It is true indeed that he does eat, the prince of the ancient name, and exquisitely beautiful little town, of Monaco. But it is food that would give an indigestion to any man with a conscience. The prince has reserved to himself of his lovely tiny principality very little more than his large palace and the surrounding gardens. The rest is let to the keeper of a gambling establishment built and organized on a very magnificent scale, and standing, with its hotel and several gay shops, in the most exquisite Italian gardens that imagination can picture—veritable gardens of Armida, with terrace above terrace, flights of white, gleaming steps, handsome balustrades, and all the glorious flowers and foliage of far-distant and still more sunny regions. They command a view of unspeakable beauty. They are full of all the sweet, peaceful suggestions of lovely nature, heightened and enhanced by the order and arrangement of subtle art. As I wandered up and down the marble stairs, and from beneath the shade of eucalyptus, palm, mimosa, tamarisk, and cypress, into the sunny walks bright with flowers, my heart sank within me at the dreadful thought that all this had been brought together for no other purpose than to minister to human passions of the worst kind, and to accumulate sordid gains by trading on vice. Games of chance may not, in themselves, be wrong. Far be it from me to assert that they are. But if the chronicles of Monaco could be truly written for only one season, we should look on this beautiful scene, where God's best gifts in bountiful nature have been used to decorate and adorn it to the utmost, as simply one of the gates of hell, and probably one of its broadest and largest. The moon was riding through a pure expanse of spotless blue, her reflection dancing on the rippling sea with silver footsteps, as we passed down the flights of broad stairs from terrace to terrace to join the night-train to Mentone. The journey took us barely twenty minutes; and we were silent and depressed. We had seen no startling sight: all was perfectly decorous and calm. A slight click, click, very occasionally, as the heaps of gold had been piled on the tapis vert, and a subdued, muffled noise, hardly perceptible, as the croupiers dragged forward the gains and the losses of silent figures that sat or stood around the numerous gambling-tables—that was all. Hours passed. People came and went with noiseless tread and controlled countenance. No man committed [pg 210] suicide in our presence. No woman shrieked at her loss or laughed at her success. Outwardly, it was calm, silent, and intense. But there is a wordless language which speaks from one human soul to another, and which, whether we will or no, reveals something of the inner state and the unspoken secrets. The very air teemed with these secrets. And as I passed out into the quiet night, I wondered whether perhaps in hell there will be the same decorous silence, without the exterior beauty, and all the fire of anguish be hidden beneath the outer garb—so entirely did it seem that, to many, it might be but one step from this to that.
The rusticity of Mentone was a relief after the sort of nightmare to which we had so needlessly subjected ourselves at Monaco. It was carnival time, and the peasantry were making merry. A motley crew came pouring down the only street worthy of the name, in fantastic dresses, making hideous sounds through huge horns, shouting and dancing. They had two bears with them, which, I afterwards heard, in their frolic they had let loose, to the alarm of quiet folks. For myself, I scrambled up a steep, narrow, and very dirty vicolo,76 part of which was composed of broken steps, glad to be out of their way. And so, climbing higher and higher, I found myself at the parish church, where there was an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and where the noise of the masks and merry-makers could not penetrate.
As I am far from intending to give my kind readers anything of the nature of a guide-book—a task for which I am utterly unqualified—I will not weary them with an account of how and by what route we found ourselves at the San Marco Hotel at Bologna, the City of Arcades, the capital of jurisprudence, whence came many an astute lawyer, reared in its celebrated university, which has also given the church six sovereign pontiffs, and amongst them the witty and learned Benedict XIV. To Bologna we owe the great school of painting founded by Francia, which boasts of the Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, and his pupil Guercino, besides many others. We thought ourselves unusually accurate and learned, when, on arriving at the Accademia, we asked the surly guardian which way we ought to turn to get to the Pinacoteca; and not till we had, in a more roundabout form, told him we wanted to see the pictures would he condescend from his stolid dignity to tell us where to go. The Francias alone, the S. Cecilia of Raphael, or the Martyrdom of S. Agnes by Domenichino, would be worth a yet longer journey to behold. And the Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns, drawn in crayons by Guido, with stains of damp on the paper, and some slight discoloration from age, leaves an impression on the memory surpassing, to my mind, all that artist's finished paintings. Bologna has set an example our more liberal times, as we are apt to think them, seem unwilling to follow, and are doing so but slowly and grudgingly. The learned ladies [pg 211] who aspire to equality with the other sex might come here in a body, raise the now declining glories of the university, and fill those comparatively empty halls. Bologna has known female lawyers of eminence, and doctors, and at least one surgeon and anatomist of the gentler sex, and has done homage to their learning and merit. Might it not be as well to take advantage of a university so large-minded, and once so celebrated?—convinced, as we are, that if the ladies took the lead, the gentlemen would follow.
We had had the honor many years ago of knowing Cardinal Mezzofanti, so celebrated as a linguist. He was a Bolognese, and had been librarian of the university here, and, when we knew him, occupied an important post in the Vatican library. At that time he had mastered something like forty languages. He told us that, a short time previous, he had been informed there was a poor sailor come to Rome from some out-of-the-way part of the world—Lapland, I believe—who spoke a dialect no one could understand or make anything of; and that the man, being a Catholic, wanted to go to his Easter duties. The cardinal sent for him, and made him discourse in his presence. In two days his eminence was quite ready to hear his confession, and could talk with the man in his own tongue with fluency.
