have seen. The Church was decorated with crimson
hangings, and the choir fitted up with seats and galleries, and a throne
for the Pope. There were perhaps a couple of hundred guards of different
kinds; and three or four hundred English ladies, and not so many foreign
male spectators; so that the place looked empty. The Cardinals in
scarlet, and Monsignori in purple, were there; and a body of officiating
Clergy. The Pope was carried in in his chair on men's shoulders, wearing
the Triple Crown; which I have thus actually seen: it is something
like a gigantic Egg, and of the same color, with three little bands of
gold,--very large Egg-shell with three streaks of the yolk smeared round
it. He was dressed in white silk robes, with gold trimmings.

"It was a fine piece of state-show; though, as there are three or four
such Festivals yearly, of course there is none of the eager interest
which breaks out at coronations and similar rare events; no explosion
of unwonted velvets, jewels, carriages and footmen, such as London and
Milan have lately enjoyed. I guessed all the people in St. Peter's,
including performers and spectators, at 2,000; where 20,000 would hardly
have been a crushing crowd. Mass was performed, and a stupid but short
Latin sermon delivered by a lad, in honor of St. Peter, who would have
been much astonished if he could have heard it. The genuflections, and
train-bearings, and folding up the tails of silk petticoats while the
Pontiff knelt, and the train of Cardinals going up to kiss his Ring, and
so forth,--made on me the impression of something immeasurably old and
sepulchral, such as might suit the Grand Lama's court, or the inside of
an Egyptian Pyramid; or as if the Hieroglyphics on one of the Obelisks
here should begin to pace and gesticulate, and nod their bestial heads
upon the granite tablets. The careless bystanders, the London ladies
with their eye-glasses and look of an Opera-box, the yawning young
gentlemen of the _Guarda Nobile_, and the laugh of one of the file of
vermilion Priests round the steps of the altar at the whispered good
thing of his neighbor, brought one back to nothing indeed of a very
lofty kind, but still to the Nineteenth Century."--

"At the great Benediction of the City and the World on Easter Sunday by
the Pope," he writes afterwards, "there was a large crowd both native
and foreign, hundreds of carriages, and thousands of the lower orders of
people from the country; but even of