Page:How to See the Vatican, Sladen, 1914.djvu/14

 Rh turf, on hills in hidden valleys, which are the delight and despair of the antiquarian. The Borgia Rooms, now not so difficult to visit, are included, not to give a detailed criticism of their pictures, already so superbly treated by Ehrle and Stevenson, and Ricci, but partly to convey their effect as the most typically palatial part of the royal Palace of the Popes, and partly to give a number of interesting facts about them which have never before appeared in English.

From the above it will be seen that I have aimed at giving the traveller who goes to Rome for sight-seeing, and the stay-at-home who has to do his sight-seeing in books of travel, some idea of the parts of the Vatican which are not generally seen; either because the visitor does not know where to look for them, or because they are only shown as a special favour. I am myself a Protestant, a member of the Church of England. My idea of patriotism makes it impossible that I should ever leave the Church of my forefathers. But it is only upon the Rights and the Independence of the Church that I have strong feelings; the differences of dogma which have grown up since it parted from the Church of Rome do not concern me. I feel towards the Church of Rome as an Anglophile American feels towards England: I feel that I sprang from it. I do not forget that I belonged to it,until the Middle x