Through the cool, shady arcades of beautiful Bologna we wandered to the Piazza Vittoria Emanuel, which formerly was known by the more honorable name of Piazza del Gigante. The crowd was so great that we could hardly make our way past the groups of peasants and well-to-do farmers, in their warm, brown cloaks, all talking and gesticulating, with apparently nothing else to do. There was a market going on, but not one which seemed of sufficient importance to justify so large a crowd, and which probably collects there daily, about mid-day, out of the abundant leisure which pervades Italian life, even in its most industrious forms. We visited the shrine of S. Dominic, and were long engaged in admiring its extraordinary beauty. The saint died at Bologna in 1221. He was in England when the vision was granted him which revealed to him that, before the next Feast of the Assumption, his earthly career would be closed, and, on arriving at Bologna, had forewarned the students at the university that he was about to leave them. Shortly after, he went to Venice on the affairs of his order. He returned to the monastery of S. Nicholas, at Bologna, in the great heats of the last days of July. The following morning he celebrated his last Mass, and said Office in choir. He then complained of headache, but refused to take any further repose than was obtained by sitting on a sack of wool which happened casually to be at hand. Finding his suffering increase, he sent for the novices, to give them his last exhortation, summing up all in these simple words: “Be filled with charity, keep humility, and observe voluntary poverty.” In the hope that a purer air might benefit their beloved father and founder, they carried him to the Church of S. Mary of the Mount. But the journey, brief as it was, proved rather to have aggravated his condition. Once again he addressed the assembled brethren; and finding that there was some idea of burying him there, instead of in his own monastery, [pg 212] he entreated to be taken back to S. Nicholas, that he might, as he expressed it, be buried beneath the feet of his brothers. They wanted to change his clothes, but discovered he had no others but those he wore. Brother Moneta therefore lent him a habit. He had received the last sacraments at S. Mary's of the Mount; and finding that his disciples, in the excess of their grief, were delaying to read the prayers for the dying, he was the first to beg they would commence. While they prayed around him, his lips silently repeated the words; and when they came to the sentence, “Come to his assistance, ye saints of God. Come forth to meet him, ye angels of the Lord, receiving his soul, and offering it in the sight of the Most High,”77 he lifted up his hands toward heaven, and at the same moment gave up his pure soul to God.
It was at noon, on Friday, the 6th of August. Thus he reached his home five years before his companion in arms in the warfare of the great church militant, S. Francis of Assisi, who was six years his junior. The last words of the holy dying are ever precious to the Christian world; and it is to be remarked that those of the canonized saints have most frequently been taken from Holy Scripture or from the liturgy of the church. S. Francis died repeating the 141st Psalm; thus his last words were, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the just wait for me, until Thou reward me.”
The greater part of our journey to Bologna from Genoa had been through a highly cultivated but flat and uninteresting country. The contrast was great on the railway from Bologna to Florence, with its forty-five tunnels, its sudden turnings and windings, the beautiful valleys of the Apennines, and the mountains themselves looking as if the giant hand of nature had crushed them like rose-leaves, and then flung them down with all the crinkles in them. You look below on fertile fields and beautiful little towns nestling on the sides of green hills, with gardens and meadows smiling in the sunshine. As you are attempting to realize the lovely scene before you, the relentless engine is bringing you nearer to rugged rocks, with hanging woods and fringes of the golden broom. A black cavern yawns in front of you, and in a second you are plunged in darkness. Away you are hurried, with grind, and puff, and roar, regretting the sunny picture from which you have so suddenly been snatched. Just as you are recovering from the shock, again you emerge on a scene as beautiful as the last; and again are you doomed to lose it, almost before your dazzled eyes have recovered from this unnaturally rapid succession of day and night, and which reminded me of a certain planet, where, as astronomers assure us, the inhabitants, if there be any, are exposed to the vicissitudes of several days and nights in the course of our comparatively leisurely space of four-and-twenty hours. I have always ventured to hope they were not also condemned to dress and undress each time; otherwise I think many of them must be tempted to follow the example of that poor gentleman who cut his throat, leaving a paper [pg 213] on the table in which he stated that it was the constant buttoning and unbuttoning which had been too much for him.
Nothing can exceed the beauty of the view as the plain of Tuscany opens before you. We had seen it two-and-twenty years ago, before any railroads were there to cut short the delights of travelling. We had gazed long and lingeringly from out the windows of our travelling-carriage, while the setting sun left his last kiss on the mountain heights, and the evening mists gathered below. I, for one, had never seen it since. But sometimes in my dreams that view had come back to me, and, when I awoke, it Was still there. Sometimes the phantasmagoria of the mind had suddenly unfolded it before my memory without my being able to say when and where I had painted that picture on my brain. And now I saw it again; and suddenly all those broken recollections seemed to gather themselves together, and unroll before me, while my soul whispered, “Here is the reality of what for so many years has haunted you, and which you have so often been tempted to believe was a trick of your imagination. It is a fact; and you can recall it and put it together, piece by piece; as you will do, far more perfectly, the broken and half-forgotten fragments of your life when the barrier of death is passed.”
The only other wide expanse which has left the same impression on my imagination, waking and sleeping, is the view from the beautiful viaduct at Aricia, as it first burst upon me—the vast campagna and the crimson lights of the setting sun.
