Page:How to See the Vatican, Sladen, 1914.djvu/11



word Vatican is familiar to travellers in the signification of a place with museums of matchless sculpture, and a gallery of paintings, and a chapel whose paintings are yet more famous. This does not help them to understand the first signification. The number of English people who have visited the Vatican Collections without giving any thought to the Vatican beyond them is very great. This is excusable because there is no guide-book in English, and no adequate guide-book in any language, to the Vatican as a Palace. The reason is not hard to discover. In the days before the cataclysm of 1870, when Pius. was on the Papal Throne reigning like an Augustus, the insatiable curiosity which characterizes readers pampered by the gossip-loving periodicals of the twentieth century had not demanded what we call books of travel, meaning books of sight-seeing, which are so popular now. And since 1870 the Vatican has been in mourning.

For reasons pointed out in the Publishers' Note, How to See the Vatican excludes those parts of the Palace with which every visitor is familiar, Rh