The institution comprises a hospital for every kind of disease, containing in ordinary times 1620 beds, a number which can be almost doubled in time of necessity; a lunatic asylum containing an average of 450 inmates; and a foundling hospital, where children are received from all parts of the papal states, and even from the Neapolitan towns. Upwards of 3000 foundlings pass through the hospital annually, but the mortality is very great,—in the return of 1846, as much as fifty-seven per cent. The person who wishes to deposit an infant rings a bell, when a little bed is turned towards the grille near the door, in which the baby is deposited. Close to this is another grille, without any apparent use. "What is that for?" you ask. "Because, when nurses come in from the country, they might be tempted to take the children for money, and yet not feel any natural tenderness towards them, but by looking through the second grille, they can see the child, and discover if it is simpatico, and if not, they can go away and leave it."
At the end of the street one enters the Piazza Rusticucci (where Raphael died), from which open the magnificent colonnades of Bernini, which lead the eye up to the façade of St. Peter's, while the middle distance is broken by the silvery spray of its glittering fountains.
The Colonnades have 284 columns, are sixty-one feet wide, and sixty-four high; they enclose an area of 777 English feet; they were built by Bernini for Alexander VII., 1657-67. In the centre is the famous red granite Obelisk of the Vatican, brought to Rome from Heliopolis by Caligula, in a ship which Pliny describes as being "nearly as long as the left side of the port of Ostia." It was used to adorn the circus of Nero, and was brought from a position near the present sacristy of St. Peter's by Sixtus V. in 1586. Here it was elevated by Domenico Fontana, who estimated its weight at 963,537 Roman pounds; and employed 800 men, 150 horses, and 46 cranes in its removal.
The obelisk was first exorcised as a pagan idol, and then dedicated to the Cross. Its removal was preceded by high mass in St. Peter's, after which Pope Sixtus bestowed a solemn benediction upon Fontana and his workmen, and ordained that none should speak, upon pain of death, during the raising of the obelisk. The immense mass was slowly rising upon its base, when suddenly it ceased to move, and it was evident that the ropes were giving way. An awful moment of suspense ensued, when the breathless silence was broken by a cry of "Acqua alle funi!"—throw water on the ropes, and the workmen, acting on the advice so unexpectedly received, again saw the monster move, and gradually settle on its base. The man who saved the obelisk was Bresca, a sailor of Bordighiera, a village of the Riviera di Ponente, and Sixtus V., in his gratitude, promised him that his native village should ever henceforth have the privilege of furnishing the Easter palms to St. Peter's. A vessel laden with palm-branches, which abound in Bordighiera, is still annually sent to the Tiber in the week before Palm Sunday, and the palms, after being prepared and plaited by the nuns of S. Antonio Abbate, are used in the ceremonial in St. Peter's.
The height of the whole obelisk is 132 feet, that of the shaft, eighty-three feet. Upon the shaft is the inscription to Augustus and Tiberius: "DIVO. CÆS. DIVI. JULII. F. AUGUSTO.—TI. CÆSARI. DIVI. AUG. F.—AUGUSTA. SACRUM." The inscriptions on the base show its modern dedication to the Cross[324]—"Ecce Crux Domini—Fugite partes adversæ—Vicit Leo de tribu Juda."
"Sixte-quint s'applaudissait du succès, comme de l'œuvre la plus gigantesque des temps modernes; des médailles furent frappées; Fontana fut créé, noble romain, chevalier de l'Éperon d'or, et reçut une gratification de 5,000 écus, indépendamment des matériaux qui avaient servi à l'entreprise, et dont la valeur s'élevait à 20,000 écus (108,000 fr.); enfin des poëmes, dans toutes les langues, sur ce nouveau triomphe de la croix, furent adressés aux différents souverains de l'Europe."—Gournerie, Rome Chrétienne, ii. 232.
"In summer the great square basks in unalluring magnificence in the midday sun. Its tall obelisk sends but a slim shadow to travel round the oval plane, like the gnomon of a huge dial; its fountains murmur with a delicious dreaminess, sending up massive jets like blocks of crystal into the hot sunshine, and receiving back a broken spray, on which sits serene an unbroken iris, but present no 'cool grot,' where one may enjoy their freshness; and in spite of the shorter path, the pilgrim looks with dismay at the dazzling pavement and long flight of unsheltered steps between him and the church, and prudently plunges into the forest of columns at either side of the piazza, and threads his way through their uniting shadows, intended, as an inscription[325] tells him, for this express purpose."—Cardinal Wiseman.
"Un jour Pie V. traversait, avec l'ambassadeur de Pologne, cette place du Vatican. Pris d'enthousiasme au souvenir du courage des martyrs qui l'ont arrosée de leurs larmes, et fertilisée par leur sang, il se baisse, et saisissant dans sa main une poignée de poussière: 'Tenez,' dit-il au représentant de cette noble nation, 'prenez cette poussière formée de la cendre des saints, et imprégnée du sang des martyrs.'
"L'ambassadeur ne portait pas dans son cœur la foi d'un pape, ni dans son âme les illuminations d'un saint; il reçut pourtant avec respect cette rélique étrange à ses yeux: mais revenu en son palais, retirant, d'une main indifférente peut-être, le linge qui la contenait, il le trouva ensanglanté.
"La poussière avait disparu. La foi du pontife avait évoqué le sang des martyrs, et ce sang généreux reparaissait à cet appel pour attester, en face de l'hérésie, que l'Église romaine, au XVIe siècle, était toujours celle pour laquelle ces héros avaient donné leur vie sous Néron."—Une Chrétienne à Rome.