aristocratic worship, slowly filled with, oh! such a poor, poor,
wretched congregation, while the two priests, two sacristans and small
choir-boys looked on (with a glance at watch) like people preparing
for a play and waiting for a full house; the bell-ringer occasionally
hanging on to the rope near the door, and giving a jump as he let go.
I don't mean merely poor in fortune, in ragged draggled clothes, the
sweepings of those rag-fair quarters, but poor in wretched, ill-grown,
ill, dull, stupid bodies and souls, draggle-tailed like their clothes,
only two savage-looking peasants having dignity or grace. More like an
Irish congregation than an Italian, the two policemen, the women
nursing their babies, the dreary sickly nuns, the broken,
idiot-looking shabby elderly men in overcoats.

At last the priests and choir-boys, to match, went in procession to
the altar, and the service began; merely chants with a response from
the crowd. But as soon as they began everything seemed to pull
together, to be all right, to have significance....

Is it possible that of religious things only the aesthetic side is
vital, universal, is what gives or seems to give a meaning, deludes us
into a belief in some spirituality? Sometimes one suspects as much:
that the unifying element is not so much religion, as, after all, art.

_March_ 23.

X.

INSCRIPTIONS.

These are fragments of inscriptions from the Macellus Liviae, of the
time of Valens and Gratian, now transferred to the porch of S. Maria
in Trastevere: "Maceus vixit dulcissime cum suis ad supremam diem. C.
Gannius primogenitus vix: ann. VII. Desine jam mater lacrimis rinovare
querellas--namque dolor talis non tibi contigit uni." So at least I
read.

Another states that "M. Cocceius Ambrosius Aug: Lib: praepositus
vestis albae triumphalis (?) fecit." When he had lived with Nice (?)
his wife forty-five years eleven days "sine ulla querela."

Also, "Dis Manib. Rhodope fecerent (?) Berenice et Drusilla delicatae
dulcissimae suae (_sic_)."

Also, "Attidiae felicissimae uxori rariosimae Fl: Antoninus."

How these inscriptions, of which I copied out a few yesterday during a
heavy shower in the portico of S. M. in Trastevere, make one feel,
again by this magic of Rome, the other half of the truth: How little
the centuries matter, how vain are these thousands of years, which
exist only in our thoughts, how solely important are the brief pangs
of us poor obscure shortlive