From the Richmond Enquirer, 10/16/1862, p. 2, c. 4

A VISIT TO HOLLYWOOD. – It is a beautiful feature in the faith of the Catholic, which, on All Saint's Day, prompts a visit to the abodes of the dead. Many indeed are the hallowed memories which on that day are called up in beautiful reality to endear the dust of those who, when living were beloved and who now, though slumbering in the narrow house, are revivified by the magic fancies of affection.

A few evenings since we visited our own beautiful Hollywood. Around, the dead were sepulchred, dreaming the dreams of "that sleep which knows no waking," and by our side were the quick, in the lithe elasticity of youth, or in the "sear and yellow leaf," dreaming day-dreams as strange and many tinted as the flowers of which were strewn around by the lingering genius of the still living love.

In life we know that there is a double union existing between mind and matter, and consciousness cannot determine whether or not the dreams of one are ever dependent upon the state and condition of the other. One, we know, or think we know.

"---- aspires to Heaven,
Pants for its sempiternal heritage,
And ever changing, ever rising still.
Wantons in endless being;
The other for a time, the unwilling sport
Of circumstances and passion, struggles on,
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly,
Then, like a useless and worn out machine,
Rots, perishes and passes."

More than a year ago, this pleasant burial ground was one Elysium of charming plots and beautiful monuments. Scarcely a grave was without its marble and its light of laughing flowers. Now through its northwestern expanse the yellow earth rises in thickly folding billows over dead roses of chivalry, from every State, aye, almost every town and village in the South. The same feelings of sadness arise, but not in the same train of retrospective musing, when we contemplate these bare and melancholy graves, emblems of that victory which death brings to the soldier in the midst of war, the victory of an everlasting peace. No canopied and perfumed couch comes up in the imagined picture of the soldier's death, but we are apt to see instead all that can make misery more wretched and death itself more welcome than the light of day.

Gentle and affectionate hearts, men in the first full glow of health and youth, the soul of honor and of patriotism, blessed with friends and fortune, and sustained to the last, with an unfaltering hope, sleep there; and when they lay down, no friend was near, no fortune brought them the care and kindness of the home's affection, and no hope of home again shone in the brightness of its realization upon their blanching brows and sinking hearts.

It is indeed sad to pass through this quarter of Hollywood. All that was can suggest and peace foreshadow, floats like a vision over each turfless grave.

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