sons, or sacred readings, which,
like the singing, in broken [134] vernacular Latin, occurred at certain
intervals, amid the silence of the assembly. There were readings, again
with bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on a
difficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy,
haunting men's minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than had
ever belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention,
into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at
length complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with a
thousand tender memories, every one appeared to know by heart,
displaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournful
figure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently
turned--a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincture
in his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in the
experiences of the past.

It was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebrated
to-day. Astiterunt reges terrae: so the Gradual, the "Song of
Degrees," proceeded, the young men on the steps of the altar responding
in deep, clear, antiphon or chorus--

Astiterunt reges terrae--
Adversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum:
Nunc, Domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum--
Et signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu.

And the proper action of the rite itself, like a [135] half-opened book
to be read by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions, and
carried them forward into the present, as having reference to a power
still efficacious, still after some mystic sense even now in action
among the people there assembled. The entire office, indeed, with its
interchange of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was itself like a
single piece of highly composite, dramatic music; a "song of degrees,"
rising steadily to a climax. Notwithstanding the absence of any
central image visible to the eye, the entire ceremonial process, like
the place in which it was enacted, was weighty with symbolic
significance, seemed to express a single leading motive. The mystery,
if such in fact it was, centered indeed in the actions of one visible
person, distinguished among the assistants, who stood ranged in
semicircle around him, by the extreme fineness of his white vestments,
and the pointed cap with the golden ornaments upon his head.

Nor had Marius ever seen the pontifical character, as he conceive