[[7]] I suppose that there had been a Christian church on the site for thirteen centuries. On the day of my visit it was locked and barred—discouraging to pilgrims.
[[8]] The converse of this story is that of the orthodox but sadly prosy preacher who was demonstrating at great length the certainty of his own immortality. "Yes, my brethren, the mighty mountains shall one day be cast into the sea, but I shall live on. Nay, the seas themselves, the vast oceans which cover the greater part of the earth, shall dry up; but not I—not I!" And the congregation really thought that he never would!
[[9]] One more instance of Park repartee I must chronicle: the Radical politician shouting, "I want land reform—I want housing reform—I want education reform—I want——" and the disconcerting interruption, "Chloroform!"
[[10]] His mother, though a Catholic like himself, was a devotee of "Father Ignatius," and lived at Llanthony. She travelled about everywhere with the visionary "Monk of the Church of England," acting as pew-opener, money-taker, and general mistress of the ceremonies at his lectures, and had published an extraordinary biography of him.
[[11]] Have they ever been reprinted? I know not. Here they are:—
"Leave him alone:
The death forgotten, and the truth unknown.
Enough to know
Whate'er he feared, he never feared a foe.
Believe the best,
O English hearts! and leave him to his rest."
[[12]] These words were penned in 1449 by one whom a contemporary layman described on his death as "the wisest, the most perfect, the most learned, and the holiest prelate whom the Church has in our day possessed." His beautiful tomb is in the Minerva church in Rome. Exactly a century later (1549) Cirillo Franchi wrote on the same subject, and in the same vein, to Ugolino Gualteruzzi: "It is their greatest happiness to contrive that while one is saying Sanctus, the other should say Sabaoth, and a third Gloria tua, with certain howls, bellowings, and guttural sounds, so that they more resemble cats in January than flowers in May!"
Who recalls now Ruskin's famous invective against modern Italian music, in which, after lauding a part-song, "done beautifully and joyfully," which he heard in a smithy in Perugia, he goes on: "Of bestial howling, and entirely frantic vomiting up of hopelessly damned souls through their still carnal throats, I have heard more than, please God, I will endeavour to hear ever again, in one of his summers." It is fair to say that the reference here is probably not to church music.
[[13]] The name which we English used playfully to give to the great heavy leather curtains which hang at the entrance of the Roman churches.
[[14]] Speaking of the impression of triumph which one receives on entering St. Peter's, she continues: "Tandis que dans les églises gothiques, l'impression est de s'agenouiller, de joindre les mains avec un sentiment d'humble prière et de profond regret, dans St. Pierre, au contraire, le mouvement involuntaire serait d'ouvrir les bras en signe de joie, de relever la tête avec bonheur et épanouissement."—Récit d'une Soeur, ii. 298.