door of their cage—is enough to move the heart
of a stone. But I put it to you, O well-meaning
but indiscreet Canons and Dean before
apostrophised, is this wholly wise, this concentration,
this focussing, as it were, of mundane
charms, during the holy offices? Or, turning to
you, Monsignore and Eccellenza, il Maggiordomo
di Sua Santità, who has signed and issued
the ladies' yellow ticket I have now in my hand,
I would know if this be the interpretation of
the austere admonition inscribed thereon: "No
one shall be admitted who is not decentemente
vestita and adorned with a veil or cuffia." See
how this simple sumptuary law has been artfully
wrested by the wily señoras. Foolish Maggiordomo
di Sua Santità! you bid them come decently
attired in black, and they burst upon you a
dangerous band of Perea Nenas.

But we are drifting on again, through lanes
that open spasmodically, as the great Briton
abroad, a lady on either arm, comes placidly by,
round by this corner, through many red-draped
enclosures, whence the sad-eyed Swiss, lifting
the corner of a curtain, looks out mournfully
and scrutinises your yellow biglietta, as though
he were the scarlet gaoler of Mr. Millais. Then,
past the sad-eyed—who is satisfied, yet half
mistrustful—and we have emerged into a pew hard
by to the Chair of St. Peter, hard by to the
great crimson canopy and throne of many steps
where the grand functions of the day are to be
rehearsed.

A green lawn of many acres, speckless, newly
mown, as it were plaisaunce on which the
glittering figures shall come, and go, and bend,
and defile, has grown up at our feet, and we
stand at the edge of the lawn, only that two
lines of heads directly in front—heads ecclesiastical,
smoothly shaven to the very poll, with
bared brawny necks attached—are at times a
little obstructive. Chiefs, these, of Dominican,
Barnabite, and other orders: stalwart, burly,
religious generalissimos, who sit sturdily in their
places and change snuff-boxes. I look between
the heads, and see again the great bronze
canopy with the sinuous pillars rising afar off
under the poised dome, where a dark dusky
mass that shifts, and swells, and heaves, and
rolls back and forward mistily, is brought to bay
as by a great sluice gate. And there is being
borne up to us at times from the sluice gate, the
old hum and subdued murmur of feet moving
and shuffling, and of babbling voices monotonous
as a far-off sea washing over pebbles and
shells, when presently a bright sun ladder
bursts in suddenly, and comes down aslant the
solemn mosaic prophets in the galleries, lying
an instant on the edges and points of gilt
cornices, and just tipping the gold pins and combs of
the Spanish captives, whose faces all look this
way from afar off over their fans.

All this time, a living fringe border has been
growing up by the edge of the green lawn:
more monastic captains have strode in—tall
brawny men of Homeric proportions—and had
sat them down. Now, military music is heard afar
off, it might be a mile or so away, and Verdi is
borne up to us from the distance. Now, through
the sea-shore hum, the crash of grounding arms
is heard, and communicative little abbé tells how
the gaudy Palatine Guard is forming in two
purple and gold lines down the nave. There is
plainly abroad that flush and restlessness of
expectation which waits on a coronation, and other
such magnificent functions. Officials flit across
the green lawn desperately. With the black
waves still surging and fretting at the sluices,
there enters on the green sward two superb files
of warriors, magnificent in gold helmets and
plumes, baldrics, and great jack-boots, which step
together within an hair's breadth. All eyes on
the warriors. Halt in the centre—flash swords
—sweep to the right and to the left—and in a
second, two sides of the green sward have
a gorgeous supplemental fringe. The Noble
Guard, this—Guardia di Nobili—whispers
communicative abbé, Guards of the body di
Sua Santità. Rustle and flutter again on the
left, and a crimson velvet box or orchestra
near me becomes of a sudden bursting and
flashing with golden dolls. It needs no
prophet to help me to the knowledge that
the golden dolls, whose faces are lean and
wizened, and who are packed tightly into their
golden clothes, and who have the air of being
rasped eternally under the chin by their sharp
golden collars, and who groan under heavy
orders that seemed nailed to their wooden chests,
are the awful Brethren of Diplomacy, who bend
and smile on each other with the smile
plenipotential as they take their seats. How many
lorgnettes are at that moment raking that bench
of protocols!

Hush! Here it comes, the long expected,
the eagerly attended pageant—the march, the
progress, the procession. From far down
below, from out of the dark clouds, it is being
unwound in some mysterious fashion. It floats
on, over the green lawns, as though it were a
cloud—white, scarlet, purple, silver, golden; it
rolls forward, to the right and to the left, in
great waves—waves episcopal, priestly, diaconal,
patriarchal, cardinational—rolling in like a foaming
tide, and flooding the green lawn, with the
chief priest of all the Churches, Pius Nonus,
Pontifex Maximus, borne in aloft on men's
shoulders. Flutter and settle in your places,
O white-robed army! closing up your ranks
fast, leaving lawn clear, and overflowing up the
steps to the throne of state. Crowd upon the
steps in grouping gracefully irregular, and now
let the music steal from behind the gilded grates,
and the incense fume, and the functions
commence.

It has been sung many times over before
now, the magnificence of that ceremonial.
Writing men have struck out wildly for words,
striving to describe what can be but poorly
described. Words, alas! are not colours!
Still there is one stage of that phantasmagoria,
when the great white-robed drifts into
a glittering procession, and for the space of
an hour, and yet longer, streams by—an
unique pageant, and most dazzling progress—