University of Virginia Library

44. LETTER XLIV.

All the world goes to hear “mass in the Sistine
chapel,” and all travellers describe it. It occurs infre
quently and is performed by the pope. We were there
to-day at ten, crowding at the door with hundreds of
foreigners, mostly English, elbowed alternately by
priests and ladies, and kept in order by the Swiss
guards in their harlequin dresses and long pikes. We
were admitted after an hour's pushing, and the guard
retreated to the grated door, through which no woman
is permitted to pass. Their gay bonnets and feathers
clustered behind the gilded bars, and we could admire
them for once without the qualifying reflection that
they were between us and the show. An hour more
was occupied in the entrance, one by one, of some
forty cardinals with their rustling silk trains supported
by boys in purple. They passed the gate, their train-bearers
lifted their cassocks and helped them to kneel
a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took their
seats with the same servile assistance. Their attendants
placed themselves at their feet, and, taking the
prayer-books, the only use of which appeared to be
to display their jewelled fingers, they looked over
them at the faces behind the grating, and waited for his
holiness.

The intervals of this memory, gave us time to study
the famous frescoes for which the Sistine chapel is renowned.
The subject is the “Last judgment.” The
Savior sits in the midst, pronouncing the sentence, the
wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand,
and the righteous ascending with the assistance of angels
on the right. The artist had, of course, infinite
scope for expression, and the fame of the fresco (which
occupies the whole of the wall behind the altar) would
seem to argue his success. The light is miserable,
however, and incense or lamp-smoke, has obscured
the colors, and one looks at it now with little pleasure.
As well as I could see, too, the figure of the Savior
was more that of a tiler throwing down slates from the
top of a house in some fear of falling, than the judge
of the world upon his throne. Some of the other
parts are better, and one or two naked female figures
might once have been beautiful, but one of the succeeding
popes ordered them dressed, and they now
flaunt at the judgment seat in colored silks, obscuring
both saints and sinners with their finery. There are
some redeeming frescoes, also by Michael Angelo, on
the ceiling, among them “Adam and Eve,” exquisitely
done.

The pope entered by a door at the side of the altar.
With him came a host of dignitaries and church servants,
and, as he tottered round in front of the altar,
to kneel, his cap was taken off and put on, his flowing
robes lifted and spread, and he was treated in all respects,
as if he were the Deity himself. In fact, the
whole service was the worship, not of God, but of the
pope. The cardinals came up, one by one, with their
heads bowed, and knelt reverently to kiss his hand and
the hem of his white satin dress; his throne was higher
than the altar, and ten times as gorgeous; the incense
was flung toward him, and his motions from one side
of the chapel to the other, were attended with more
ceremony and devotion than all the rest of the service
together. The chanting commenced with his entrance,
and this should have been to God alone, for it
was like music from heaven. The choir was composed
of priests, who sang from massive volumes
bound in golden clasps, in a small side gallery. One
stood by the book, turning the leaves as the chant
proceeded, and keeping the measure, and the others
clustered around with their hands clasped, their heads
thrown back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the
turning leaves in such grouping and attitude as you
see in pictures of angels singing in the clouds. I
have heard wonderful music since I have been on the
continent, and have received new ideas of the compass
of the human voice, and its capacities for pathos and
sweetness. But, after all the wonders of the opera, as
it is learned to sing before kings and courts, the chanting

of these priests transcended every conception in
my mind of music. It was the human voice, cleared
of all earthliness, and gushing through its organs with
uncontrollable feeling and nature. The burden of the
various parts returned continually upon one or two
simple notes, the deepest and sweetest in the octave
for melody, and occasionally a single voice outran the
choir in a passionate repetition of the air, which seemed
less like musical contrivance, than an abandonment
of soul and voice to a preternatural impulse of devotion.
One writes nonsense in describing such things,
but there is no other way of conveying an idea of them.
The subject is beyond the wildest superlatives.

To-day we have again seen the pope. It was a
festa, and the church of San Carlos was the scene of
the ceremonies. His holiness came in the state-coach
with six long-tailed black horses, and all his cardinals
in their red and gold carriages in his train. The
gaudy procession swept up to the steps, and the father
of the church was taken upon the shoulders of his
bearers in a chair of gold and crimson, and solemnly
borne up the aisle, and deposited within the railings
of the altar, where homage was done to him by the
cardinals as before, and the half-supernatural music
of his choir awaited his motions. The church was
half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn
up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles,
stood even within the railing of the altar, capped
and motionless, conveying, as everything else does,
the irresistible impression that it was the worship of
the pope, not of God.

Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a
large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and
a flushed apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne
about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even
his limbs hanging lifelessly. The gorgeous and heavy
papal costumes only render him more insignificant,
and when he is borne about, buried in his deep chair,
or lost in the corner of his huge black and gold pagoda
of a carriage, it is difficult to look at him without
a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are
magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble and scholar-like,
and I may say, perhaps, that there is no one of
them, who had not nature's mark upon him of superiority.
They are a dignified and impressive body of men,
and their servile homage to the pope, seems unnatural
and disgusting.