and intoxication," or the other-the religion of nature and of antiquity —are much calculated to beget peace of mind and happiness.

Much insight into the actual social condition of a people is to be obtained by the contemplation of street-life, but even this is capable of undergoing some modification from the point of view in which it is contemplated. The politician, the artist, the philanthropist, have each, for example, their stand-points. If, according to our author, the white girls of Albion, Murray in their hands, escort their long and spare mammas, armed with portable stools; and if the pretty French women slip along manifestly more interested in the effect which they produce than in antiquities, the picture is not necessarily Roman; but if the Italian women, with bare necks loaded with chains, and with heavy pendents to their ears, are, as we are informed, insensible to French coquetry, the army of occupation is to be pitied. "Models, artists, ruined princes, chi lo sa? passing by proudly wrapped in a mantle, which they bear with all the dignity of ancient consuls, notwithstanding the holes and the stains which constitute its principal ornaments," are more characteristic. "All is vanity at Rome," said Saint Philip of Neri, and every one must have his carrozzello with which to run over his neighbour, or be himself upset. The peasant rides his mule, the farmer his waggon drawn by the great grey oxen of the Campagna, the dealer in finocchi rides postilion-wise. All these are topped by the immense house on wheels, tilted up by the weight of three footmen in silk stockings behind, and which bears a cardinal, his flag (which is an umbrella, called a pavillon), and the " TrèsSaint Sacrement."

As to describing the population of white, red, blue, grey, violet, black, and brown monks, it is utterly out of the question; our author, good churchman as he was, came for the moment under the spell that nothing "but the delirium of a local fever could have evoked this strange world of multi-coloured worshippers." Nay, we almost tremble for his orthodoxy, when we find him insinuating that the young girls who were mourning for the earth they have quitted, circulate in blessed troops under the care of matrons "often with more than one title to respectability." Roman Catholicism is fecund. Behind the young girls in black, with white muslin veils, come, we are told, " troops of little children of the Christian doctrine, following a child of greater dimensions, bearing a black cross." Then there are religious beggars too, from the mysterious penitent with cowl drawn over his face, who may be a prince, a senator, or a brigand doing penance, to the uncleanly hermits who shake their bussolas in your face, with a look that tells you at once how disagreeable it would be to meet them in the solitudes of the Campagna by moonlight alone.

Well, this is not kindly to all these good religious people. There is a colouring of sarcasm about the sketch for which we are not responsible. Perchance our author will be more gallant when he comes to treat of the fair sex. Let us see. Here are the flower-girls. "They overwhelm you with praises till they cover you with abuse." The fair sit also beneath the porticos. They are "old and dishevelled, ugly enough to remind you of Macbeth's witches." Others, again, are "lugubrious specimens of all human infirmities, feverish and lividly pale, poor creatures, yet glimmering with that fitful light which is imparted by the plague to the most

common-looking physiognomies, till succeeded by that frightful yellow swelling which defies all cure!" Really, worse and worse.

The French soldiery will at all events excite admiration, if the monks and the fair sex fail. Not in the least. They are "too scornful, too boastful, and too indifferent to all other vanities but their own not to make a real goodness and a readiness to oblige forgotten. Ah! dear little French soldiers, when will you permit others to appreciate you at your real value, by ceasing to depreciate the nation or the individual for whom we know you are ready to lay down your lives at any moment, to devote yourselves bodies and souls."

As to the Pontifical Zouaves, with their elegant costume of iron-grey and orange, France, we are told, has the honour of having contributed the most generous soldiers of the corps, but this valiant national army having been for the most part sent from Rome, few are now met with.

As to the senators, their attendants, with liveries of red and yellow, and armed with trumpets, would make the Parisians believe that the good old days of the Carnival had come back again.

It is, indeed, as impossible, our author declares, to describe the living portion of Rome, as it is the caprices of a kaleidoscope shaken with a febrile hand. It is life set amid churches, ruins, and flowers. The latter play a great part in out-of-door Rome, rivalling the numerous and frequent odours of a less desirable character, rivalling even the sharp and penetrating odour of fried oil, but failing to triumph over it.

Linen and clothes of all shapes and sizes hang from every house, from princely and papal abodes as well as from those of the people. Palaces which would be the pride even of Paris rise up in juxtaposition with miserable huts. Gloomy fronts, protected by rusty iron bars, open upon gardens and courts, with flowers, statuary, and fountains. Rome presents a succession of enigmas and surprises. The art of decorating a shop is unknown or despised, and if you enter one, the master of the place seems to confer an honour upon you in disturbing himself to serve you. He does so with his hat on his head, and yawns in your face. The dolce far niente is the favourite occupation of the Romans.

