I was not long held by this new wonder, for beneath and around stretched the great graveyard, that seemed a harmony of forest, wild, and garden. We rested at intervals of a few miles on the lofty platforms, descending the flights of steps at times to view the statuesque dead and their surroundings. Here and there we came across groups of young men and young women intently listening to strange voices that seemed to issue from some hidden being within the statued dead. These were students, and the sounds were the voices of the dead, treasured up on fine tablets of irelium, which could either be read or made to re-utter their recorded words. To me the silent bowed figures of the living seemed the lifeless, the whispering dead seemed the living. It was a piece of necromancy, I felt at first; and, but for my questioning intellect, I should have shrunk back in fear. It is true, I could not see the lips of the erect figure move, and when I gazed long enough some tremor of the eyelid would betray the life of the listener; but for the first few minutes the illusion was complete, and all the surroundings, the stillness, the far echo of wailing music, the sombre trees, seemed to confirm it. Every new group we encountered produced the same eerie feeling. But we passed on; and the joy which filled the spaces of the great valley buried the sense of death. It was the least funereal scene I had ever witnessed; for along the paths and wide tree-arched avenues went bands of carollers singing songs of triumph and gladness, the air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, and masses of varied colour broke the olive darkness of the groves. The world was at once jubilant and harmonious.