be placed at night around this wood, to save it from the depredations of the peasantry; every tree belonging to the convent and not guarded was sure to be cut down. No one, so my informant told me, would believe the sums of money the convent had spent of late on charity, and how for this purpose even their daily supplies of food had been curtailed; but alas! it was only like pouring water into a sieve, for the people were poorer than ever. I own that when the old priest pointed out the number of churches and convents you could see in the valley below, and spoke, with regret, of the time when there were twelve convents round Subiaco alone, I felt that the cause of this hopeless misery was not far to seek, though hard to remedy.
On my way homewards to the town I beheld the half dozen sky-rockets which composed the display of fire-works, and also the two rows of oil-lamps on the cornices over the church-door, which formed the brilliant illuminations. Neither sight seemed to collect much crowd or create much excitement. As the dusk came on the streets emptied fast, and by night-time the town was almost deserted; and, except that the wine-shops were still filled with a few hardened topers,
every sign of the fair had vanished. There was not even a trace of drunkenness apparent. The next morning the same scene was repeated with little difference, save that the crowd was rather greater, and a band of military music played in the market-place. About noon the holy procession was seen coming down the winding road which leads from the convent to the town. I had taken up my position on a roadside bank, and enjoyed a perfect view. There were a number of shabby flags and banners preceded by a hundred able-bodied men dressed in dirty-white surplices, rather dirtier than the colour of their faces. A crowd of ragged choristers followed swinging incense-pots, droning an unintelligible chant, and fighting with each other. Then came a troop of monks and scholars with bare heads and downcast eyes. All these walked in twos and twos, and carried a few crucifixes raised aloft. The monks were succeeded by a pewter-looking bust, which, I suppose, was a likeness of St Benedict, and the bust was followed by a mule, on which, in a snuff-coloured coat, black tights, white neckcloth, and a beef-eater’s hat, the whole sheltered beneath a green carriage umbrella, rode His Excellency the Governor of the
district. Behind him walked his secretary, the Syndic of Subiaco, four gendarmes, and three broken-down, old livery-clad beadles, who carried the umbrellas of these high dignitaries. In truth, had it not been for the unutterable shabbiness of the whole affair, I could have fancied I saw the market scene in “Martha,” and “The Last Rose of Summer” seemed to ring unbidden in my ears. Not a score of un-official spectators accompanied the procession from the convent, and the interest caused by it appeared but small; the devotion absolutely none. The fact which struck me most throughout was the utter apathy of the people. Not a person in the place I spoke to—and I asked several—had any notion who the governor was. The nearest approach that I got to an answer was from one of the old beadles, who replied to my question, “Chi sa?” “É una roba da lontano;” and with this explanation that the governor was “a thing that came from a distance,” I was obliged to rest satisfied. When the procession reached the town the band joined in, the governor got off his mule, room was made for our party in the rank behind him, I suppose, as “distinguished foreigners;” and so with banners flying, crosses nodding, drums
beating, priests and choristers chanting, we marched in a body into the church, where the female portion of the crowd and all the beggars followed us. I had now, however, had enough of the “humours of the fair,” and left the town without waiting to try my luck at the tombola, which was to come off directly High Mass was over.
CHAPTER XV. THE HOLY WEEK.
The nil admirari school are out of favour. In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact, to admire everything. Since the days of Wordsworth and Peter Bell, every petty poet and romantic writer has had his sneer at the shallow sceptic to whom a cowslip was a cowslip only, and who called a spade a spade. I feel, therefore, painfully that I am not of my own day when I express my deliberate conviction, that the ceremonies of Holy Week at Rome are—the word must come out sooner or later—an imposture. This is not the place to enter into the religious aspect of the Catholic question, nor if it were, should I have any wish to enter the lists of controversy as a champion of either side. I can understand that for some minds the ideas of Church unity,
of a mystic communion of the faithful, and of an infallible head of a spiritual body have a strange attraction, nay, even a real existence. I can understand too, that for such persons all the pomps and pageantry of the Papal services present themselves under an aspect to me unintelligible. Whether these ideas be right or wrong, I am not able, nor do I care, to argue. The Pontifical ceremonies, however, have not only a spiritual aspect, but a material and very matter-of-fact one. They are after all great spectacles got up with the aid of music and upholstery and dramatic mechanism. Now, how far in this latter point of view the ceremonies are successful or not, I think from some small experience I am pretty well qualified to judge; and if I am asked whether, as ceremonies, the services of the Church of Rome are imposing and effective, I answer most unhesitatingly, No. I know that this assertion upsets a received article of faith in Protestant England as to the seductive character of the Papal ceremonies. I remember well the time when I too believed that the shrines of the old faith were the haunts of sense-enthralling grandeur, of wild enchantment and bewitching beauty; when I too dreamt how
amidst crowds of rapt worshippers, while unearthly music pealed around you and the fragrant incense floated heavenwards, your soul became lost to everything, save to a feeling of unreasoning ecstasy. In fact, I believed in the enchantments of Papal pageantry, as firmly as I believed that a Lord Mayor’s feast was a repast in which Apicius would have revelled, or that an opera ball was a scene of oriental and voluptuous delight. Alas! I have seen all, and known all, and have found all three to be but vanity.
Now the question as to the real aspect of the Papal pageantry, and the effects produced by it upon the minds, not of controversialists, but of ordinary spectators, is by no means an unimportant one with reference to the future prospects of Italy and the Papacy. Let me try then, not irreverently or depreciatingly, but as speaking of plain matters of fact, to tell you what you really do see and hear at the greatest and grandest of the Roman ceremonies. Of all the Holy Week services none have a more European fame, or have been more written or sung about, than the Misereres in the Sistine Chapel. Now to be present at these services