e about the
persecution of the Christians. Are not the churches full of martyrs
with choppers in their meek heads; virgins on gridirons; riddled St.
Sebastians, and the like? But have they never persecuted in their
turn? O me! You and I know better, who were bred up near to the pens of
Smithfield, where Protestants and Catholics have taken their turn to be
roasted.

"You pass through an avenue of angels and saints on the bridge across
Tiber, all in action; their great wings seem clanking, their marble
garments clapping; St. Michael, descending upon the Fiend, has been
caught and bronzified just as he lighted on the Castle of St. Angelo:
his enemy doubtless fell crushing through the roof and so downwards.
He is as natural as blank verse--that bronze angel-set, rhythmic,
grandiose. You'll see, some day or other, he's a great sonnet, sir, I'm
sure of that. Milton wrote in bronze; I am sure Virgil polished off his
Georgics in marble--sweet calm shapes! exquisite harmonies of line! As
for the Aeneid; that, sir, I consider to be so many bas-reliefs, mural
ornaments which affect me not much.

"I think I have lost sight of St. Peter's, haven't I? Yet it is big
enough. How it makes your heart beat when you first see it! Ours did
as we came in at night from Civita Vecchia, and saw a great ghostly
darkling dome rising solemnly up into the grey night, and keeping us
company ever so long as we drove, as if it had been an orb fallen out
of heaven with its light put out. As you look at it from the Pincio, and
the sun sets behind it, surely that aspect of earth and sky is one of
the grandest in the world. I don't like to say that the facade of the
church is ugly and obtrusive. As long as the dome overawes, that facade
is supportable. You advance towards it--through, oh, such a noble court!
with fountains flashing up to meet the sunbeams; and right and left of
you two sweeping half-crescents of great columns; but you pass by the
courtiers and up to the steps of the throne, and the dome seems to
disappear behind it. It is as if the throne was upset, and the king had
toppled over.

"There must be moments, in Rome especially, when every man of friendly
heart, who writes himself English and Protestant, must feel a pang
at thinking that he and his countrymen are insulated from European
Christendom. An ocean separates us. From one shore or the other one can
see the neighbour cliffs on clear days: one must wish sometimes that
there were no