Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/107

Rh childish, and the spectacle is altogether too long. One feels a great desire to bid the actors proceed,

Nevertheless it was actually a beautiful and a solemn moment, when the Pope elevated the host, and the same instant, music, as from heaven, streamed down from the cupola of the church. All fell upon their knees, I also, thankful that at that moment, I felt myself one with all Christians, Catholics or not, who believe in the free-will offering for the forgiveness of sinners. That was the only moment of devotion of which I was conscious during this festival, which is celebrated by us.—oh, with what earnestness, what sincere feeling!

The Pope was carried out as he had been carried in, preceded by a cardinal's hat and a bishop's mitre, surrounded with peacock's feathers, and distributing blessings on the right hand and the left, with a countenance beaming with a kindly, but not a spiritual life. Nor could I discover any thing of the kind in the throng which filled the church. They all, evidently contemplated the day's solemnity merely as some grand spectacle. This spectacle was also continued outside the church by the magnificence of the cardinals' equipages, horses and servants glittering in gold and silver. But the princes of this church, driving in these splendid carriages, drawn by magnificent horses in silver-mounted trappings,—how little they resembled their Great Master, the God who walked through the world.

In the afternoon I went to the Colosseum, and heard