"If I were," said she, "to tell me of it would for ever check the inspiration. To banish all suspicion of poetry, let me make a carping criticism, the only one, I think, which the whole interior of this edifice would suggest to me. I do wish that its marble pillars could be swept clean of the multitudes of little boys that are clinging to them—cherubs I suppose they are to be called. By breaking the pillar into compartments, they destroy the effect of its height. Little, indeed, they are not; they are big enough. A colossal infant—what can be made of it? And an infant, too, that must not smile, or he might be taken for a representative of some other love than the celestial?"
"Ay, and do what the artist will," said Winston, "the two Loves often bear a very striking resemblance. In the church of St. Giovanni, amongst their wreaths of flowers, the cherubs have a very Anacreontic appearance."
"But away with criticism. One farewell look," cried Mildred, "at this magnificent dome. How well all its accessaries, all its decorations, are proportioned and harmonised—growing lighter as they rise higher. Here at the base of each of the four vast columns which support it, we have gigantic statuary—seen and felt to be gigantic, yet disturbing nothing by its great magnitude—just above the columns those exquisite bas-reliefs—next the circular mosaics—then the ribbed roof, so chastely gilded and divided into compartments, distinct yet never separated from the whole—it is perfection!"
They bade farewell to St. Peter's; and, in pursuance of their design, re-entered their carriage and drove to its great dilapidated rival—the Coliseum.
"No dome here but the wide heavens," said Winston, as they approached the vast circular ruin rising arch above arch into the air. "How it scales, and would embrace the sky! Verily these old Romans seemed to have no idea that any thing was to come after them; they lived and built upon the earth as if they were the last types of the human species."
"Mutability and progress are modern ideas; they had not attained to them," said Mildred.
They walked partly round the interior, looking through the deep arches, overhung with verdure, and regretting the patches here and there too perceptible of modern masonry, and still more the ridiculous attempt, by the introduction of some contemptible pictures, or altar pieces, in the arena, to christianise the old heathen structure. They then ascended to the summit to enjoy the prospect it commands, both of the distant country, the beautiful hills of Italy, and of the neighbouring ruins of ancient Rome.
"How plainly it is the change of religion," said Winston, "which gives its true antiquity to the past! All that we see of ancient Rome bears the impress of Paganism; every thing in the modern city, of Catholicism. It is this which puts the great gulf between the two, and makes the old Roman to have lived, as it seems to us, in a world so different from our own. Strange! that what in each age is looked upon as pre-eminently unchangeable and eternal, should by its transformations mark out the several eras of mankind. Ay, and this religion which now fills the city with its temples—which I do not honour with the name of Christianity—will one day, by its departure from the scene, have made St Peter's as complete an antiquity as the ruins we are now sitting on."
"I notice," said Mildred, "you are somewhat bitter against Catholicism."
"I was tolerant when at a distance from it, and when again at a distance I shall perhaps grow tolerant again. But a priesthood, not teaching but ruling, governing men in their civil relations, seizing all education into its own hand, training the thinking part of the community to hypocrisy, and the unthinking to gross credulity—it is a spectacle that exasperates. I used in England to be a staunch advocate for educating and endowing the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland. I shall never, I think, advocate that cause again. To educate this priesthood,—what is it but to perfect an instrument for the restraining and corrupting the education of all the rest of the people? To endow this priesthood,—what else would it be but to give them an additional influence and power, to be used always for their own aggrandisement, and the strengthening of their own usurpations? The donative of a Protestant government would not make them dependent upon that government; they have sources of wealth in their own superstitions; they draw their vitality, and strike their roots, in a far other soil than the crafty munificence of an opponent. They would use the gift as best it pleased them, and defy a government—anxious only for peace—to withdraw it. No! even if the tranquillity of the empire should require the two churches to be placed on an equal footing, I still would not endow the Roman Catholic.—But pardon me,—what have we to do with the politics of England here?"