Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/70

52 monument of the first Jewish noble-woman in Bohemia Bas-Schevi of Traunberg. In a group of the oldest stones, we are especially attracted by the fourcornered memorial, covering the relics of a celebrated rabbi, Abigdor Caro, who sang of the fate of his fellow-believers in the middle-ages in a famous eloquent „selichu“. And here again some stones call up the memory of the founder of the neighbouring synagogue Mardochai Meisl and the renowned bibliophile Rabbi Oppenheim, whose library is now in Oxford. And there again a couple of monuments of two learned men, well known to their contemporaries: the chronicler and mathematician David Gans, a friend of Keppler and Tycho Brahe, and the pupil of Galileo Galilei Salomon del Medigo de Candia. Many of the inscriptions on the tombs, time has long ago defaced; but still you can distinguish the quaint and easily legible characters of the old Hebrews, arrayed in symmetrical lines, and having an inexpressibly decorative effect.

And the deep stillness of graveyard solitude reigns all around; only now and then you hear the note of a blackbird flying heavily from tree to tree whose tone echoes faintly between the dark walls of the remote corners of the cemetery; and again it is quiet and still under the crowns of the syringas and you feel as if the sorrow of centuries dwelt here, mixed with the wailing of the once heavily persecuted chosen nation.

At such a time under the indescribably mournful impression of the graveyard solitude, you become ready to believe all the mysterious tales and stories which are told about this ancient cemetery, over which the darkness of the evening is beginning to spread. It seems as if the evening breeze wafted to you the subdued sighs from the weed covered graves and from the tombs of innocent children who for centuries were buried in a particular bend of the cemetery. And now, the shadows of the trees grow longer and deeper with the evening.

In the neighbouring synagogue the large brass candlesticks have flashed forth a brilliant light. The high windows of the building gleem in the thickning darkness of evening through the stillness of which you hear the muffled melancholy tones of the organ and the singing of the