This was our first visit to Florence since the government had taken possession of the Dominican church and monastery of San Marco, and opened the latter as a museum to the public in 1869; so that my old jealousy that Frank could gaze at those wonderfully lovely angels of Fra Angelico was now at an end. I do not think there is a cell without some exquisitely devotional painting by the monk-artist, whose every picture is an embodied meditation and a prayer. We paused long in the two cells where Savonarola had lived and studied and suffered. The old question forced itself upon me as to what had been the real character of that grand, imposing figure, which fills so large a page in the history of Florence—the hard-featured reformer, the man of relentless will and burning eloquence. Where was the little rift in the flute which jarred that celestial music? Where was the flaw in the gem which spoiled its intrinsic value? And which was the snare in his life which prevented his growing on into heroic virtue? His gifts and graces were immense, and, at one time at least, so supernatural that they seemed at once the guarantee and the pledge that he would die a saint in the highest acceptation of the word. Frank, who has read a great deal about him, written by all sides, is persuaded that it was a form of spiritual pride and dependence on himself that ruined all. Of course, at this distance of time, and judging only from existing documents, no one can say when precisely this began—when the annihilation of self first gave place to an inner complacency; when that heart, covered, as before, with the rude hair-shirt, began to throb with a secret sentiment of personal satisfaction in the graces [pg 214] God had given. It must have been long, if ever, before those set, stern features began to betray that another spirit had entered into the soul of the ascetic monk, which gradually was tarnishing the purity of his spiritual life. But when the end came, and he bowed to death in its most dreadful form, hurried on by the malignity of his enemies—who, having once laid their hand on their prey, feared lest the mercy of Rome should be enlightened to arrest its own mandate—can any doubt that the man who had done so much in a holy cause, and had so decried the pomp and pride of life, found all the graces attached to a great and accepted sacrifice?
We hurry from Florence. And though I might linger over my pages, and make my story more full of information, and possibly of interest, I yet refrain from anything that may trench on the character of mere sketches, which alone I aim at. Frank forms one of a deputation to the Holy Father, and he was to reach Rome by a certain day. We arrived long enough before that date to establish ourselves in a house in the Ripetta, overlooking the yellow Tiber. Charon, mild, modern, and a Roman, ferries his boat just beneath our windows. The rope is fastened to a stake on our balcony, and makes a creaking noise as the boat crosses the river, to which we are so habituated that we think it musical. Charon wears a glazed hat, and affects a nautical air quite uncalled for, considering his limited navigation. For the moderate fee of one half-penny he conveys his passengers to and fro across the classic river. Landed on the opposite shore, we pass along a narrow lane, on one side limited by a high wall, on the other by a green bank paved with violet-leaves. Modern violet-leaves, but doubtless descendants of those that fell beneath the coulter of Cincinnatus' plough along these Quintian fields that early morn when the anxious senate went to call the half-naked hero to another and less peaceful field, and bade him cross the Tiber (where we have done), and turn his plough-share into a sword against those ever-recurring Volsci and Æqui. Let the violets grow, O warrior ploughman! and in a few brief days thou shalt return to find the little purple flowers ready to hail thy triumph. Shall we see Racilia behind the tall vine-poles, bearing the toga that is to cover the brawny shoulders of the noble laborer? Or have these familiar idyls of our early life lost their charm in the sterner and more assured memories of Christian Rome?
The narrow, violet-bordered lane leads into wide fields and to the fortifications of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. We are outside the gates of the city. The white walls of Rome stand glittering in the sunshine to our left; to our right lies the green, undulating Campagna; and before us are the heights of Monte Mario, pine-crowned.
S. Michael, poised in mid-air, sheathes his avenging sword above the huge round tower that was the tomb of Hadrian, and by turns the hiding-place of the popes or the prison of their enemies.
Darkly looming against the blue-white sky, the bronze figure of Rome's guardian angel for ever holds his weapon half-way out of his scabbard, like the suspended threat of an avenging power.
