But how, said Cyrus, shall I make men think me more excellent than themselves? By being really so, replies Xenophon, putting his words into the mouth of Cambyses. Pius Sextus takes no deeper method I believe, yet all acknowledge his superiour merit: No prince can less affect state, nor no clergyman can less adopt hypocritical behaviour. The Pope powders his hair like any other of the Cardinals, and is, it seems, the first who has ever done so. When he takes the air it is in a fashionable carriage, with a few, a very few guards on horseback, and is by no means desirous of making himself a shew. Now and then an old woman begs his blessing as he passes; but I almost remember the time when our bishops of Bangor and St. Asaph were followed by the country people in North Wales full as much or more, and with just the same feelings. One man in particular we used to talk of, who came from a distant part of our mountainous province, with much expence in proportion to his abilities, poor fellow, and terrible fatigue; he was a tenant of my father’s, who asked him how he ventured to undertake so troublesome a journey? It was to get my good Lord’s blessing, replied the farmer, I hope it will cure my rheumatism. Kissing the slipper at Rome will probably, in a hundred years more, be a thing to be thus faintly recollected by a few very old people; and it is strange to me it should have lasted so long. No man better knows than the present learned and pious successor of St. Peter, that St. Peter himself would permit no act of adoration to his own person; and that he severely reproved Cornelius for kneeling to him, charging him to rise and stand upon his feet, adding these remarkable words, seeing I also am a man[13]. Surely it will at last be found out among them that such a ceremony is inconsistent with the Pope’s character as a Christian priest, however it may suit state matters to continue it in the character of a sovereign. The road he is now making on every side his capital to facilitate foreigners approach, the money he has laid out on the conveniencies of the Vatican, the desire he feels of reforming a police much in want of reformation, joined to an immaculate character for private virtue and an elegant taste for the fine arts, must make every one wish for a long continuance of his health and dignity; though the wits and jokers, when they see his arms up, as they are often placed in galleries, &c. about the palace, and consist of a zephyr blowing on a flower, a pair of eagle’s wings, and a few stars, have invented this Epigram, to say that when the Emperor has got his eagle back, the King of France his fleurs de lys, and the stars are gone to heaven, Braschi will have nothing left him but the wind:
Redde aquilam Cæsari, Francorum lilia regi,
Sydera redde polo, cætera Brasche tibi.
These verses were given me by an agreeable Benedictine Friar, member of a convent belonging to St. Paul’s fuor delle mura; he was a learned man, a native of Ragusa, had been particularly intimate with Wortley Montague, whose variety of acquirements had impressed him exceedingly.
He shewed us the curiosities of his church, the finest in Rome next to St. Peter’s, and had silver gates; but the plating is worn off and only the brass remains. There is an old Egyptian candlestick above five feet high preserved here, and many other singularities adorn the church. The Pillars are 136 in number, all marble, and each consisting of one unjoined and undivided piece; 40 of these are fluted, and two which did belong to a temple of Mars are seven feet and a half each in diameter. Here is likewise the place where Nero ran for refuge to the house of his freed-man, and in the cloister a stone, with this inscription on it,
Hoc specus accepit post aurea tecta Neronem[14].
Here is an altar supported by four pillars of red porphyry, and here are the pictures of all the popes; St. Peter first, and our present Braschi last. It has given much occasion for chat that there should now be no room left to hang a successor’s portrait, and that he who now occupies the chair is painted in powdered hair and a white head-dress, such as he wears every day, to the great affliction of his courtiers, who recommended the usual state diadem; but “No, no,” said he, “there have been red cap Popes enough, mine shall be only white,” and white it is.
This beautiful edifice was built by the Emperor Theodosius, and there is an old picture at the top, of our Saviour giving the benediction in the form that all the Greek priests give it now. Apropos, there have been many sects of Oriental Christians dropt into the Church of Rome within these late years; a very venerable old Armenian says Greek mass regularly in St. Peter’s church every day before one particular altar; his long black dress and white beard attracted much of my notice; he saw it did, and now whenever we meet in the street by chance he kindly stands still to bless me. But the Syriac or Maronites have a church to themselves just by the Bocca della Verita; and extremely curious we thought it to see their ceremonies upon Palm Sunday, when their aged patriarch, not less than ninety-three years old, and richly attired with an inconvenient weight of drapery, and a mitre shaped like that of Aaron in our Bibles exactly, was supported by two olive coloured orientals, while he pronounced a benediction on the tree that stood near the altar, and was at least ten feet high. The attendant clergy, habited after their own eastern taste, and very superbly, had broad phylacteries bound on their foreheads after the fashion of the Jews, and carried long strips of parchment up and down the church, with the law written on them in Syriac characters, while they formed themselves into a procession and led their truly reverend principal back to his place. An exhibition so striking, with the view of many monuments round the walls, sacred to the memory of such, and such a bishop of Damascus, gave so strong an impression of Asiatic manners to the mind, that one felt glad to find Europe round one at going out again. One of the treasures much renowned in it we have seen to-day, the transfiguration painted by Rafaelle; it was the first thing the Emperor did visit when he came to Rome, and so a Franciscan Friar who shews it, told us. He saw a gentleman walk into church it seems, and leaving his friends at dinner, went out to converse with him. “Pull aside the curtain, Sir,” said the stranger, “for I am in haste to see this master-piece of your immortal Raphael.” I was as willing to be in a hurry as he, says the Friar, and observed how fortunate it was for us that it could not be moved, otherwise we had lost it long ago; for, Sir, said I, they would have carried it away from poor Monte Citoria to some finer temple long ago; though, let me tell you, this is an elegant Doric building too, and one of Bramante’s best works, much admired by the English in particular. I hope, if it please God now that I should live but a very little longer, I may have the honour of shewing it the Emperor. “Is he expected?” enquired the gentleman. “Every day, Sir,” replies the Friar. “And well now,” cries the foreigner, “what sort of a man do you expect to see?” “Why, Sir, you seem a traveller, did you ever see him?” quoth the Franciscan. “Yes, sure, my good friend, very often indeed, he is as plain a man as myself, has good intentions, and an honest heart; and I think you would like him if you knew him, because he puts nobody out of their way.”