The Bedouin have left us. We stand alone on the summit. All is still. Not a sound reaches us from far or near. Turning now to the west, the eye can see nothing but pyramids and tombs, rocks and sand in countless number. Not a blade, not a bush can find nutriment in this sterile ground. Yellow, grey, and dull brown cover everything, far and wide, in unbroken monotony.
Only here and there a white object is shining amidst the dust. It is the dried skeleton of some dead animal. Silent and void, the enemy to everything that has life—the desert—stretches before us. Where is its end? In days, weeks, months the traveller would never reach it, even if he escaped alive from the choking sand. Here, if anywhere, Death is king; here, where the Egyptians saw the sun vanish every day behind the wall of the Libyan mountains, begins a world which bears the same comparison to the fruitful lands of the East as a corpse does to a living man happy in the battle and joy of life. A more silent burial-place than this desert exists nowhere on this earth; and so tomb after tomb was erected here, and, as if to preserve the secret of the dead, the desert has enveloped tombs and bodies with its veil of sand. Here the terrors of infinity are displayed. Here at the gate of the future life, where eternity begins, man’s work seems to have eluded the common destiny of earthly things and to have partaken of immortality.
“Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock Time” is an Arabian proverb which has been repeated thousands of times.
Cicerone durch das alte und neue Ægypten (Stuttgart und Leipzig, 1886).
SAINT PETER’S.
CHARLES DICKENS.
When we were fairly off again, we began, in a perfect fever, to strain our eyes for Rome; and when, after another mile or two, the Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance, it looked like—I am half afraid to write the word—like LONDON!!! There it lay, under a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and, high above them all, one Dome. I swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, it was so like London, at that distance, that if you could have shown it me in a glass, I should have taken it for nothing else.
We entered the Eternal City at about four o’clock in the afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo, and came immediately—it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy rain—on the skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know that we were only looking at the fag-end of the masks, who were driving slowly round and round the Piazza, until they could find a promising opportunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into the thick of the festivity; and coming among them so abruptly, all travel-stained and weary, was not coming very well prepared to enjoy the scene....
Immediately on going out next day we hurried off to St. Peter’s. It looked immense in the distance but distinctly and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near approach. The beauty of the Piazza in which it stands, with its clusters of exquisite columns and its gushing fountains—so fresh, so broad, and free and beautiful—nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory: and most of all, the looking up into the Dome: is a sensation never to be forgotten. But, there were preparations for a Festa; the pillars of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent frippery of red and yellow; the altar, and entrance to the subterranean chapel: which is before it, in the centre of the church: were like a goldsmith’s shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish pantomime. And though I had as high a sense of the beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt no very strong emotion. I have been infinitely more affected in many English cathedrals when the organ has been playing, and in many English country churches when the congregation have been singing. I had a much greater sense of mystery and wonder in the Cathedral of San Mark, at Venice....
On Sunday the Pope assisted in the performance of High Mass at St. Peter’s. The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on that second visit, was exactly what it was at first, and what it remains after many visits. It is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is an immense edifice, with no one point for the mind to rest upon; and it tires itself with wandering round and round. The very purpose of the place is not expressed in anything you see there, unless you examine its details—and all examination of details is incompatible with the place itself. It might be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a great architectural trophy, having no other object than an architectural triumph. There is a black statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy; which is larger than life, and which is constantly having its great toe kissed by good Catholics. You cannot help seeing that: it is so very prominent and popular. But it does not heighten the effect of the temple as a work of art; and it is not expressive—to me, at least—of its high purpose.