Dark-browed Roman women are hanging out inconceivable colored rags that surely never can have served for human raiment, to dry on the wooden rails that mark our [pg 215] road. They are jabbering, in harsh and femininely shrill tones, their curtailed patois of the Roman tongue; and the lark, in advance of the season, is carolling overhead in the motionless air and in the quivering light of the mid-day sun. We re-enter the city by the Porta Angelica, and are standing on the fields of the Vatican, where stood Nero's circus and Nero's gardens. Of all the characters of the heathen Roman Empire, none comes more prominently forward as the very type of human depravity and accomplished wickedness than that of Nero. He seems the embodiment of evil heightened by a versatility of talent and varnished by the gloss of a false poetic sense that makes him the exact opposite to all that produces heroic virtue in its greatest charm, as well as its highest glory, among the Christian saints. His was the poet nature debased to the lowest sensuality and the meanest vanity. And in the mystic saints, is there not ever something of the poet nature carried to its most subtle expression and its utmost elevation in the ascetic purity and tender devotion of a S. Francis or a S. Gertrude? There is a wonderful sequence in the low-lying, half-hidden events of the church's history. There is a marvellous counterbalancing of good against evil, as though the providence of God had (if we may use the expression) taken pleasure in substituting light for darkness, and beauty for ugliness; selecting in each the exact counterpart of the other, and placing them in juxtaposition. And so it is in this spot, which most brings to our recollection the lavish and foul luxury of Rome's artist emperor, the degraded being who was by turns actor, poet, musician, wrestler, or coachman, but fiend always! There, where the horrid pomp of his midnight revels was lighted up by the living and burning forms of the meek martyrs of the church—there we now have the grandest monument of the faith for which those martyrs died that ever has been, or probably ever will be. And the great saints, the pillars of the church, the founders and foundresses of her armies of religious orders, stand now, sculptured in cool marble niches along the aisles of that gorgeous Basilica which stands on the very ground of Nero's infamous gardens. There, too, was another “Potter's Field,” in which to bury strangers; for the clay soil on which S. Peter's is built had served in the old Roman manufactory of bricks and earthenware. The potters had excavated numberless caves on the slopes of the Vatican hills, where subsequently the Christians concealed themselves, and, as in the other catacombs of Rome, celebrated the divine mysteries and buried their dead. It is said that S. Peter himself, on his first journey to Rome, baptized many in these very catacombs—many, probably, who later on had received that other baptism of blood in the ghastly revels of Nero's gardens, and whose remains were gathered together secretly by the brethren, and buried in the caves of the “Potter's Fields.” And now the strangers have become possessors; the holy dead have consecrated what might well have been called another “field of blood”; and the successors of S. Peter sit in reverend state and govern Christendom on the very spot where the first Bishop of Rome celebrated in secret the first Masses Rome ever witnessed. The grain of mustard-seed has indeed become a great and goodly tree, and the [pg 216] birds of all nations and all ages lodge in the beneficent shadow of its branches.
The whole history of the Basilica of S. Peter, whether the first that sheltered the relics of the apostles, or the present more magnificent one, built from the designs of Bernini, and completed by Michael Angelo, teems with facts of this nature.
The old roof of S. Peter's was covered by Pope Honorius I. with the gilt bronze tiles that had roofed, some historians say the temple of Romulus, others that of Jupiter Capitolinus, possibly of both; as though the first founders of pagan Rome, the Romulus and Remus of history and legend, were to pay tribute to the founders of Christian Rome, the great apostles SS. Peter and Paul, whose blood cemented the walls of the early church, and over whose sacred relics that venerable roof was to hang; or, as if the false Jove, dethroned and vanquished by the fisherman, were stripped of his splendor to do honor to the true God. The tiles have been removed elsewhere now, but the fact still retains its touching import. And the like is carried out in the present Basilica; for the Pantheon, raised to the honor of its myriad of demon gods, gave up the bronze of its portico at the command of Urban VIII., that out of it Bernini might fashion that wonderful work, the Baldacchino over the high altar. Wonderful work! that, as we gaze at it, never weary and ever admiring, we ask ourselves in what way the mind of the architect78 wrought when he brought forth this splendid design. Did it come to him at once, like the one grand idea ruling all the cadences of action in a Greek play? Or did he build it up, piece by piece, in his soul, and touch and retouch the beautiful image like the finished diversities of an idyl? We incline to the first, for that is most like inspiration, and the Baldacchino of S. Peter's must have been an inspiration.
As we pass beneath the deep shadow of the great colonnade of S. Peter's into the vast piazza facing the Basilica, it is like stepping from the mazes of a forest out into the sunny plain. Almost catching the diamond spray of these ever-joyous fountains, we mount the easy steps, so dignified in their gradual ascent, and pass into the gallery of the façade with the same awe-struck feeling we have experienced when suddenly we have found our frank glance come in unexpected contrast with the deep, scrutinizing gaze of a dark eye and the overhanging solemnity of a thoughtful and heavy-laden brow. And first the bass-relief before us tells us the history of the church. Christ delivers the keys to S. Peter, who, kneeling, receives the tokens of his high office. At either end of the long gallery are the equestrian statues of two great imperial defenders and benefactors of the church: Constantine the Great still gazes on the labarum that appeared to him in mystic form not far off on that very hill of Monte Mario, pine-crowned, and where now stands a church in commemoration of the event—an event which turned the City on Seven Hills, the Babylon of the prophecies, the woman drunk with the blood of the martyrs, into the Eternal City, the port of the church's bark, the patrimony of S. Peter, and the home of all Christian hearts—the city of which a great and royal sufferer once said; “J'ai trouvé [pg 217] que Rome est l'endroit où on peut le mieux se passer du bonheur.”79 Here all sorrow is ennobled, all grief is sheltered. The great King of the church is himself “the Man of Sorrows,” and here his Vicar reigns!
At the very entrance we pause to ponder over as touching an elegy as ever was written in memoriam; and the grief it portrays is that of the other great defender of the church, whose equestrian statue meets us on the left end of the gallery—Charlemagne mourns for Adrian I.
“I, Charles, write these verses, weeping for my father! Yea, my father, my dear love! These verses are my lamentation for thy loss. Be thou ever mindful of me, whose memory seeks thee dwelling with Christ in the blessed region of heaven. The priests and the people loved thee with a great love, and all with one love, best of shepherds! Great friend! I mingle in one our names and our illustrious titles. Adrian and Charles—emperor, I; and father, thou!”