Burials are generally carried out at night, and are not attended by any of the members of the family or friends, but solely by the fraternities and monks. The mortuary cloths are very sumptuous, and at times drolly decorated with jocose skeletons, engaged in fantastic dances, those behind using their fleshless thigh-bones as sticks to hasten on those in front!

Yet our author says: "It would be really like dwelling in the antechamber of Paradise to live in Rome, if one could only get one's friends to live there too. One feels there more strongly than anywhere else that death is true life, so utterly does the curiosity of the mysteries of the infinite deprive the tomb of its secret horrors.'

Christians of all denominations have probably passionately loved and appreciated St. Peter's as much as artists, but it requires, we are told, to be an artist to comprehend the terrible, the sublime, the absorbing beauty of that edifice, which might impose and yet only insinuates itself. He had been there seven or eight times, our author avers, before he began to suspect the crushing grandeur of the church dissimulated in its admirable

proportions, at the same time that it appears simple, so much is its splendour essential to it.

St. Peter's is, in the estimation of the author, "more unique, more immense, more incomparable, than any translation by pen or pencil could express." Charlemagne and Constantine are, in his eyes, proud of the equestrian guard which they mount at the two extremities of the royal peristyle which precedes "the sublime palace of the poor fisherman Peter, become the arbiter of emperors and kings, by his supreme title of first vicar of the vicars of God."

And then in the interior what repose, what silence, what divine shade! The very rays of light seem to descend in columns of divine smoke from the heavens direct upon earth. A few country women and monks stretch up to kiss the statue of "St. Peter," imposing in its immovable calm, and now sanctified, after having represented the false majesty of Jupiter! Then there is the chair of Peter, too. What a grand air have those bishops in bronze, with golden mitres, who guard it day and night! There is a legend associated with this chair, too! There are also those beautiful and noble popes in marble, seated, standing, upright, or kneeling on their tombs, but all blessing those who pass by!

"What accumulated treasures, what ineffable marvels! It seems to us now that we did not profit sufficiently by the days that were granted to us; we seem to have seen nothing, and yet we have not to reproach ourselves with having allowed many hours to elapse without hastening to pay our pious visit to St. Peter's."

It is possible, however, even for St. Peter to be dull. The mass of Palm Sunday, for example, is described as long and tedious, and the distribution of what were supposed to be palm-branches, interminable; above all," the absence of the holy father cast a mortal chill beneath the lofty vaults of the basilica." The procession was, however, headed by three generals: General du Carmel in the white mantle of St. Theresa, the General of the Jesuits, and the General of the Capucins. The superb uniform of the Pope's Swiss Guard charms the eye, we are also told, in a quite different degree "to that of the pitiful uniform of our valiant little soldiers, shockingly accoutred, except in their glory." The thirteen Apostles, on the other hand, clothed and mitred in white, were not interesting in aspect; and their supper, served up by a cardinal, was a tedious affair. The author seems almost to have wished back the olden times, when a rival manager of " Mysteries and Moralities”— -one Pont Allaiswould beat his drum at the church porch to summon the faithful to his opposition performances. The supper-table is admittedly a spectacle, "on l'oublie trop," says our author; and when we consider that our Lord and his disciples sat on that eventful eve in the garden at the foot of Olivet, eating after the invariable fashion of the East, on the ground, or at the most from a platter on a stool, it is an anachronism which neither the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, nor the scenic mimicry of the Capella Sistina, can relieve of its absurdity. The Sixtine Chapel, we are also told, notwithstanding the grand frescoes of Bonarotti, in the absence of the holy father is like a desolate widow, who cares neither to please nor to adorn herself.

But whilst the darkness of the basilica was so tangible as to extinguish

the lights ever burning at the Confessional of St. Peter, the shops of fried fish without were brilliantly lighted up, and each establishment had its little fantastic chapel or its statuette of the Madonna. Their patron should be St. Lawrence, in whose memory the Escorial was erected in the form of a gridiron.

Saturday of the Holy Week was devoted to the chapel of the United Romanist Armenians. The Pope is credited here with a "douce sagesse" for feeling that the only really important question is one same worship of the true God! A great curtain veiled here the holy mysteries, little curtains were drawn forwards and backwards, as in the Greek Church; and during the elevation of the host two assistants held an enormous white kerchief in front of the bishop.

On Easter-day the Pontiff king himself made his appearance. He was borne across the basilica of St. Peter in the Sedia gestitoria, which has no connexion with the gesta Romanorum; and the spectacle was, we are informed, "unique in the world." "What a contrast between this royal and august pomp, and the theatrical pomp of the Armenians!"

