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produced any visible effect on the solemn stillness and vast solitude that reigns there. If you meet a party of friends close to the chapel door. may see and speak to them, but if either party moves on for a moment or two, they are lost again, as a floating atom, visible for a moment, and then gone. I am quite certain that if I were a Roman Catholic I should believe some miraculous influence rested upon this edifice, it is in all things so utterly unlike every thing else in the world. The mind loses all power of judgment there; but the faculties you lose are merged in ecstacy. The eye ceases to measure distance, but revels in immensity of space. all that is most gorgeous in colours. blends into one vast harmony; and the very air is something special and apart, for be it cold or be it hot without, you breathe beneath that magic dome the delicious mildness of eternal spring.

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St.

I never thought I should live to prefer a Grecian to a Gothic cathedral, but the time is come. Peter's is to the eye what the finest of Handel's choruses are to the ear. ... a multitude of harmonies blended into one. Beauty, sublimity, grace, strength, holiness, and joy, all seize upon the soul, and produce a "measureless content," such as I never felt before.

It is truly said that comparisons are odious, but it is exceedingly difficult to keep clear of them; and thus, while one day standing beneath the dome of St. Peter's, the fair Magdelaine of Paris rose be

DIFFICULTY OF KEEPING CLEAR OF IT. 265

fore me. Without, it is indeed all grace, all lovliness; but unhappily my fancy at that moment gave me the view within, and the very thought of it, as I stood amidst the noble company of marble saints, and beneath the springing vault that rose above them, gave me the sensation of falling from heaven to earth.

...

How I have just now got back to St. Peter's I do not well know. . . . I thought that I was going to talk to you a little about the relics of old Rome .... but this is exactly one instance of the sort of mysterious power belonging to the mighty Basilica which touches upon the miraculous.. If we set off upon a long morning expedition, wherein there is an immense deal to do, and no thoughts of even crossing the bridge of St. Angelo making a part of it, we are almost sure, some how or other, to find ourselves at St. Peter's before we get home again. .... If we begin discoursing of the Pantheon, we are sure, before many minutes, to find it absolutely necessary, in order to explain what we mean, to talk a little about St. Peter's; and now, when I had no idea of writing a word on the subject, I find myself in the midst of it.

LETTER XVI.

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Agreeable English Society in Rome.- Roman Conversazionis.-Influence of the Cardinals.—Their high State.-The Sistine Chapel. -The Chaunt.-Frescoes of Michael Angelo.-Difficulty of seeing them well. Homage of the Cardinals. Conduct of a Party of young English Ladies. Offensive Manners exhibited by the Second-rate Class of English Travellers on the Continent.-Indecent Conduct during the Papal Mass at St. Peter's.-The Borghese and Doria Palaces. The Farnesina Palace. The Corsini. - The Sciana. -The Tomb of the Borghese, and its splendid Chapel. St. John Lateran.-St. Ignatius.-The Fountains.

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Rome, December, 1841. We have found an extremely pleasant circle of English society here; perhaps, for sojourners, who have so much to do, and so little time to do it in, it is too pleasant, for we have more than once been tempted to give up an Italian saloon for an English one. In truth, I feel conscious that I am not profiting as much as I might by the introductions with which I have been favoured to one or two distinguished persons here. In morning visits I have had the opportunity of conversing with several Roman gentlemen, among whom I have found the very highest intelligence and the noblest tone of feeling; and were I established here, with the power of receiving, I can conceive nothing more delightful than cultivating the ac

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quaintance of such persons, and endeavouring to establish such a degree of intimacy as might lead to free discussion of every kind. There is a tone of deep feeling, a justness of thought, a depth of acquirement, in more than one individual whom I have met here, that creates the strongest possible desire to know more of them.... but it is very difficult. Again and again the precious opportunities for the conversation I so greatly value have been lost by our being from home in quest of pictures and statues, and without the power of receiving company at dinner .... that best of conversation intervals, which comes in so pleasantly between the sight-seeing of the morning and the dissipation of the evening. . . . Without this power, it is, I think, very difficult for sojourners at Rome to cultivate the acquaintance they would most value. As to the evening parties among the noble Romans, I must confess that I think all enjoyment from them is very greatly destroyed by the sort of state with which it is the custom to receive the cardinals. The venerable college make much too considerable a part of the Roman aristocracy, for this sort of stiff ceremony to be without a pretty strong degree of paralysing effect upon the Romans themselves, but to Protestant strangers it is generally more so. It appears to me, that the whole arrangement of the company is affected by their presence, which, nevertheless, is absolutely necessary for a salon

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comme il faut. The ladies seat themselves at the upper end of the saloon, while the gentlemen, red and violet stockings included, circulate in the lower part of it, conversing among themselves, often playing cards, but for the most part taking apparently very little heed of the fair personages permitted to be in their presence. Meanwhile the ladies converse in whispers, and certainly with as little appearance of animation or enjoyment as it is possible to imagine. The moment a cardinal approaches them they rise up, as if it were a sovereign; the only difference being, that whereas a sovereign desires the ladies he addresses to reseat themselves, the cardinals very rarely do any such thing.... and the affect of this upon the circle may easily be imagined. When this sort of old-fashioned, awkward, rococo etiquette is moreover considered a symptom of piety, and where any relaxation of it in a stranger would be held to be an offensive acknowledgment of heresy, the matter becomes serious. . . . rendering a Roman conversazione very far from being amusing. On one occasion, when we had been, for a long-seeming half hour or so, enduring the tedium of this high solemnity, we took courage, having the very pleasant drawing-room of Sir Frederic and Lady A before our eyes, to make an early exit; and on reaching the anti-room, I was considerably startled to see it, large though it was, half filled with lace-covered laquais, in the most pompous

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