In the history of nations, as in the life of individuals, there is a not unfrequent repetition of events bearing the same type though not the same in fact. They give a characteristic coloring to the biography of the individual or the history of the people. The events and the man react on each other. But this is especially true, and in a far deeper sense, with the history of God's church. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they spoiled the Egyptians. They carried away as a tribute the treasures unwillingly conceded by their former masters. The Christian world, on the conversion of Constantine, stepped forth from the darkness and despotism of paganism, and Charlemagne, as if in commemoration of this antitype of that deliverance, endowed the church of S. Peter with rich tributes from Egypt for the benefaction of the clergy, and for the lighting and repairing of the great Basilica. Human governments are generally ungrateful; but the church is a divine government, though carried on through human agents, and gratitude is one of her virtues and one of her most distinctive attributes. Constantine and Charlemagne are not forgotten. Their statues guard the entrance of S. Peter's, as erstwhile their power guarded and endowed the see of Peter. Nor shall even the weaker sex fail of the tribute liberally paid to loyalty and devotion. There is something sublime in the gratitude depicted in the monument to the Countess Mathilda, who holds in her hands the mitre and the keys, as though to suggest the idea of consigning them to the protection of the great mediatrix of the incorrigible Emperor of the West, Henry IV., and who had sheltered in her own dominions the great S. Gregory, and done so much to increase the patrimony of the church. A royal father giving his crown and sceptre into the hands of a favorite child could not more touchingly portray the loving appreciation of the sovereign pontiffs towards one who had been so true to the church's cause. And time has no effect in diminishing the gratitude of that church which is built upon a rock, and where all is enduring, any more than it has in diminishing the glory of the saints; for it was Urban VIII. who erected the monument in S. Peter's to the spiritual daughter of the great Hildebrand, Gregory VII.—a grateful memory of [pg 218] more than six hundred years' standing!
We have often heard people complain of a sentiment of disappointment on first entering S. Peter's. It has been accounted for by the fact that the perfect proportion and harmony of the whole, producing therefore no startling contrasts, fail to effect so sudden an impression on the mind as would be the case were the harmony less absolute. To this it may be replied that some minds are more alive to impressions of harmony, and others to those of contrast. We can best speak from experience, and we all agreed that nowhere had we felt such a sense of completeness and its consequent repose fall upon our souls as when we pushed aside that heavy leathern portal, and passed within the precincts of S. Peter's. I do not remember ever to have done so, though I have probably been there fifty times, without an involuntary pause as I first entered; and before approaching the holy-water stoups, supported by white marble boys of six feet high, who carry a large marble shell between them, and, everything being large in proportion, fail not to look like infants, in spite of their real size. The first chapel to the right as you enter is the one in which a large number of very valuable relics are kept in rich reliquaries, and which are only shown to the public on certain days. These are distinct from the great relics of the Passion, which are exhibited to the crowd from the loggia in the dome on either side of the high altar during Holy Week. I used to be attracted to that chapel, which is otherwise less striking than many of the others, by the Pietà of Michael Angelo. In my father's house in England we have that same Pietà, said to be an original. It is on a smaller scale and unfinished; at least the head and features of Our Lady always gave me that impression. Not so the figure of Our Lord, which is full of the sad tenderness of death. The utter supineness of the limbs and of the arm, which has fallen off Our Lady's lap, and hangs down; the beauty of the worn face; the wonderfully graceful and yet manly hands, pierced, like the feet; the general position of the whole body, like a broken flower flung on the Mother's lap—are full of the deepest religious feeling and pathos. But it is difficult thoroughly to appreciate it where it stands in S. Peter's. It is over the altar, and one had need do as I used to do at P——, when a child, to be able to appreciate all the details. I used to go alone, when I was sure of not being caught, down the dark, dreary passage which led to the dark, disused chapel, on the damp, marble pavement of which stood this supposed original of the Pietà. Then getting a chair from a bath-room in the vicinity of the chapel, I stood upon that, so as to bring myself nearly on a level with the head of Our Lady, and thus be able to look down, as she does, on the dead Christ supported on her knees.
How often in S. Peter's I have wished I could do the same with the undoubted work of Michael Angelo, and trace again in every line the pathetic beauty of suffering and death, as, with eyes full of tears, I had done in early life! The Pietà at S. Peter's has the same absence of real beauty in the face of Our Lady with the one at P——; the same long upper lip and want of finish. It also gives a like impression with all other pietàs, in [pg 219] which the Mother is represented as holding her Divine Son on her knees—a thing which in reality would be impossible. No woman could support on her knees the dead body of a full-grown man. Michael Angelo, whose idealism was always under the control of his marvellous anatomical drawing, was too conscious of that not to endeavor palpably to counteract what probably, as he was working at the group, he felt to be an invincible objection. He has certainly made it look possible in his Pietà, but he has done it at the expense of beauty and congruity. The Blessed Virgin's lap is enormous; her whole figure looks powerful and gigantic, while that of the Saviour is undersized in proportion.
I have often paused in the space opposite this first chapel, across the nave, to watch some fifty little urchins learning their catechism. Merry little creatures they seemed to be, all more or less in the négligé attire of Italian beggar life, picturesque in color and dilapidated in texture. Sparkling black eyes and gleaming white teeth were their chief and never-failing beauty. They sat on low forms, or rather they leant upon them, lay upon them, scrambled over them, waiting for their instructor, who always seemed long in coming. When at last he did arrive, a faint semblance of order was established. The little creatures shouted forth the answers in a sort of loud sing-song, nudging each other all the time, swinging their little, naked, well-bronzed legs, and keeping up some perennial jokes all the time with each other, but little in unison with the words they were repeating. I cannot say that their demeanor seemed at all to affect the stolid gravity of their priestly instructor, or even to try his patience. He simply ignored it. He appeared to have no eyes nor ears for any sound but the well-known monotony of the responses. It is to be hoped something may come back to them of it all when they are old enough to think. For myself, I could only reflect on what a strange reminiscence it would seem to me to have learnt my catechism beneath the dome of S. Peter's. To these little, careless mortals, it was only a part of their everyday life.
