times pierce the soul, in the relationships, the uncertainties, the separations, the changes, and strifes, of this mortal state.

The day has been most delightful; and a ride on horseback, in the vicinity of Rome, along the majestic ruins of the aqueducts on going out; and on our return, amidst the giant remains of the Palatine, the Coliseum, and the Forum, seen by the soft and waning twilight of a lovely evening-this is enough for one day.

December 29.-I had an interview to-day with the rector, and some students, of the Propaganda. I learned from them that this celebrated institution for propagating the Catholic faith, is governed by a board of twenty cardinals; that its income is about one hundred thousand dollars* per annum; and that its present number of students is about one hundred, of whom thirteen are from the United States. The rector is a German count, apparently not more than thirty years of age-M. Reisach; and the young gentlemen with whom I met were American students. We had much conversation upon various topics, for two or three hours, some minutes of which I shall just note. They stated the surprising fact, that the pope's annual expenditure, for personal and household purposes, is only fourteen thousand dollars. They ridiculed the idea that he has sent, as has been alleged, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, from his private purse, to America; nor has the Propaganda, they say, ever expended on American missions more than thirty or forty thousand dollars. On the subject of exclusive salvation, they stated a doctrine, saving a little tinge of assumption, as liberal as any one could desire. It was, that sincere conviction of being right must spread its shield over all those who entertain it. The assumption lay in an implied reservation of rightful supremacy for the Catholic church; but they distinctly held, that if any man should leave the mother church, from sincere and honest conviction, the dissent was not to be deemed fatal.

December 30.—I hunted up this morning the mausoleum of Augustus; yes, hunted for it. Little thought the man, once deemed so important to the world, that it was said, “It had been good for mankind if he had never been born, or had never died"— little did he think the time would ever come, when his proud mausoleum must be searched for, or when found at last, would be found surrounded and hidden almost from sight by other houses-itself a stable and a tannery. I asked a picket of soldiers within fifteen rods of the spot; and with the habitual ignorance and impudence united, of the common people here, on such points, they would have sent me first to the Coliseum (a mile off), and then to the Castle of St. Angelo. Of the mausoleum of Augustus, they knew nothing! Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus, celebrated by Virgil, was buried in this spot. I confess, it interested me more, as the place where this promising youth, the hope of the people, was laid down to rest as the place where Octavia poured out a mother's tears-than for any associations with imperial grandeur; although in Augustus it had a noble representative.

I went to see the Apollo and the Laocoon to-day, and gazed upon them (especially the first) for a while, with the sad feeling, that it might be my last look. Yet the Laocoon, much as the other has the

* It was three hundred thousand dollars before the French were here.

preference, is awfully tragic and powerful. The tremendous muscular energy and contortion, but all in vain; the imploring sons, with a youthful, an almost infantine expression of countenance, as they raise their eyes and hands to their father; the fatal complication of folds in the huge serpent; but most of all, the Laocoon himself-the agony of the parted lips, the expression, almost more than mortal, of suffering and horror beneath the eye; the accusing brow-accusing Heaven for the terrible severity of his lot-yes, those folds of accusation, above the right eye in particular-all is wonderful; it is dreadful; and for this reason, is a less admired work, than if the subject were more agreeable.

But the Apollo-oh heavens!-I am ready to exclaim again-that sovereignty of conscious power and superiority-it is as if his very look-no arrow needed-as if his very look would kill; and yet, that look is all beautiful! It is a countenance as if its bare thought could annihilate, and yet the spirit of all gracefulness so pervades it, that it seems as if the fair creation might spring forth beneath its glance. I may never see it more; but I could as soon forget the sun in heaven, after having once seen it, as forget this representation of the god of light, and brightness, and beauty, and power.

December 31.-I visited this morning the studio of Camuccini, one of the most celebrated living painters. He has great talent, and his studio presents many fine paintings, and yet finer sketches. He has taken hold, too, of the old Roman subjects, so much neglected in general Regulus, Horatius Coccies, Virginius, Curius Dentatus.

This afternoon I attended a service at the Gesu, appropriated to the close of the year, consisting chiefly of music. Good singing, though too noisy-that is the constant fault here: great execution on the organ, of which they have three in this church; a stupendous assemblage of people, filling this immense temple and all the chapels to overflowing; the church itself, a rich and solemn edifice, with gilded ceiling, with paintings and statues, and marble pillars, and pilasters, and altars: the dim arches and majestic dome, seen obscurely by the light of the declining sun, and afterward, of innumerable wax tapers-all this, with the occasion to help it, made it a scene not easily to be forgotten. I wish we had more of these things with us Protestants. Meet it is that the epochs of this mortal and momentous existence should be thus signalized!

