e bells in Rome are
heard chiming the _Ave Maria_.

----------------squilla di lontano
Che paja il giorno pianger che si muore.
DANTE.

----------------_the vesper bell from far,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day._
CAREY'S TR.

The evening prayer is used to fix the time. In Italy they say: _I will
see you an hour before, or an hour after the Ave Maria_: and the
different periods of the day and of the night, are thus religiously
designated. Oswald enjoyed the admirable spectacle of the sun which
towards the evening descends slowly in the midst of the ruins, and
appears for a moment submitted to the same destiny as the works of man.
Oswald felt all his habitual thoughts revive within him. Corinne herself
was too charming, and promised too much happiness to occupy his mind at
this moment. He sought the spirit of his father in the clouds, where the
force of imagination traced his celestial form, and made him hope to
receive from heaven some pure and beneficent breath, as the benediction
of his sainted parent.

Chapter ii.

The desire of studying and becoming acquainted with the Roman religion,
determined Lord Nelville to seek an opportunity of hearing some of those
preachers who make the churches of this city resound with their
eloquence during Lent. He reckoned the days that were to divide him from
Corinne, and during her absence, he wished to see nothing that
appertained to the fine arts; nothing that derived its charm from the
imagination. He could not support the emotion of pleasure produced by
the masterpieces of art when he was not with Corinne; he was only
reconciled to happiness when she was the cause of it. Poetry, painting,
music, all that embellishes life by vague hopes, was painful to him out
of her presence.

It is in the evening, with lights half extinguished, that the Roman
preachers deliver their sermons in Holy Week. All the women are then
clad in black, in remembrance of the death of Jesus Christ, and there is
something very moving in this anniversary mourning, which has been so
often renewed during a lapse of ages. It is therefore impossible to
enter without genuine emotion those beautiful churches, where the tombs
so fitly dispose the soul for prayer; but this emotion is generally
destroyed in a few moments by the preacher.

His pulpit is a fairly long gallery, which he traverses f