nd
charges to demonstrate that every one was bound as a law-abiding citizen
to obey, no matter what might be his private, personal convictions with
regard to it. Since the Coliseum has been cleared of rubbish, fourteen
little oratories or places of prayer have been cheaply constructed
around its inner circumference, and here at certain seasons prayers are
offered for the eternal bliss of the martyred Christians of the
Coliseum. These prayers were being offered on this occasion. Some twenty
or thirty men (priests or monks I inferred), partly bare-headed, but as
many with their heads completely covered by hooded cloaks which left
only two small holes for the eyes, accompanied by a larger number of
women, marched slowly and sadly to one oratory, chanting a prayer by the
way, setting up their lighted tapers by its semblance of an altar,
kneeling and praying for some minutes, then rising and proceeding to the
next oratory, and so on until they had repeated the service before every
one. They all seemed to be of the poorer class, and I presume the
ceremony is often repeated or the participators would have been much
more numerous. The praying was fervent and I trust excellent,--as the
music decidedly was not; but the whole scene with the setting sun
shining redly through the shattered arches and upon the ruined wall,
with a few French soldiers standing heedlessly by, was strangely
picturesque and to me affecting. I came away before it concluded, to
avoid the damp night-air; but many chequered years and scenes of
stirring interest must intervene to efface from my memory that sunset
and those strange prayers in the Coliseum.

XXV.

ST. PETER'S.

ROME, Saturday, June 29, 1851.

St. Peter's is the Niagara of edifices, having the same relation to
other master-pieces of human effort that the great cataract bears to
other terrestrial effects of Divine power. In either case, the first
view disappoints, because the perfection of symmetry dims the
consciousness of magnitude, and the total absence of exaggeration in the
details forbids the conception of vastness in the aggregate. In viewing
London's St. Paul's, you have a realization of bulk which St. Peter's
does not give, yet St. Paul's is but a wart beside St. Peter's. I do not
know that the resemblance has been noticed by others, but the
semi-circle of gigantic yet admirably proportioned pillars which
encloses the grand square in front of St. Peter's reminds me vivid