Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/110

120 took her place, preaching with great ease and salvelse, but evidently by rote. Two priests, standing behind him, in broad-brimmed hats, complimented him, smiling when he had finished.

Little ones, more or less perfectly trained, succeeded each other without intermission. It was amusing enough to witness as a spectacle, but it was painful to me to see these infant souls thus early taught to accept Christ's doctrine as a lesson fit for repeating by rote on the theatre of life. It was with quite another meaning that the Saviour desired that children should come to him. These infant-preachings are said to have been practiced ever since the middle ages.

December 30th.—Visited, with Madame de M., San Paolo fuori della Mure, the largest Basilica of Rome, built by Constantine the Great, so called, upon the spot where, according to tradition, the Apostle Paul was beheaded—a small Christian church marked the place from the most ancient times—afterwards it was destroyed by fire, and rebuilt more than once, down to the present time, when, after the last conflagration, in 1821, it is again restored, and that in a manner which will make it what it was originally intended to be, one of the most magnificent temples of the Christian Church, equal, though built in a different style, to St. Peter's. Long, rich rows of pillars lead through the five naves of the church to the chancel. Most of the monarchs of Europe, and even some princes of the East, have, on this last occasion, made valuable gifts for the completion or decoration of the church. The Czar Nicholas of Russia has given altars and pillars of malachite the Pacha of Egypt, pillars of beautiful