At this silent hour I wandered among the tombs that lay within the
cemetery at some distance from the city: they were arranged with the most
pleasing care, and the statuary exhibited on many of them formed an
ornamental grace to their sepulchral beauty. Some were wholly shrouded in
cypress, while others shone in the moonlight beneath a wreath of
consecrated roses, designed to embalm the mementos of mouldering marble.
Here a sister's affection might be traced--one who had lived long enough
to lay her sacred offering upon the tomb, and bedew it with the tears of
grief. Notwithstanding its solemn associations, it was withal a place
adapted to the most exquisite feelings, and a sanctuary where the heart
might forget its worldly aspirations. But the Turks, in selecting their
cemeteries, far transcend the boasted intellectual superiority of
Europeans; and the one which lay beneath the walls of Aleppo, was, in
every point of view, eminently calculated to confirm me in such an opinion.
Its cypress trees,

The only constant mourners o'er the dead,

when the hearts that deplored the destiny of their friends had mingled
with them in the dust, appeared perfectly congenial with the natural
solemnity of the place; and the vortex of succeeding events has not yet
swept away the charm they impressed upon my memory.

As I stood in a state of silent abstraction, beside a tomb distinguished
from the others by a sculptured turban, the sound of a lute excited my
attention, and instantly averting my head from the object placed before it,
I perceived the tall shadowy figure of a man, partially concealed among
the cypress trees.--This nocturnal wanderer, my only companion in the
"City of the Dead," dispelled my gloomy reflections at once, and inspired
some vivid ideas relative to his appearance in such a place. Wishing to