Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/119

Rh single sun-set, when Algernon was loitering through the aisles of a vast church, which seemed, like the faith it served, imperishable. The west was shut out, but the whole building was filled with a rich purple haze—the marble figures on the monuments stood out with a distinctness like real existence, but apart from our own. To me statues never bear aught of human resemblance—I cannot think of them as the likeness of man or woman—colourless, shadowy, they seem the creation of a spell; their spiritual beauty is of another world—and well did the Grecian of old, whose faith was one of power and necessity, not of affection, make his statues deities: the cold, the severely beautiful, we can offer them worship, but never love. It was, however, neither statue nor picture that so rivetted Algernon's attention, but a female kneeling at the shrine of the Virgin in most absorbing and earnest prayer. Perhaps the most striking, as well as the most picturesque change in costume, is the veil universally worn in Italy; and but that the present day does not pique itself on its romance, it were matter of marvel how a woman could ever be induced to abandon an article of dress so full of poetical and graceful