Ash Wednesday

February 19th. [1858]

Day before yesterday, pretty early, we went to St. Peter's, expecting to see the Pope cast ashes on the heads of the cardinals, it being Ash Wednesday. On arriving, however, we found no more than the usual number of visitants and devotional people scattered through the broad interior of St. Peter's; and thence concluded that the ceremonies were to be performed in the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, we went out of the cathedral, through the door in the left transept, and passed round the exterior, and through the vast courts of the Vatican, seeking for the chapel. We had blundered into the carriageentrance of the palace: there is an entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen, a parti-coloured dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the whereabouts of the chapel. At last an attendant kindly showed us the proper door, and led us up flights of stairs, along passages and galleries, and through halls, till at last we came to a spacious and lofty apartment adorned with frescoes: this was the Sala Regia, and the ante-chamber to the Sistine Chapel.

The attendant, meanwhile, had informed us that my wife could not be admitted to the chapel in her bonnet, and that I myself could not enter at all, for lack of a dress-coat ; so my wife took off her bonnet, and, covering her head with her black lace veil, was readily let in, while I remained in the Sala Regia, with several other gentlemen, who found themselves in the same predicament as I was. There was a wonderful variety of costume to be seen and studied among the persons around me, comprising garbs that have been elsewhere laid aside for at least three centuries the broad, plaited, double ruff, and black velvet cloak, doublet, trunk-breeches, and sword of Queen Elizabeth's time the papal guard, in their striped and parti-coloured dress as before described, looking not a little like harlequins; other soldiers in helmets and jackboots; French officers of various uniform; monks and priests ; attendants, in oldfashioned and gorgeous livery; gentlemen, some in black dress-coats and pantaloons, others in wide awake hats and tweed overcoats; and a few ladies in the prescribed cdstume of black; so that, in any other country, the, scene might have been taken for a fancy ball. By-and-by, the cardinals began to arrive, and added their splendid purple robes and red hats to make the picture still more brilliant. They were old men one or two very aged and in firm and generally men of bulk and substance, with heavy faces, fleshy about the chin. Their red hats, rimmed with gold lace, are a beautiful piece of finery, and are identical in shape with the black, looselycocked beavers worn by the Catholic ecclesiastics generally. Wolsey's hat, which I saw at the Manchester Exhibition, might have been made on the same block, but apparently was never cocked, as the fashion now is. The attendants changed the upper portions of their masters' attire, and put a little cap of scarlet cloth on each of their heads, after which the cardinals, one by one, or two by two, as they happened to arrive, went into the chapel, with a page behind each holding up his purple train. In the meanwhile, within the chapel, we heard singing and chanting; and whenever the voluminous curtains that hung before the entrance were slightly drawn apart, we outsiders glanced through, but could see only a mass of people, and beyond them still another chapel, divided from the hither one by a screen. When almost everybody had gone in, there was a stir among the guards and attendants, and a door opened, apparently communicating with the inner apartments of the Vatican. Through this door came not the Pope, as I had partly expected, but a bulky old lady in black,, with a red face, who bowed towards the spectators with an aspect of dignified complaisance as she passed towards the entrance of the chapel. I took off my hat, unlike certain English gentlemen who stood nearer, and found that I had not done amiss, for it was the Queen of Spain.

There was nothing else to be seen; so I went back through the ante-chambers (which are noble halls, richly frescoed on the walls and ceilings), endeavouring to get out through the same passages that had let me in. I had already tried to descend what I now suppose to be the Scala Santa, but had been turned back by a sentinel. After wandering to and fro a good while, I at last found myself in a long, long gallery, on each side of which were innumerable inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, on slabs of marble, built into the walls; and classic altars and tablets were ranged along, from end to end. At the extremity was a closed iron grating, from which I was retreating; but a French gentle man accosted me, with the information that the custode would admit me, if I chose, and would accompany me through the sculpture department of the Vatican. I acceded, and thus took my first view of those innumerable art-treasures, passing from one object to another, at an easy pace, pausing hardly a moment anywhere, and dismissing even the Apollo, and the Laocoon, and the Torso of Hercules, in the space of half a dozen breaths. I was well enough content to do so, in order to get a general idea of the contents of the galleries, before settling down upon individual objects. Most of the world-famous sculptures presented themselves to my eye with a kind of familiarity, through the copies and casts which I had seen; but I found the originals more different than I anticipated. The Apollo, for instance, has a face which I have never seen in any cast or copy. I must confess, however, taking such transient glimpses as I did, I was more impressed with the extent of the Vatican, and the beautiful order in which it is kept, and its great, sunny, open courts, with fountains, grass and shrubs, and the views of Rome and the Campagna from its windows more impressed with these, and with certain vastly capacious vases, and two great sarcophagi than with the statuary. Thus I went round the whole, and was dismissed through the grated barrier into the gallery of inscriptions again; and after a little more wandering, I made my way out of the palace. . .