The niches, filled with colossal statues of the founders and foundresses of religious orders, embellish the walls on all sides; and probably all Catholics look out for some special saint as they wander through the Basilica. We used particularly to salute S. Teresa and S. Frances of Rome; the latter attended by her guardian angel. These statues produce a grand effect, being all of white marble, standing in niches of many-colored marbles and rich carving, though they are far from all having artistic merit. There are still some niches empty. Who will fill them? What saintly founders or foundresses of new orders does the future of the church still reserve for us? Or will the last day come, and find those niches empty still? With the exception of the four statues under the dome, they are (and must always be) canonized saints and founders of orders.
I have heard of people whose great ambition was to be buried in Westminster Abbey. I knew one pretty bride, of high rank and youthful ambition, who was married in the Abbey because she was persuaded that her husband would be a great statesman, and that his grateful country would bury him there. But I never heard of any [pg 220] one who dreamed of filling one of the empty niches in S. Peter's. On first entering the church, one sees the many lamps burning round the Confessional of S. Peter, as the high altar is called. They seem to pour an orange-colored glow all around. You stand or kneel against the marble balustrade, and look down on the kneeling figure of Pius VI. before the tomb of his greater predecessor. It is a beautiful, restful image of perpetual prayer, and is one of the few works of Canova I have ever really admired. Against the marble balustrade there hang some wooden frames containing an indulgenced prayer and hymn to S. Peter and S. Paul in Latin. I once had a curious illustration of how a trifle may strike a stranger, while it escapes the notice of one in the habit of seeing it constantly. I never went to S. Peter's that I did not say that prayer at the tomb of the apostles; for it must be remembered the relics (not all of them) of S. Paul lie here, as well as those of S. Peter. I had had occasion to insert them in a manuscript, which fell into the hands of a certain very learned Capuchin, who holds a high post in his order, and in connection, also, with the Sovereign Pontiff. He surprised me by asking me where I got those prayers and hymns. He had never read them before, in the many years he had lived at Rome in the venerable convent of his order, and might have seen them fastened by a small chain to the spot where he must so often have knelt. Perhaps the fact that in every church in Rome you will find an indulgenced prayer printed up somewhere as an incentive to devotion, may have led to his not particularly noticing the one at S. Peter's.
Frank used to tell Mary he never knew any one so greedy of indulgences as she was. She always looked out for these short prayers; she never went to S. Peter's without kneeling, as she passed the priests in their confessionals, to receive the little tap from the long wand they have in front of the confessional, and to the receiving of which an indulgence is attached. He used to tell her laughingly that he did not understand how she had the face to disturb the priest saying his Office, and oblige him to lift his eyes from his Breviary, and detach the long stick as she knelt a yard or two distant. We have seen her unblushingly obtain three raps in succession with all the devotion possible; and then, when she and I were looking another way, Frank would strive against his natural British undemonstrativeness, and kneel for the little blow, getting up again with a shy blush. Mary and I never took any notice. We knew that the small act of humility, which, among the childlike Italians, came almost as a matter of course, cost him far more than it did us, and therefore had more merit. The Romans have a harmless superstition that if you are leaving Rome, and are anxious to return, you will not fail to do so if you deposit some small coin in a safe place. I had done so the last time I had been there; and, sure enough, I was back again to claim my money. But though I could remember the part of the church beneath the statue of S. Juliana where I had dropt it into a crevice, I never could find it again. However, that did not matter, since the charm had worked successfully. A draught of the water from the fountain of Trevi is said to have the same effect. I drank a cupful once in pure jest, and have been to Rome four times [pg 221] since; but something more powerful than the hidden half-pence or the fountain of Trevi has lured me back again. There is, I believe, no spot in the world where everybody gets to feel so at home as in Rome, outside the land of their birth and the roof that shelters all their domestic affections.
