On their way to St Peter's they stopped before the castle of St Angelo. "There," said Corinne, "is one of those edifices whose exterior is most original; this is the tomb of Adrian, which, changed into a fortress by the Goths, bears the double character of its first and second destination. Built for the dead, an impenetrable enclosure surrounds it; and, nevertheless, the living have added something hostile to it by the external fortifications, which form a contrast with the silence and noble inutility of a funereal monument. On the top is seen an angel of bronze with a naked sword[7], and in the interior the most cruel prisons are contrived. Every event of Roman history, from Adrian to our time, is connected with this monument. It was here that Belisarius defended himself against the Goths, and, almost as barbarous as they who attacked him, threw at his enemy the beautiful statues that adorned the interior of the edifice[8]. Crescentius, Arnault de Brescia, Nicolas Rienzi, those friends of Roman liberty who so often mistook memories for hopes, defended themselves for a long time in this imperial tomb. I love these stones which are connected with so many illustrious facts. I love this luxury of the master of the world—a magnificent tomb. There is something great in the man who, possessing every enjoyment, every terrestrial pomp, is not dismayed from making preparations for his death a long time before hand. Moral ideas and disinterested sentiments fill the soul when it in a manner breaks through the boundaries of mortality.
"It is from here that we ought to perceive St Peter's. The pillars before it were to extend as far as here:—such was the superb plan of Michael Angelo; he expected, at least, that it would be so finished after his death; but the men of our days no longer think of posterity. When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule every thing except money and power is destroyed." "It is you who will revive that sentiment," cried Lord Nelville. "Who ever experienced the happiness I enjoy? Rome shewn by you, Rome interpreted by imagination and genius, Rome, that is a world animated by sentiment, without which the world itself is a desert[9]. Ah, Corinne! what will succeed to these days, more happy than my heart and my fate permit!" Corinne answered him with sweetness: "All sincere affections proceed from heaven, Oswald! Why should it not protect what it inspires? To that Power belongs our fate."
At that moment St Peter's appeared to them, the greatest building that man has ever raised; for the pyramids of Egypt themselves are inferior to it in height. "Perhaps," said Corinne, "I ought to have shewn you the finest of our buildings last, but that is not my system. It is my opinion that to beget a sensibility for the fine arts, we must begin by beholding objects that inspire a deep and lively admiration. This sentiment once felt, reveals, if I may so express myself, a new sphere of ideas, and renders us afterwards more capable of loving, and of judging, what even in an inferior order recalls the first impression we have received. All those gradations, those prudent methods, one tint after another, to prepare for great effects, are not to my taste; we cannot arrive at the sublime by degrees; infinite distances separate it even from that which is only beautiful." Oswald felt an altogether extraordinary emotion on arriving opposite St Peter's. It was the first time that the work of man had produced upon him the same effect as one of the wonders of nature. This is the only work of art, now on our earth, possessing that kind of grandeur which characterises the immediate works of the creation. Corinne enjoyed the astonishment of Oswald. "I have chosen," said she, "a day when the sun is in all its lustre, to shew you this edifice. I have in reserve for you a still more exquisite, more religious pleasure, when you shall contemplate it by moonlight: but you must first witness the most brilliant intellectual feast—the genius of man adorned with the magnificence of nature."
The square of St Peter is surrounded by pillars—those at a distance of a light, and those near of a massive structure. The ground, which is upon a gentle ascent up to the portico of the church, still adds to the effect which it produces. An obelisk, 80 feet high, stands in the middle of the square, but its height appears as nothing in presence of the cupola of St Peter's. The form of an obelisk alone has something in it that pleases the imagination; its summit is lost in the air, and seems to lift the mind of man to heaven. This monument, which was constructed in Egypt to adorn the baths of Caligula, and which Sixtus Quintus caused to be transported to the foot of the temple of St Peter, this cotemporary of so many centuries, which have spent their fury upon it in vain, inspires us with a sentiment of respect; man, sensible of his own fleeting existence, cannot contemplate without emotion that which appears to be immutable. At some distance on each side of the obelisk are two fountains, whose waters form a perpetual and abundant cascade. This murmuring of waters, which we are accustomed to hear in the open country, produces, in this enclosure, an entirely new sensation; but this sensation is quite in harmony with that to which the aspect of a majestic temple gives birth.
Painting and sculpture, imitating generally the human figure or some object existing in nature, awaken in our soul perfectly clear and positive ideas; but a beautiful architectural monument has not any determinate meaning, if it may be so expressed, so that we are seized, in contemplating it, with that kind of aimless reverie, which leads us into a boundless ocean of thought. The sound of fountains harmonises with all these vague and deep impressions; it is uniform as the edifice is regular.
"Eternal motion, and eternal rest,"
are thus blended with each other. It is particularly in a spot like this that Time seems stript of his power, for he appears no more able to dry up the fountains than to shake these immovable stones. The waters, which spout in sheaves from these fountains, are so light and cloudlike that on a fine day the rays of the sun produce on them little rainbows, formed of the most beautiful colours.
"Stop here a moment," said Corinne to Lord Nelville, when they had already reached the portico of the church; "stop a little before you lift up the curtain which covers the door of the temple. Does not your heart beat as you approach this sanctuary? And do not you feel at the moment of entrance all that excites expectation of a solemn event?" Corinne herself lifted up the curtain and held it to let Nelville pass; she displayed so much grace in this attitude that the first look of Oswald was to admire her as she stood, and for some moments she engrossed his whole observation. However, he proceeded into the temple, and the impression which he received beneath these immense arches was so deep, and so solemn, that love itself was no longer able to fill his soul entirely. He walked slowly by the side of Corinne, both preserving silence. Indeed here every thing seemed to command silence; the least noise re-echoes to such a distance that no language seems worthy of being repeated in an abode which may almost be called eternal! Prayer alone, the voice of calamity, produces a powerful emotion in these vast regions; and when beneath these immense domes you hear some old man dragging his feeble steps along the polished marble, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is imposing even by the infirmity of his nature which subjects his divine soul to so many sufferings; and that Christianity, the worship of suffering, contains the true guide for the conduct of man upon earth.
Corinne interrupted the reverie of Oswald, and said to him, "You have seen Gothic churches in England and in Germany; you must have remarked that they have a much more gloomy effect than this church. There was something mysterious in the Catholicism of the northern nations; ours speaks to the imagination by external objects. Michael Angelo said on beholding the cupola of the Pantheon, 'I will place it in the air;' and, in effect, St Peter's is a temple built upon a church. There is some connection between the ancient religions and Christianity, in the effect which the interior of this edifice produces upon the imagination. I often come and walk here to restore to my soul that serenity which it sometimes loses: the sight of such a monument is like continual and sustained music, which waits to do you good when you approach; and certainly we must reckon among the claims of our nation to glory, the patience, the courage and the disinterestedness of the heads of the church, who have devoted one hundred and fifty years, so much money, and so much labour, to the completion of an edifice which they who built it could not expect to enjoy[10]. It is even a service rendered to the public morals to present a nation with a monument which is the emblem of so many noble and generous ideas." "Yes," answered Oswald; "here the arts possess grandeur, and imagination and invention are full of genius; but how is the dignity of man himself protected here! What institutions! what feebleness in the greater part of the governments of Italy! and, nevertheless, what subjugation in the mind!" "Other nations," interrupted Corinne, "have borne the yoke the same as we, and have lacked the imagination to dream of another fate.
'Servi siam sì, ma servi ognor frementi.'