University of Virginia Library

61. LETTER LXI.

Rome, 1833.—This is Friday of the holy week.
The host, which was deposited yesterday amid its
thousand lamps in the Paoline chapel, was taken from
its place this morning, in solemn procession, and carried
back to the Sistine, after lying in the consecrated
place twenty-four hours. Vigils were kept over it all
night. The Paoline chapel has no windows, and the
lights are so disposed as to multiply its receding arches
till the eye is lost in them. The altar on which
the host lay was piled up to the roof in a pyramid of
light, and with the prostrate figures constantly covering
the floor, and the motionless soldier in antique armor
at the entrance, it was like some scene of wild
romance.

The ceremonies of Easter Sunday were performed
where all others should have been—in the body of St.
Peter's. Two lines of soldiers, forming an aisle up
the centre, stretched from the square without the portico
to the sacred sepulchre. Two temporary platforms
for the various diplomatic corps and other privileged
persons occupied the sides, and the remainder
of the church was filled by thousands of strangers, Roman
peasantry, and contadini (in picturesque red boddices,
and with golden bodkins through their hair),
from all the neighboring towns.

A loud blast of trumpets, followed by military music,
announced the coming of the procession. The
two long lines of soldiers presented arms, and the esquires
of the pope entered first, in red robes, followed
by the long train of proctors, chamberlains, mitre-bearers,
and incense-bearers, the men-at-arms escorting
the procession on either side. Just before the
cardinals, came a cross-bearer, supported on either
side by men in showy surplices carrying lights, and
then came the long and brilliant line of white-headed
cardinals, in scarlet and ermine. The military dignitaries
of the monarch preceded the pope, a splendid
mass of uniforms, and his holiness then appeared, supported,
in his great gold and velvet chair, upon the
shoulders of twelve men, clothed in red damask, with
a canopy over his head, sustained by eight gentlemen,
in short, violet-colored silk mantles. Six of the Swiss
guard (representing the six catholic cantons) walked
near the pope, with drawn swords on their shoulders,
and after his chair followed a troop of civil officers,
whose appointments I did not think it worth while to
inquire. The procession stopped when the pope was
opposite the “chapel of the holy sacrament,” and his
holiness descended. The tiara was lifted from his
head by a cardinal, and he knelt upon a cushion of velvet
and gold to adore the “sacred host,” which was
exposed upon the altar. After a few minutes he returned
to his chair, his tiara was again set on his head,
and the music rang out anew, while the procession
swept on to the sepulchre.

The spectacle was all splendor. The clear space
through the vast area of the church, lined with glittering
soldiery, the dazzling gold and crimson of the
coming procession, the high papal chair, with the immense
fan-banners of peacock's feathers, held aloft,
the almost immeasurable dome and mighty pillars
above and around, and the multitudes of silent people,
produced a scene which, connected with the idea of
religious worship, and added to by the swell of a hundred
instruments of music, quite dazzled and overpowered
me.

The high mass (performed but three times a year)
proceeded. At the latter part of it, the pope mounted
to the altar, and, after various ceremonies, elevated the
sacred host. At the instant that the small white wafer
was seen between the golden candlesticks, the two
immense lines of soldiers dropped upon their knees,
and all the people prostrated themselves at the same
instant.

This fine scene over, we hurried to the square in
front of the church, to secure places for a still finer
one—that of the pope blessing the people. Several
thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up
between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the
piazza, and the immense area embraced by the two
circling colonnades was crowded by, perhaps, a hundred
thousand people, with eyes directed to one single
point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liveries
of the ambassadors' and cardinals' carriages, the
vast body of soldiery, and the magnificent frame of
columns and fountains in which this gorgeous picture
was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable.

In a few minutes the pope appeared in the balcony,
over the great door of St. Peter's. Every hat in the
vast multitude was lifted and every knee bowed in an

instant. Half a nation prostrate together, and one
gray old man lifting up his hands to heaven, and blessing
them!

The cannon of the castle of St. Angelo thundered,
the innumerable bells of Rome pealed forth simultaneously,
the troops fell into line and motion, and the
children of the two hundred and fifty-seventh successor
of St. Peter departed blessed.

In the evening all the world assembled to see the illumination,
which it is useless to attempt to describe.

The night was cloudy and black, and every line in
the architecture of the largest building in the world
was defined in light, even to the cross, which, as I
have said before, is at the height of a mountain from
the base. For about an hour it was a delicate but vast
structure of shining lines, like the drawing of a glorious
temple on the clouds. At eight, as the clock
struck, flakes of fire burst from every point, and the
whole building seemed started into flame. It was done
by a simultaneous kindling of torches in a thousand
points a man stationed at each. The glare seemed to
exceed that of noonday. No description can give an
idea of it.

I am not sure that I have not been a little tedious in
describing the ceremonies of the holy week. Forsyth
says in his bilious book, that he “never could read,
and certainly never could write, a description of them.”
They have struck me, however, as particularly unlike
anything ever seen in our own country, and I have endeavored
to draw them slightly and with as little particularity
as possible. I trust that some of the readers
of the Mirror may find them entertaining and
novel.

Florence, 1833.—I found myself at six this morning,
where I had found myself at the same hour a
year before—in the midst of the rural festa in the Cascine
of Florence. The duke, to-day, breakfasts at his
farm. The people of Florence, high and low, come
out, and spread their repasts upon the fine sward of
the openings in the wood, the roads are watered, and
the royal equipages dash backward and forward, while
the ladies hang their shawls in the trees, and children
and lovers stroll away into the shade, and all looks
like a scene from Boccaccio.

I thought it a picturesque and beautiful sight last
year, and so described it. But I was a stranger then,
newly arrived in Florence, and felt desolate amid the
happiness of so many. A few months among so frank
and warm-hearted a people as the Tuscans, however,
makes one at home. The tradesman and his wife,
familiar with your face, and happy to be seen in their
holyday dresses, give you the “buon giorno,” as you
pass, and a cup of red wine or a seat at the cloth on
the grass is at your service in almost any group in the
prato. I am sure I should not find so many acquaintances
in the town in which I have passed my life.

A little beyond the crowd, lies a broad open glade
of the greenest grass, in the very centre of the woods
of the farm. A broad fringe of shade is flung by the
trees along the eastern side, and at their roots cluster
the different parties of the nobles and the ambassadors.
Their gayly-dressed chasseurs are in waiting, the silver
plate quivers and glances, as the chance rays of
the sun break through the leaves over head, and at a
little distance, in the road, stand their showy equipages
in a long line from the great oak to the farmhouse.

In the evening, there was an illumination of the
green alleys and the little square in front of the house,
and a band of music for the people. Within, the
halls were thrown open for a ball. It was given by the
grand duke to the Dutchess of Lichtenberg, the widow
of Eugene Beauharnois. The company assembled at
eight, and the presentations (two lovely countrywomen
of our own among them), were over at nine. The
dancing then commenced, and we drove home, through
the fading lights still burning in the trees, an hour or
two past midnight.

The grand duke is about to be married to one of the
princesses of Naples, and great preparations are making
for the event. He looks little like a bridegroom,
with his sad face, and unshorn beard and hair. It is,
probably, not a marriage of inclination, for the fat
princess expecting him, is every way inferior to the
incomparable woman he has lost, and he passed half
the last week in a lonely visit to the chamber in which
she died, in his palace at Pisa.