In the same place where I had hidden my little coin I remember a scene which filled my imagination with interest and admiration. It was Holy Thursday. The high altar was being stripped of all the ornaments, and washed with wine, to the mournful chanting of the choir; the daylight was fast declining, though still some rays of the setting sun stole through the yellow-tinted windows below the dome; and the Grand Penitentiary was seated in his violet robes on a raised platform, in a crimson velvet chair, with no partition between him and the low stool to his right, on which the penitents were to kneel. There were several steps, covered with cloth, to mount from the pavement of the church to the seat of the prelate; and at some distance from these was a temporary railing to prevent the crowd from approaching within hearing of what should pass between the penitent and the priest. We stood among the crowd. The penitent was a man of about thirty years of age, with coal-black hair and beard, deep, dark eyes, and regular features. It was very curious to hear the remarks of the bystanders; and they were very characteristic of Italians, born to the faith. Most of them were praying aloud, in brief ejaculations, that God would grant him perfect contrition. The women especially were exclaiming: “Ah! poverello, ma piange!”80 Two priests passed through the crowd, and paused a moment, with a smile of indescribable benevolence and satisfaction that a big fish had been caught in Peter's net, and was being drawn to land. The confession lasted a long time. The man never for a moment shifted his position; but by degrees the venerable prelate bent his ear closer and closer to the poor penitent, and his countenance showed a mixture of compassion and tenderness quite paternal. The man's forehead almost touched the priest's shoulder, as he poured forth his long history of error and shame. At length the priest's hand was raised to give the absolution, and a murmur of relief and congratulation ran through the crowd of spectators. The hand rested on the man's head before he rose from his knees. He came quickly down the steps. The crowd parted to let him pass. He can have seen none but smiling and happy glances all around him, if he cared to look up; but all silently made way for him, and in a moment he was lost in the multitude, absolved and released from the burden of some “reserved case.” Of course there were many conjectures as to who and what he might be. Some said he had been a bandit; others that he was a priest who had broken his vows, and made this confession in public as an act of greater humility; for of course it is not imperative to carry all reserved cases to the Grand Penitentiary, nor need the penitent wait for Lent to get absolution. Nevertheless, the prelate with power to absolve all reserved cases (of which murder is one) occupies that raised confessional throughout Lent for certain hours of the day. Mary was so overcome at the piety and charity of the crowd in the [pg 222] warm interest they evinced, and observed so often that it must be delightful to be thus prayed for while making one's confession, that we began to apprehend she would mount the platform herself, had not Frank timely observed to her that, in all probability, she had no reserved case on her conscience!
By this time the shades of night were closing in. The lights were all extinguished. The altars stood bare and cold. The dark crowd swayed in dense masses towards the open doors. The light of the moon struggled pale and wan through the high windows where the setting sun had lately thrown a golden glow. The vast cathedral echoed to the steps of the departing crowd, and we turned towards home, more deeply impressed with the desolation expressed by the Holy Thursday ceremonies in S. Peter's in the stripping of the altars than with many others more generally remarked.
It was night before we reached our apartment in the Ripetta.
Mary's bedroom overlooked the river, and in the morning she could see S. Peter's bathed in the rosy light of the rising sun, while flights of white sea-gulls came up the river with the early tide to feed upon the refuse which had been thrown into the water. They came swooping down, with their glittering plumage flashing in the sunshine, and, dipping low, would snatch some dainty morsel from the swift water, and mount up, in graceful, curving flight, to repeat the same again and again. As the port was close to our house, no doubt it was an advantageous position for both the breakfast and supper of the gulls. They always returned in the evening, but at no other hour in the day. At night we could see lights in three windows of the Vatican. They were always there, and always at about the same hour they disappeared. One day, when Mary was calling on Cardinal Antonelli he asked her where we were living; and on her describing the position, and how she could see S. Peter's and the Vatican, and specially those three windows, he told her the lights were from his own apartment. His eminence is very fond of flowers, and has a garden in Rome, in which he takes great pleasure. They were talking of flowers, and he observed to Mary that she would find very much the same flora throughout Europe, though not of course equally distributed. Mary objected that she had never seen the little common yellow primrose of our English woods, in that part of Italy. “Nevertheless, you will find we have it,” was his reply. And not long after, on our way to Viterbo, we saw its starry blossoms by the roadside, and hailed it as an old friend, dearer to our hearts than even the graceful pink cyclamen, which from the position of the petals reminds me of a pretty, blushing child with her hair all drawn back from her forehead.
What memories crowd upon me as I recall these trivial incidents! What happy hours have I spent beneath that deep-blue but not unclouded sky, with the warm breeze perfumed by the breath of violets in the Doria Pamphili Villa! The great stone pines, with their soft, unceasing sighs; the large willows dropping their bright-green flexible wands into the clear water; the violet anemones, with here and there a large crimson one, or a yellow tulip lighting up the soft green grass like a sparkling gem; the violets, not bashful and hidden shrinkingly beneath their leaves, as in [pg 223] our colder climes, but lifting their little dark-purple heads high in the air, to drink the light and leave a perfumed kiss on every breeze that floats; soft masses of white cloud sailing slowly over the blue ether, and casting dappled shadows on the long grass. In the distance is S. Peter's and the Vatican, with fields of broken ground in many tints of yellow and green and red between it and the stone balustrade against which we lean. It appears, from this point of view, to be quite outside the city, and to stand alone and untrammelled by meaner buildings. Behind us is a dense avenue of venerable ilex, and but now we were visiting the Colombarium, the other side of the road, and moralizing on the pagan practice of cremation, as compared with the hallowed Christian sepulture—it must have been so difficult to realize that the little handful of ashes in the urn had anything to do with the dead wife or child or father, that they had loved, embraced, and conversed with!
