to the tomb of Saint Peter has been called the 'Confession.'
The word, I believe, is properly applied to the altar-rail, from the
ancient practice of repeating there the general confession immediately
before receiving the Communion, a custom now slightly modified. But I
may be wrong in giving this derivation. At all events, a marble
balustrade follows the horseshoe shape of the well, and upon it are
placed ninety-five gilded lamps, which burn perpetually. There is said
to be no special significance in the number, and they produce very
little effect by daylight.

But on the eve of Saint Peter's Day, and perhaps at some other seasons,
the Pope has been known to come down to the church by the secret
staircase leading into the Chapel of the Sacrament, to pray at the
Apostle's tomb. On such occasions a few great candlesticks with wax
torches were placed on the floor of the church, two and two, between the
Chapel and the Confession. The Pope, attended only by a few chamberlains
and Noble Guards, and dressed in his customary white cassock, passed
swiftly along in the dim light, and descended the steps to the gilded
gate beneath the high altar. A marble pope kneels there too, Pius the
Sixth, of the Braschi family, his stone draperies less white than Pope
Leo's cassock, his marble face scarcely whiter than the living Pontiff's
alabaster features.

Those are sights which few have been privileged to see. There is a sort
of centralization of mystery, if one may couple such words, in the
private pilgrimage of the head of the Church to the tomb of the chief
Apostle by night, on the eve of the day which tradition has kept from
the earliest times as the anniversary of Saint Peter's martyrdom. The
whole Catholic world, if it might, would follow Leo the Thirteenth down
those marble steps, and two hundred million voices would repeat the
prayer he says alone.

Many and solemn scenes have been acted out by night in the vast gloom of
the enormous church, and if events do not actually leave an essence of
themselves in places, as some have believed, yet the knowledge that they
have happened where we stand and recall them has a mysterious power to
thrill the heart.

Opposite the Chapel of the Sacrament is the Chapel of the Choir. Saint
Peter's is a cathedral, and is managed by a chapter of Canons, each of
whom has his seat in the choir, and his vote in the disposal of the
cathedral's income, which is considerable. The chapter maintains the