three shades of purple; exquisite white and gold
officiating priests, like great white peacocks, at the altar; the
perfect movement of the incensing, perfect courtesy and dignity of the
mutual salutations; and a well-played organ, on a reed stop, giving an
imitation Bach _musette_. The whole ceremony, rather like the 6/8 of
that _musette_, perhaps a trifle too much of the dancing element, but
grave and very perfect. Why should not, at some future period, our
philosophers sit in carved oak stalls, in minever and purple, and
salute and be saluted, and speak with intervals of _musettes_ on the
organ? It would suit Renan at least; and surely this, which is so
venerable and sanctioned by time in our eyes, would have seemed quite
as odd and grotesque a thing if foretold to St. Paul.

VIII.

STAGE ILLUSION.

I feel that, among other good things, Rome, while it gave my childhood
notions of dignity, of time and solemn things, kept my eye and fancy
on very short commons. How stunted are the trees (all except the
weeds) here! how flowerless the hedges! how empty of life, grace,
detail the country!

I remember the sort of rapture of the first acquaintance with Tuscan
valleys, hills, woods, fields, and all the lovely fulness of dainty
real detail.

Rome, as I said before, is all theatre scenes; marvellous _coup
d'oeils_, into which, advancing (from the Capitol) from opposite the
Palatine palms, from the Lateran steps, from the Tiber quays, you
find nothing _to go on with_; and in so far it fits, it symbolises,
perhaps, its own history--for what is history but a series of such
admirable theatrical views; mere delusion, and behind them prose,
mere prose? The reality of Rome is, one feels it, in its distant hills.
There you can penetrate; thence history streamed.

_March_ 19.

IX.

SANTA MARIA IN COSMEDIN.

After wandering between tremendous hailstorms about the Aventine (the
black sky and turbid Tiber from S. Alessio, in odd contrast with the
lemons and oranges and freesias of S. Sabina, and with the chill empty
churches), I waited for a Mass at S. M. in Cosmedin. Garlands (how
poor and inartistic compared to the Tuscan and Venetian ones!) hanging
in porch and box strewn at the door. The church, just restored, very
swept and garnished still, with its Byzantine delicacy of fluted
ribbed columns, carved precious ambones and carpet of lovely marbles,
a place for the perfect ritual and splendid vestments of an