nclosing thus a large square in
the Piazza del Pantheon. The spectacle is one of the most imposing of
all Roman ceremonies.

The King, and Queen Elena, and the Dowager Queen Margherita, accompanied
by their respective civil and military households, assist at the requiem
mass celebrated in the Pantheon, and at a commemoration service, on the
same day, in the Royal Chapel of the Sudario, where also assemble the
ladies and gentlemen of the Order of the Annunziata.

On the same morning the feast of St. Gregory, Pope and Doctor of the
church, is celebrated at his church on the Caelian Hill. He was born of a
noble family, and was Prefect of Rome in 573. Pope Pelagius II made him
regionary deacon of Rome, and sent him as legate to Constantinople in
578, where he remained till the death of Pelagius, when he was elected
Pope (590). He introduced the Gregorian chant. His first great act was
to send St. Augustine to convert the Saxons of England to the Christian
faith. An inscription in the Church of San Gregorio Magno states that
St. Augustine was educated in the abbey which was erected on the site of
the present church by Gregory, and that many early archbishops of York
and Canterbury were also educated there. It was on the steps of this
church that Augustine and his forty monks took leave of Gregory, when
setting out for England. He died in 604, after a pontificate of thirteen
years and six months. He was buried in the portico of the Vatican
Basilica, and his body lies under the altar dedicated to him in this
same church. His church, on the Caelian Hill, was built on the site of
the monastery founded by him. In the chapel of the triclinium, near the
church, the table on which he served the poor is shown. Near the church
also is seen his cell, where his marble chair and one of his arms are
exhibited.

During the Lenten season of 1907 one of the privileges of Rome was to
hear the sermons of Monsignor Vaughn, in the English Catholic Church of
San Silvestre. Monsignor Vaughn is the private chaplain of the Pope. His
discourses attracted increasing throngs of both Catholic and Protestant
hearers. This celebrated prelate is a brother of the late English
Cardinal. He is a man of great distinction of presence, of beautiful
voice and fascination of manner. One discourse had for its theme the
joys of the life that is to come. The spiritual body, he said, has many
qualities not pertaining to the physical body. It is immured from all
dis