As

January 2.-We attended a party lately at Cardinal W—'s. we do not know much about cardinals in America, and as they are the highest officers in a church to which the most of our people feel a superstitious strangeness, they may be looked upon, perhaps, as quite a preternatural set of beings. Be it known to you, then, that a cardinal's palace is very much like other mansions of the distinguished classes, and that a cardinal's party is very much like a great New York or Boston jam; that is, after you make your entrance: there is much more parade on being introduced-a tremendous throng of carriagessoldiers in attendance-and a noisy, repeated, and sometimes ludicrous announcement of the names of the guests as they pass through the anterooms; ludicrous, because here are names from all parts of the world to be pronounced, and a man will sometimes find it difficult to know his own, in the mouths of these Italian ushers. A large proportion, indeed, on all these occasions, is English; and here were several

of the English nobility jostled in the crowd, and bearing nothing in their manner to distinguish them from others; simplicity is the order of the day. As to a cardinal's manners, I can only say, that in the person of our entertainer, they were extremely simple and kind; it was as easy to converse with him as with your next neighbour. For the rest, a cardinal is one of a conclave of seventy, not always full, that elects the pope; is one of the pope's secret council; wears a red hat, rides in a red carriage, and has the liveries of his servants and of his horses of the same colour.

A cardinal is one of the pope's council, but I believe the prerogative is rather nominal. The pope is an absolute sovereign; and it is found quite impossible, I understand, to restrain the present pontiff in a course of expenses, that threaten the ruin, in temporal power, of the papal see. It is said that the annual expenses of the government now exceed the income, by about three millions of piastres. To meet this deficiency, the revenues from one village and district after another of the Roman state, are pledged away to the bankers from whom the money is borrowed, without any prospect of redemption; and I am told that ten or twelve years of extravagance like this, must leave the papal exchequer in a state of complete bankruptcy.

It might be inferred from this, perhaps, that Gregory XVI. is a very ambitious pontiff. Yet he affects very little state; is not disposed to exact observance, and brings his personal and household expenses within the most moderate allowance. He was formerly rector of the Propaganda; and the students of that institution tell me, that when they are admitted to audience, he often tells them that he is tired of worldly care and grandeur, and wishes that he could be their rector again.

But with all this simplicity about the world, I suspect that he has a great deal of spiritual ambition. One or two circumstances will illustrate this. He wrote a book before his elevation to the popedom, which gained little or no attention. He has since caused this work to be published in every form, from the folio to a small pocket volume. St. Paul's Cathedral, a mile and a half out of the walls, was once built, I suppose, in the midst of a populous neighbourhood. A few years ago it was destroyed by fire. The pope is now rebuilding it, at an immense expense, * in what is nearly a waste field; and for no ostensible reason that I can see, but that he may, by and bye, write upon its pediment "Gregorius XVI. ædificavit hanc basilicam.'

January 3.-These two days past I have taken walks out of the walls. One of them was to the church of St. Lorenzo, a strange old building, on the site and partly of the materials of an ancient temple; with an old mosaic pavement; with pillars of all sizes, cut off and fitted in, with most admired incongruity; but especially with a colonnade about the high altar, of most magnificent fluted Corinthian pillars of Parian marble. By the bye, the number of ancient pillars now standing in Rome, and mostly in the churches, is immensely great. I have seen it stated, I think, somewhere, at sixteen thousand.

To-day, I went without the wall, on the west side of the city, and found a variegated and picturesque country. What a glorious spot this *The columns in this cathedral are single shafts of granite, polished to the smoothness of marble.

must have been, when the malaria was not here; nor had misrule, misery, poverty, degradation, fallen here, with the weight of a thousand curses. The whole Campagna, stretching to the sea on one side, and to the mountains on the other, was filled, was almost swarming with dwellings, many of them the villas of wealthy and noble Romans-for these all lived, or had villas out of the city; Rome and its neighbourhood was filled with temples, baths, forums, arches, columns, colonnades, statues; and it was Rome, the sovereign queen of nations, the mistress of the world. She was the central point, from which radiating lines went out through all the earth. On those diverging courses, consuls and generals went forth to command provinces, or to conquer new nations; upon them, they returned, to celebrate, in solemn procession, their triumphs; upon these great ways of empire, ambassadors travelled in state, to give law, and couriers came back to bring intelligence; and now, so secluded, so solitary among the nations is Rome, that one of our party, in writing a letter to-day, inadvertently said, "We are as much out of the world here, as if we were in the moon."

