drove through the scantily lighted streets of Rome to a small church
in the neighborhood of the Piazza Navona. To a more imaginative man
than myself, the scene when we entered the building would have been too
impressive to be described in words--though it might perhaps have been
painted. The one light in the place glimmered mysteriously from a
great wax candle, burning in front of a drapery of black cloth, and
illuminating dimly a sculptured representation, in white marble, of the
crucified Christ, wrought to the size of life. In front of this ghastly
emblem a platform projected, also covered with black cloth. We could
penetrate no further than to the space just inside the door of the
church. Everywhere else the building was filled with standing, sitting
and kneeling figures, shadowy and mysterious, fading away in far corners
into impenetrable gloom. The only sounds were the low, wailing notes
of the organ, accompanied at intervals by the muffled thump of fanatic
worshipers penitentially beating their breasts. On a sudden the organ
ceased; the self-inflicted blows of the penitents were heard no more. In
the breathless silence that followed, a man robed in black mounted
the black platform, and faced the congregation. His hair had become
prematurely gray; his face was of the ghastly paleness of the great
crucifix at his side. The light of the candle, falling on him as he
slowly turned his head, cast shadows into the hollows of his cheeks, and
glittered in his gleaming eyes. In tones low and trembling at first, he
stated the subject of his address. A week since, two noteworthy persons
had died in Rome on the same day. One of them was a woman of exemplary
piety, whose funeral obsequies had been celebrated in that church. The
other was a criminal charged with homicide under provocation, who had
died in prison, refusing the services of the priest--impenitent to
the last. The sermon followed the spirit of the absolved woman to its
eternal reward in heaven, and described the meeting with dear ones who
had gone before, in terms so devout and so touching that the women near
us, and even some of the men, burst into tears. Far different was the
effect produced when the preacher, filled with the same overpowering
sincerity of belief which had inspired his description of the joys
of heaven, traced the downward progress of the lost man, from his
impenitent death-bed to his doom in hell. The dreadful superstition
of everlasting torment