Yesterday, I went out betimes, and strayed through some portion of ancient Rome, to the column of Trajan, to the Forum, thence along the Tarpeian Way; after which I lost myself among the intricacies of the streets, and finally came out at the bridge of St. Angelo. The first observation which a stranger is led to make, in the neighbourhood of Roman ruins, is that the inhabitants seem to be strangely addicted to the washing of clothes; for all the precincts of Trajan's Forum, and of the Roman Forum, and wherever else an iron railing affords opportunity to hang them, were whitened with sheets, and other linen and cotton, drying in the sun. It must be that washerwomen burrow among the old temples. The second observation is not quite so favourable to the cleanly character of the modern Romans; indeed, it is so very unfavourable, that I hardly know how to express it. But the fact is, that, through the forum, . . . and any where out of the commonest foot-track and road-way, you must look well to your steps If you tread beneath the triumphal arch of Titus or Constantine, you had better look downward than upward, whatever be the merit of the sculptures aloft. . .

After awhile, the visitant finds himself getting accustomed to this horrible state of things; and the associations of moral sublimity and beauty seem to throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I allude. Perhaps there is something in the mind of the people of these countries that enables them quite to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry - looking, wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little coloured prints of the crucifixion; they hang tin hearts and other tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are encrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon; in short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in the least troubled by the proximity. It must be that their sense of the beautiful is stronger than in the Anglo-Saxon mind, and that it observes only what is fit to gratify it.

To-day, which was bright and cool, my wife and I set forth immediately after breakfast, in search of the Baths of Diocletian, and the Church of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. We went too far along the Via di Porta Pia, and after passing by two or three convents, and their high garden walls, and the villa Bonaparte on one side, and the villa Torlonia on the other, at last issued through the city gate. Before us, far away, were the Alban hills, the loftiest of which was absolutely silvered with snow and sunshine, and set in the bluest and brightest of skies. We now retraced our steps, to the Fountain of the Termini, where is a ponderous heap of stone, representing Moses striking the rock a colossal figure, not without a certain enormous might and dignity, though rather too evidently looking his awfullest. This statue was the death of its sculptor, whose heart was broken, on account of the ridicule it excited. There are many more absurd aquatic devices in Rome, how ever, and few better. We turned into the Piazza di Termini, the entrance of which is at this fountain; and after some inquiry of the French soldiers, a numerous detachment of whom appear to be quartered in the vicinity, we found our way to the portal of Santa Maria degl' Angeli. The exterior of this church has no pretensions to beauty or majesty, or, indeed, to architectural merit of any kind, or to any architecture whatever; for it looks like a confused pile of ruined brickwork, with a fa9ade resembling half the inner curve of a large oven. No one would imagine that there was a church under that enormous heap of ancient rubbish. But the door admits you into a circular vestibule, once an apartment of Diocletian's Baths, but now a portion of the nave of the church, and surrounded with monumental busts; and thence you pass into what was the central hall; now, with little change, except of detail and ornament, transformed into the body of the church. This space is so lofty, broad, and airy, that the soul forthwith swells out and magnifies itself, for the sake of filling it. It was Michel Angelo who contrived this miracle; and I feel even more grateful to him for rescuing such a noble interior from destruction, than if he had originally built it himself. In the ceiling above, you see the metal fixtures, whereon the old Romans hung their lamps; and there are eight gigantic pillars of Egyptian granite, standing as they stood of yore. There is a grand simplicity about the church, more satisfactory than elaborate ornament; but the present Pope has paved and adorned one of the large chapels of the transept in very beautiful style; and the pavement of the central part is likewise laid in rich marbles. In the choir there are several pictures, one of which was veiled, as celebrated pictures frequently are, in churches. A person, who seemed to be at his devotions, withdrew the veil for us, and we saw a martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Domenichino, originally, I believe, painted in fresco in St. Peter's, but since transferred to canvas, and removed hither. Its place at St. Peter's is supplied by a mosaic copy. I was a good deal impressed by this picture the dying saint, amid the sorrow of those who loved him, and the fury of his enemies, looking upward, where a company of angels, and Jesus with them, are waiting to welcome him and crown him; and I felt what an influence pictures might have upon the devotional part of our nature. The nail-marks in the hands and feet of Jesus, ineffaceable, even after he had passed into bliss and glory, touched my heart with a sense of his love for us. I think this really a great picture. We walked round the church, looking at other paintings and frescoes, but saw no others that greatly interested us. In the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, and there is a statue of St. Bruno, by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very fine. I thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admiration. Houdon was the sculptor of the first statue of Washington, and of the bust whence, I suppose, all subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly modelled.

After emerging from the church, I looked back with wonder at the stack of shapeless old brick work that hid the splendid interior. I must go there again, and breathe freely in that noble space.