eel at the
moment of entrance all that excites expectation of a solemn event?"
Corinne herself lifted up the curtain and held it to let Nelville pass;
she displayed so much grace in this attitude that the first look of
Oswald was to admire her as she stood, and for some moments she
engrossed his whole observation. However, he proceeded into the temple,
and the impression which he received beneath these immense arches was so
deep, and so solemn, that love itself was no longer able to fill his
soul entirely. He walked slowly by the side of Corinne, both preserving
silence. Indeed here every thing seemed to command silence; the least
noise re-echoes to such a distance that no language seems worthy of
being repeated in an abode which may almost be called eternal! Prayer
alone, the voice of calamity, produces a powerful emotion in these vast
regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man
dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so
many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his
nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that
Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the
conduct of man upon earth.

Corinne interrupted the reverie of Oswald, and said to him, "You have
seen Gothic churches in England and in Germany; you must have remarked
that they have a much more gloomy effect than this church. There was
something mysterious in the Catholicism of the northern nations; ours
speaks to the imagination by external objects. Michael Angelo said on
beholding the cupola of the Pantheon, 'I will place it in the air;' and,
in effect, St Peter's is a temple built upon a church. There is some
connection between the ancient religions and Christianity, in the effect
which the interior of this edifice produces upon the imagination. I
often come and walk here to restore to my soul that serenity which it
sometimes loses: the sight of such a monument is like continual and
sustained music, which waits to do you good when you approach; and
certainly we must reckon among the claims of our nation to glory, the
patience, the courage and the disinterestedness of the heads of the
church, who have devoted one hundred and fifty years, so much money, and
so much labour, to the completion of an edifice which they who built it
could not expect to enjoy[10]. It is even a service rendered to the
public morals to present a nation with a monume