esigned by Michael
Angelo; the foot-soldiers in white short-clothes, which threatened
to burst, and let them fly into pieces; there were fine ladies and
gentlemen, loafers and loungers, from every civilized country, jabbering
in all the languages; there were beggars in rags, and boors in coats
so patched that there was probably none of the original material left;
there were groups of peasants from the Campagna, the men in short
jackets and sheepskin breeches with the wool side out, the women with
gay-colored folded cloths on their heads, and coarse woolen gowns; a
squad of wild-looking Spanish gypsies, burning-eyed, olive-skinned,
hair long, black, crinkled, and greasy, as wild in raiment as in face;
priests and friars, Zouaves in jaunty light gray and scarlet; rags and
velvets, silks and serge cloths,--a cosmopolitan gathering poured into
the world's great place of meeting,--a fine religious Vanity Fair on
Sunday.

There came an impressive moment in all this confusion, a point of august
solemnity. Up to that instant, what with chanting and singing the many
services, and the noise of talking and walking, there was a wild babel.
But at the stroke of the bell and the elevation of the Host, down went
the muskets of the guard with one clang on the marble; the soldiers
kneeled; the multitude in the nave, in the aisles, at all the chapels,
kneeled; and for a minute in that vast edifice there was perfect
stillness: if the whole great concourse had been swept from the earth,
the spot where it lately was could not have been more silent. And then
the military order went down the line, the soldiers rose, the crowd
rose, and the mass and the hum went on.

It was all over before one; and the pope was borne out again, and the
vast crowd began to discharge itself. But it was a long time before
the carriages were all filled and rolled off. I stood for a half hour
watching the stream go by,--the pompous soldiers, the peasants and
citizens, the dazzling equipages, and jaded, exhausted women in black,
who had sat or stood half a day under the dome, and could get no
carriage; and the great state coaches of the cardinals, swinging high in
the air, painted and gilded, with three noble footmen hanging on behind
each, and a cardinal's broad face in the window.

VESUVIUS

CLIMBING A VOLCANO

Everybody who comes to Naples,--that is, everybody except the lady who
fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured her shoulder,
a