The Girandola on Monday night was the celebration of the municipal authorities. On Wednesday night, the people had theirs—a general illumination of the city. The proper day would have been April 12th, the anniversary of the pope's return from Gaeta, and also of his wondrous escape from all injury in an accident by the falling of a floor at St. Agnes, outside the walls, something like the late disastrous one in the capital at Richmond. Though many were injured, cardinals, priests, and laymen, none, we believed, were killed. But the chair in which the pontiff was seated came down with him through the breaking floor without even being overturned, and he was preserved from even the slightest shock. Since then, he ever keeps that day religiously sacred, and the Romans have fallen into the custom of celebrating it by a general illumination of the city. This year, as the day fell in Holy-Week, the celebration was put off until the 20th of April, Wednesday in Easter-Week.
Each householder illuminated his own building with lines of lampioni, as they call the plates of earthenware or metal, filled with tallow and a lighted wick, and surrounded by a cylindrical screen of colored paper, through which the light shines as a huge diamond. The wealthier ones affected some ornamental design in a profuser arrangement of such lights. Some used multitudinous cups of colored glass, holding oil, and a lighted taper swimming in it. In each parish, the inhabitants clubbed together to erect one or more special designs of superior artistic taste and brilliancy. The city was all aglow; nobody save the sick staid at home; the streets were filled with streams of people all moving in the same direction; for some one had, with happy thoughtfulness, got up an itinerary or route guide through the city, and all seemed to follow it. It took three hours to walk through the choice parts of the fairy scene, if you went on foot; and more, if you took a carriage. The lines of mellow light, faintly shining from windows and cornices along all the buildings, even the poorest, in the narrowest, and darkest, and crookedest streets of Rome, broken occasionally by a brighter burst from the doorway of some shop well illuminated in the interior; the blaze that rose from the lights more numerous and brighter in the squares, or shone from the fronts of wealthier and larger houses and palaces, from the arches of triumph, and from the temples of Gothic or classic style, constructed of wood and canvas, but to which painting and colored lights lent for the hour a fairy beauty like that of Aladdin's palace; every thing united to charm, to dazzle, and to bewilder the spectator. The pope had gone that afternoon as usual to St. Agnes, to be present at a Te Deum for his escape, and returned only after night-fall. As he reached the square of St. Peter's, a number of rockets shot up into the air, and burst into a thousand stars of every hue. It was a signal. Instantaneously the colonnades on either side and the front of the church were all lighted up with Bengal fires. The columns in front and the walls glowed in a white or golden light; the interior recesses were made mysterious in a rich purple. After a few moments, the tints were interchanged; the bright purple light was in front, and seemed to change the buff travertino into alabaster and precious marbles, and the trembling tints of white and light gold within imparted a supernatural beauty to the interior recesses. Change followed change, until the pope, amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the vast crowd, moved on, and at last disappeared in the rear of St. Peter's, to reach the grand gateway of the Vatican palace. The crowd too passed elsewhere, to wander along streets converted into arcades, roofed by lines of soft and many-colored lights; to admire the triumphal arches, where in niches the Saviour stood as "the way, the truth, and the life," attended by the Evangelists or the Blessed Virgin Mother, to whom David and Isaiah bore testimony; to look on the cross of jewelled light shining in the dark recesses of the front of the Pantheon, or to examine and criticise the temples of light at the Minerva, the Santi Apostoli, or Monticilorio; to rest themselves at times, listening to the music of the bands, which ever and anon they encountered; to look with delight on the illuminated steamers and barges on the river, bearing (for the nonce) the flags of every Christian nation, and to study the play of light reflected on the rippling surface of old Father Tiber; to wonder at the obelisks converted into columns of fire, or the grand stairway of Trinità di Monte, made a mountain of light, and a glorious grand stairway seeming to reach the heavens, or to watch the changing colors of Bengal fires, illuming the statues of old Neptune and his tritons and sea-horses, and the wild cavernous rocks and dashing waters of the exquisite fountain of Trevi; or, after all, to stroll through some square, where yellow gravelly walks led you between beds of green herbage, where tiny fountains were bubbling, where trees were laden with fruits of light, and where flowers filled the air with sweet perfumes. All Rome was in the streets, and in their orderly, calm, and dignified way enjoyed the scene hugely. Not a loud voice or an angry word was heard, not the slightest symptom of intoxication was seen. Everywhere the hum of pleasant talk of friends and family groups arose, made sparkling and brilliant to the ear, rather than interrupted, by the low but hearty and silvery laughs of men, of women, and of delighted children. The Romans were out, all in their best apparel; and not they alone, but thousands from the villages of the campagnas and the neighboring mountains, in their bright colors and quaint mediæval traditional costumes. All these were a study to the sixty thousand visitors then passing through the streets of Rome, not less interesting and instructive than the gorgeous illumination itself. Among those sixty thousand strangers there was but one decision—that nowhere else in Europe could there be an illumination so spontaneous, so general, so perfectly artistic, so exquisitely beautiful and grand as this was, and nowhere else could such a vast crowd walk these narrow streets for hours with such perfect order, such good humor, and such universal courtesy.