In coming into the city, we passed by the magnificent fountain of St. Paul's, and visited the church of San Pietro in Montorio-the spot assigned by tradition for St. Peter's martyrdom. There is a little circular temple, separate from the church, erected on the particular spot where the cross on which he suffered martyrdom is supposed to have stood; with an upper and lower, or subterranean chapel. It is surrounded by pillars of very dark-or, as they say in the books, black granite, and is a beautiful object.

Among the most beautiful things in Rome are its fountains, and among the most striking things are its obelisks.

The fountains in front of St. Peter's especially, are really glorious. They rise thirty or forty feet into the air, and come down in a shower. The quantity of water thrown up is so great, and the streams, as they spring out from the basin, are made so to diverge, that they present the appearance of two trees, one on each side of the piazza. The fountains are partly resolved into drops and mist, and a rainbow may always be seen in the direction opposite to the sun. Every time one sees them, they seem a new mystery and beauty; and when the sky is so fair, so glorious a thing, that you feel almost (as you do some days) as if you could kneel down and worship it, they appear like a cloud of incense-pure, bright, resplendent-offered up to that supernal splendour and purity.

As to these Egyptian obelisks, of polished granite, pointing up to the sky from almost every square and open space in Rome, and with that hand-writing of mysterious and yet unexplained characters upon their sides-what could be more striking? The antiquities of Rome are young, by their side. Some of them were built by Sesostris, by Rameses, between three and four thousand years ago. They saw ages of empire and of glory before Rome had a being. They are also in the most perfect preservation. So beautifully polished, and entirely free from stain, untouched by the storms of thirty-five centuries, it seems as if they had not lost one of their particles, since they came from the quarries of Egypt. That very surface, we know, has been gazed upon by the eyes of a hundred successive generations. Speak, dread monitors! as ye point upward to Heaven-speak, dark hieroglyphic

symbols! and tell us― -are ye not yet conscious, when conscious life has been flowing around you for three thousand years? Methinks it were enough to penetrate the bosom of granite with emotion, to have witnessed what you have witnessed. Methinks that the stern and inexorable mystery, graven upon your mighty shafts, must break silence, to tell that which it hath known of weal and woe, of change, disaster, blood, and crime!

CHAPTER XX.

ST. PETER'S ITS MAGNITUDE AND SPLENDOUR-MONUMENT TO THE LAST OF THE STUARTS-MOSAIC COPIES OF PAINTINGS-A WALK IN ST. PETER'S-SERVICES IN THE CHAPEL OF THE PROPAGANDA-LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN-ROMAN MARIONETTES- -CHURCHES BUILT ON THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN-EPIPHANY CELEBRATION IN THE PROPAGANDA-ST. ONOFRIO - CARDINAL FESCH'S GALLERY OF PAINTINGS- --ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE-SERVICE AT THE CHURCH OF ST. MARCELLUS-BLESSING THE HORSES-MOSAIC MANUFACTORY IN THE BASEMENT OF THE VATICAN-CHURCHES OF ROME.

I wish to convey to you some idea of St. Peter's-of its magnitude, at least, though I cannot of its magnificence.

But one word, first, in abatement. Though St. Peter's is the largest, and far the most expensive structure in the world, it fails entirely in its exterior appearance to make any just impression as a piece of architecture. It fails from two causes. First, because the front is mean, and totally unworthy of such an edifice. It ought to have had a stupendous portico, according to Michael Angelo's plan. And secondly, because it is hemmed in on each side by other buildings-the Vatican on its left, and the Baptistary and other buildings on the right-so that from no proper point of view can this mighty structure be seen. The first fault is owing to a want of means, and therefore not to be blamed; but the last is an unaccountable, an almost incredible fault in the original plan of this vast structure. Surely there is waste land enough in Rome, and has been for ages, to open a view to the most magnificent temple in the world. Why was it made thus vast, but to produce an impression by its size, and especially by its exterior appearance? Why, but for this, have such millions upon millions, untold, and unknown, and incalculable, almost to the ruin of the papal see, been expended upon it? And yet St. Peter's, as an exterior building, is not seen!

But now let us, crossing the area of its noble piazza-eleven thousand and fifty-five feet long, or ten acres in extent probably-surrounded by its circular colonnade, contemplate the great object itself. Its front is one hundred and sixty feet high, and three hundred and ninety-six feet wide-that is, twenty-four rods-the thirteenth of a mile. It is six hundred and seventy-three feet-forty rods-long,

I add these denominations as conveying the most palpable ideas probably to people in the country.