"Pius IX. appeared to us beautiful as the saint of Fra Angelico, which we possess in the Louvre, and before whom the angels are prostrating themselves. None of the portraits of the holy father reproduce that countenance radiating with purity, that sovereign beauty of a holy mind filled with the divine spirit. When the Pope advances on that raised seat, which appears to move by itself, the four fans of feathers which are held up around him conceal the bearers, and one feels as if present at a triumph in heaven.

"The mild and pale countenance of the Pontiff, radiating with ineffable brilliancy, exhaled a real perfume of pious tenderness, of infinite love. Ah! there was really a father, but a father king and dispenser of eternal good things, happy in reappearing among his children.

"The tears came up like a holy dew to my eyes, and never did an emotion, at once so powerful and so sweet to the senses, take possession of my whole being. Ah! how much time one has to think and to live with intensity in an hour! The Hosannah was admirably chanted, and at its preface there was still a rumour of people gladdened by such an incomparable vision. I almost thought myself in heaven, and I aspired so deeply to be there, that I understood how Elias could have been carried thither by the strength of his love. Upon first of all perceiving the Pontiff king, upon hearing the internal joyous cries of my soul that resounded within me, upon bowing before the august blessing, given with a tender and angelic grace, upon feeling myself inundated with an immense unknown happiness, my lips murmured involuntarily, Ah! what, then, will be the sight of Jesus Christ, my Lord, if the view of his vicar arouses such sensations within the soul?" "

If the author was in such ecstacies at the sight of the Pope, he was less so with his palaces. The Quirinal, with its long suites of apartments all in red, did not please him. There was an organ played by water, which has given forth the same tedious melody for ages. The Laterano, with its noble halls and stairs, and its Christian and Pagan museums, was more tolerable. As to the Vatican, he says, "Go and see it! Nothing could possibly express the feelings of terrified astonishment, of antici

pated fatigue, and of passionate interest, with which the visitor is overwhelmed on first penetrating into the great gallery of inscriptions and marbles in the Vatican." "This palace, with its Egyptian, Etruscan, Pagan, and Christian halls, of all epochs and of all times, contains marvels without number. But here is another doorway. It is the entrance to the library. Oh, enchantment! Oh, fairy land! If there is a library in paradise, it must surely resemble this!" The pictures of Raphael were exposed. Pius IX. protected them with windows. "They have taken my states, force and injustice have spoiled me, they have made a royal mendicant of the vicar of Jesus Christ," he is supposed to have said; "no matter, I will answer for the chefs-d'œuvre that are contained within the Eternal City which God has given me in keeping." In the chapel of St. Lawrence is a Virgin Mary, "smiling from beneath her muslin veil at the divine child which she holds in her arms, as people smile only in heaven. It is no creature of flesh and blood, it is the immaculate Virgin, such as alone the pious monk, who declined to eat meat at the Pope's table because he had not obtained the sanction of his prior, could understand and appreciate." Each of the portraits of the popes that adorn St. Paul's cost the labour of a year. Impatient furia francese, what would you say at having to wait so long a time? There are twenty master-mosaists and two hundred and ninety-three popes, believe, reckoning the anti-popes; two hundred and fifty-eight, reckoning only the good ones! Chi va sano va piano,' say the Italians; and their city is a living proof that that which is slowly founded lasts long."

I

The Romans affirm, not without a certain legitimate pride, that the Vatican is by itself as large as all Turin, comprising the suburbs. The palace enables the visitor, we are likewise told, to understand the sovereign. The number of galleries and staircases is incalculable. The whole place is really a royal convent, and the true house of the Lord, in which every one penetrates freely in spite of the enormous walls, which appear to belong to a fortress rather than to a palace. At the foot of the holy father's staircase there is a solitary sentinel to guard him, not from the wicked, but against the indiscretions of love. Yet it is a melancholy sequence of our fallen nature that man should never know what perfect satisfaction is here below. The Vatican is vast and magnificent as a whole, and in its details. It enjoys a beautiful situation, and commands splendid views. It is filled to overflowing with the works of genius of all ages and of all countries. Beauty and excellence reign there triumphant. Its gardens, from the bronze terrace of the Navicella, pouring out water from its port-holes to the shady alleys of cypresses, and La Pigna, with its bronze peacocks, are replete with charms of the most varied character. Close by is the most noble temple erected to the Creator on the bosom of the earth-a fitting place of prayer for the archbishop of the Westthe spiritual head of the Latin Church. But all these splendours do not satisfy the representative of the fisherman of Galilee. Not an Italian, nor even a dissident from the Roman Church, would grudge the holy father the Vatican and St. Peter; they are his historically, and as part and parcel of his being. But pontiffs, who acquired their name from the tolls of bridges having in ancient times been made over to the monks as