There were other celebrations during these two weeks, both ecclesiastical and social, but it will suffice to have spoken of the chief ones. The repositories or sepulchres of Holy-Thursday evening, the services of the three hours' agony in many churches about noon on Good-Friday, and the sermons and way of the cross in the ruins of the Colosseum, the scene of so many martyrdoms, on Good-Friday afternoon, would all deserve special mention; but we have not the space, and must pass on to the third public session of the Vatican Council.
This, as we have already stated, was fixed for Sunday, April 26th—Low-Sunday. At nine A.M., the cardinals, patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, mitred abbots, and superiors of religious orders were in their places. The council hall had been restored to the original form in which we had seen it on the day of the opening. All the changes to fit it for the discussions of the general congregations were removed. The Noble Guard and the Knights of Malta were on duty as custodians of the assembly. Cardinal Bilio celebrated a pontifical high-mass, as had been done in each of the previous sessions. At its termination, the Gospel was enthroned on the altar. The holy father intoned the "Veni Creator Spiritus," and the choir and united assembly of prelates sung the strophes alternately to the conclusion of that sublime hymn. The pontiff chanted the opening prayers, and all knelt when the litany of the saints was intoned in the varied and well-known antique melodies of Gregorian chant. At the proper place, the pontiff chanted the special supplications for a blessing on the council, and the chanters and the assembly, and, in fact, thousands of the audience, joined in the swelling responses. The effect seemed even to surpass that which we described in our first article, giving an account of the opening of the council. Other prayers followed, prescribed by the ritual. At their conclusion, the special work of this session commenced.
According to the olden time ritual of councils, all in the hall, not belonging strictly to the council, should at this point be sent away, and the gates should be closed, that in their voting the fathers might be free from all outside influence, and each might speak his mind, unswayed by fear or favor. But if, in stormier times, when clamorous mobs might invade a council hall, such precautions were necessary, here, to-day, they are certainly unnecessary. There is no need to close the wide portals against these thousands and tens of thousands who have gathered to look with reverence and rapture on this venerable assembly. Let the doors then stand open to their widest extent, that all may see.
And it was a scene worth coming, as many had done, across oceans and mountains to look on. The pillars and walls of the noble hall were rich with appropriate paintings, with mosaics, and statuary, and marbles. At the furthest end, on his elevated seat, sat the venerated sovereign pontiff, bearing on his head a precious mitre, glittering with jewels, and wearing a cope rich with massive golden embroidery. On either hand sat the venerable cardinals, arrayed in white mitres, and wearing their richest robes of office. In front of them sat the patriarchs, mostly easterns, in the rich and bright-colored robes of their respective rites, and wearing tiaras radiant with brilliants and jewelry. Down either side of the hall ran the manifold lines of primates, archbishops, bishops, and other prelates, all in white mitres, and in copes of red lama; all save the oriental prelates, who wear many-colored copes and vestments, and rich tiaras, ever catching the eye of the spectator as they sat scattered here and there in that crowd, and excepting also the heads of religious orders, who wear each his appropriate dress of white, or of black, or of brown, or mingle these colors together. The contrast and play of various colors in all these vestments give a brilliancy to the whole scene, much beyond what the uniform white of the first two sessions had yielded.
But what mattered the color of their vestments, when one considered the venerable forms of the bishops themselves. They sat still, and almost as motionless as so many marble statues. Now and then some aged prelate, with bald head and snow-white locks, would lay aside for a few moments the heavy mitre, that perhaps was pressing his aged brows too heavily. All else seemed motionless. Their countenances, composed and thoughtful, told how thoroughly they, at least, were impressed with the importance and the solemnity of their work.
In the middle stood the altar, rich and simple, on which lay enthroned the open book of the Gospels. Near by stood the light and lofty pulpit of dark wood.
Into this pulpit now ascended Monsignor Valenziani, Bishop of Fabriano and Matelica, one of the assistant secretaries, and in a voice remarkable for its strength and distinctness, and not less so for its endurance, read with most appropriate emphasis, and with the musical intonations of a cultivated Italian voice, the entire Dogmatic Constitution, from the beginning to the end. It occupied just three quarters of an hour.
At the conclusion he asked, "Most eminent and most reverend fathers, do you approve of the canons and decrees contained in this constitution?"