Again, I remember a day when we were living at Capo le Case. I took Ann with me, and we set out for a long walk regardless of the flight of time. We directed our course to S. John Lateran. On our way, we paused at San Clemente, where we had several times visited the subterranean church under the guidance of the kind and learned F. Mullooly. Few, perhaps, have ever noticed, in a church which presents so much else to interest them, a small picture, the head of S. Catharine of Sienna, over an altar at the bottom of the church, on the right hand. It is modern, and by a Dominican artist whose name is unknown to me, and probably to all save the brothers of his order. Nevertheless, I have never seen devotion more exquisitely depicted than in that sweet, sorrowful face, with the tears standing in the large, uplifted eyes. Through the open door of the church penetrated the scent of large masses of Banksia roses that hung over a wall in a garden nearly opposite. Untrained, untrimmed they flung long wreaths to the wind, and lay in cloud-like bunches of soft, creamy white. As we passed by the door of the hospital of the Salvatore, two Sisters stepped out into the sunshine, on some errand of charity for their sick and aged patients. We then visited the Basilica of S. John Lateran, “the mother and head of all churches.” The gigantic statues of the apostles have a very imposing effect, in spite of their many artistic faults, more so, perhaps, than the equally faulty statues at S. Peter's. Then we wandered into the large piazza in front of the cathedral, and looked beyond the gates and crumbling fortifications of Rome upon the Alban hills. The long avenue of trees leading to the church of Santa Croce di Gerusalemme were coming into leaf; so were the group of trees to our right, by the low wall of the piazza, on which grew tufts of fern and yellow-blossomed oxalis. We sat on the steps, and ate some hot chestnuts I had bought by the roadside, getting, at the same time, a pinch of salt from a dark-browed matron, with a yellow kerchief across her ample bosom, and a silver dagger in her hair, who sold cigars in a little wooden booth. It was enough to be alive on such a day and in such a scene, with the easy liberty of Italian life and the total absence of “Mrs. Grundy.” There was no one to see us (save a few beggar-women) sitting on the steps of the grand [pg 224] portico, and scattering the skins of our chestnuts on the pavement at our feet, while we silently drank in the balmy air and rejoiced in the beauty of the view before us. Ere we returned, we visited the Scala Santa, and looked long on Giacometti's beautiful group of the Kiss of Judas. The evening was closing in when, wearied but satisfied, we reached our home. But if these remembrances are full of light and warmth, not less pleasing are those of our moonlight drives the year that we remained in Rome till the middle of July, and every evening used to visit the Colosseum, or S. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, stopping to gaze long upon the cold silver light, so sharp and sudden on every curve and shaft, on architrave and entablature, on capital and plinth, while the dense shadows lurked behind like black stains of unfathomable darkness. Then we would drive to S. Peter's, and after crossing the bridge of Sant' Angelo between the angels, each holding an instrument of the Passion, we would look across the dark river to see the covered balcony of the house where Michael Angelo was an honored guest, and had introduced the young Raphael to the small circle of favored ones who met nightly under that roof. There, too, Vittoria Colonna probably came to increase the charm by her wit and beauty, while Michael Angelo nourished those sentiments of pure and profound veneration for her great merits which made him bitterly reproach himself after her unexpected death, because he who had never breathed one word of love to her while living, had dared to press a kiss on her marble brow when cold in death. What noble sentiments, what lofty times! And yet in many things how unseemly would some of their practices appear to us? For it was in the Church of San Silvestro al Quirinale that they used to meet after Vespers, to converse and laugh and jest together. We look across the river to mark that house. It is dark and silent now. No lights gleam from the windows. Half-defaced frescos still cover some of the walls, but it is let from top to bottom to several families of the very poorest of the people.
But I must pause. Rome is inexhaustible, whether in her classic, her Christian, or her artistic treasures; besides the charm of social intercourse, the delight of varied society, and the equal ease and splendor which may be found in the interior life of her princely palaces. Nor can I close this chapter without speaking of one whose presence, though now confined within the walls of his own palace, makes Rome so doubly dear to the true Catholic. The days are gone when our afternoon drive might be gladdened by the pleasure of finding the well-known crimson coach and magnificent black horses checking our progress, while we hastened to descend and kneel where he would pass, that we might catch a glance, perhaps a smile, and certainly the blessing, of the venerable old man in whom we recognize the Vicar of Christ. We had been admitted to more than one private audience, besides witnessing several of those receptions in which hundreds of people of many nations knelt to kiss his feet, and to hear that sweet, clear voice utter words of exhortation and encouragement. This last time we had entered the Vatican with sad and altered feelings. It was no longer a gala-day, that on which we were to [pg 225] visit the universal father of Christendom. We were going to condole with an august prisoner, a father defrauded of his rights, a sovereign deprived of his possessions. We all felt depressed and inclined for silence. The Pope had been indisposed, and, as we were kept waiting a long time, we began to fear His Holiness would prove unable to receive us. Our spirits flagged with every second that we were left in expectation, till Mary began to look so pale I feared that she was ill. At length, however, we perceived a stir among the crimson-liveried servants who were in attendance in the vestibule; presently the curtain at the end of the long gallery where we stood was drawn aside, and once again our eyes beheld him who is ever present to our thoughts, and whose name is breathed in so many prayers. The first feeling that filled our beating hearts, as we looked on his saintly and venerable face, was joy to feel that he was still amongst us; that despite increasing years, and the increasing malice and hatred of his enemies, his eye had not dimmed or his strength failed him. This impression was increased with every word he spoke. It was like the dawn which promises the perfect day, no matter how dark the night has been. “The people imagine a vain thing!” He is still with us—he, the father of his people! He may be ours for years to come. He may see the day-spring of the church again. He may live to witness her triumph. And should it be otherwise—should that white head be laid low before the triumph of the church over her enemies—will he see it less, will he share it less, because he has gone before? Impossible! The church militant and the church triumphant are one. But our hopes go further; or rather, they are more human. We believe that Pius IX. will live to see the end of confusion and the beginning of peace; the downfall of falsehood and oppression, and the restoration of himself (and others) to all their rights. May God grant it!