Pulpit eloquence and vigil solemnities alone must
have long exhibited their more sober allurements, before they could
have drawn into the streets a fiftieth part of the immense crowd that
now hurried towards the desecrated basilica. Indeed, so vast was the
assemblage soon congregated, that the advanced ranks of sightseers had
already filled the church to overflowing, before those in the rear had
come within view of the colonnades.

However dissatisfied the unsuccessful portion of the citizens might
feel at their exclusion from the church, they found a powerful
counter-attraction in the amusements going forward in the Place, the
occupants of which seemed thoroughly regardless of the bishop's
admonitions upon the sobriety of behaviour due to the solemnity of the
day. As if in utter defiance of the decency and order recommended by
the clergy, popular exhibitions of all sorts were set up on the broad
flagstones of the great space before the church. Street dancing-girls
exercised at every available spot those 'gliding gyrations' so
eloquently condemned by the worthy Ammianus Marcellinus of orderly and
historical memory. Booths crammed with relics of doubtful authenticity,
baskets filled with neat manuscript abstracts of furiously
controversial pamphlets, pagan images regenerated into portraits of
saints, pictorial representations of Arians writhing in damnation, and
martyrs basking in haloes of celestial light, tempted, in every
direction, the more pious among the spectators. Cooks perambulated
with their shops on their backs; rival slave-merchants shouted
petitions for patronage; wine-sellers taught Bacchanalian philosophy
from the tops of their casks; poets recited compositions for sale;
sophisters held arguments destined to convert the wavering and perplex
the ignorant.

Incessant motion and incessant noise seemed to be the sole
compensations sought by the multitude for the disappointment of
exclusion from the church. If a stranger, after reading the
proclamation of the day, had proceeded to the basilica, to feast his
eyes on the contemplation of the illustrious aggregate of humanity,
entitled by the bishop 'his pious and honourable brethren,' he must, on
mixing at this moment with the assemblage, have either doubted the
truth of the episcopal appellation, or have given the citizens credit
for that refinement of intrinsic worth which is of too elevated a
nature to influence the character of the outward man.

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