earlier than the
fifth century, and is therefore of a time after Honorius and the
disestablishment. Anyone who will take the trouble to examine the lives
of the early popes in Muratori may read the detailed accounts of what
each one did for the churches. It is not by any means impossible that
this may be one of the statues made under Saint Innocent the First, a
contemporary of Honorius, in whose time a Roman lady called Vestina
made gift to the church of vast possessions, the proceeds of which were
used in building and richly adorning numerous places of worship. In any
case, since it is practically certain that the statue was originally
intended for a portrait of Saint Peter, and has been regarded as such
for nearly fifteen hundred years, it commands our respect, if not our
veneration.

The Roman custom of kissing the foot, then bending and placing one's
head under it, signifies submission to the commands of the Church, and
is not, as many suppose, an act of devotion to the statue.

The practice of dressing it in magnificent robes on the feast of Saint
Peter is connected with the ancient Roman custom, which required
censors, when entering upon office, to paint the earthen statue of
Jupiter Capitolinus a bright red. But the connection lies in the Italian
mind and character, which cling desperately to external practices for
their hold upon inward principles. It is certainly not an inheritance of
uninterrupted tradition, as Roman church music, on the contrary, most
certainly is; for there is every reason to believe that the recitations
now noted in the Roman missal were very like those used by the ancient
Romans on solemn occasions.

The church is not only a real landmark. Astronomers say that if there
were a building of the same dimensions on the moon we could easily see
it with our modern telescopes. It is also, in a manner, one of Time's
great mile-stones, of which some trace will probably remain till the
very end of the world's life. Its mere mass will insure to it the
permanence of the great pyramid of Cheops. Its mere name associates it
for ever with the existence of Christianity from the earliest time. It
has stamped itself upon the minds of millions of men as the most vast
monument of the ages. Its very defects are destined to be as lasting as
its beauties, and its mighty faults are more imposing than the small
perfections of the Greeks. Between it and the Parthenon, as between the
Roman empire and the Athenian