"St. Peter's is less like a church than a collection of large churches enclosed under one gigantic roof.... One is lost in it. It is a city of columns, sculptures, and mosaics." So says the clever, versatile Willis, in his "Pencillings by the Way," and it would certainly take months to examine minutely all that is worthy of attention in this vast pile. Our time, unfortunately, was limited, and we were only able to notice some of the more celebrated and striking features. Of the plan of the building, and its architecture, external and internal, I will say nothing, for what can now be said that has not been said before, and far better than I could say it? Almost every one nowadays has formed his own idea of what this great church is like—of its exceeding vastness and extent, the immensity of its over-arching dome, and its gorgeous and profuse decorations. Yet when they at length come to visit this preconceived and idealized vision, perhaps their feeling is almost one of vague disappointment. Like Hilda in the "Marble Faun," we at first prefer our own dream-edifice to the solid reality. It is, in fact, so immense that you utterly fail to take it in all at once; your gaze is arrested by ponderous columns and you must be content to see it in fragments. You yourself seem so lost in its immensity, that you find it impossible to take in its immeasurable vastness from any single standpoint, the mind utterly refusing to grasp it; but on a second and third visit, you gradually obtain a more comprehensive idea of its proportions.
"Thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal....
"Thou movest, but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;
Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize,
All musical in its immensities:
Rich marbles, richer painting, shrines where flame
The lamps of gold, and haughty dome which vies
In air with earth's chief structures, though the frame
Sits on the firm-set ground—and this the clouds must claim.
"Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole:
And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye—so here condense the soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
[123] Its eloquent proportions, and unroll
In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory, which at once upon thee did not dart.
"Not by its fault, but thine: our outward sense
Is but of gradual grasp—and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great,
Defies at first our nature's littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate."
Mendelssohn says, "You strive to distinguish the ceiling as little as the canopy of heaven: you lose your way in St. Peter's; you take a walk in it, and ramble till you are quite tired. When Divine Service is performed and chanted there, you are not aware of it till you are quite close.... When the music commences, the sounds do not reach you for a long time, but echo and float in the vast space so that the most singular and vague harmonies are borne toward you."
The interior space is the more increased by the fact of there being no seats of any kind, and seems so immense that things of colossal size appear of only ordinary proportions. Thus, two apparently small cherubs, holding a vessel of holy water, are in reality six feet high; and other figures, almost insignificant in the distance, are really wonderfully large. The pen in the hand of St. Mark on the dome is five feet long.
There are about 134 popes buried here, and when looking at their grand and beautiful monuments, extending up the left aisle, one cannot but remember that these were the men whose power was at times almost unlimited, who controlled the destinies of the world, and made emperors tremble; and the mind travels back into the dark ages of the past. But in these enlightened times, when the souls of men have shaken off the fetters of mediæval bondage, it is difficult to understand how our ancestors could have been so enslaved—worshipping the reigning pope, though even a Borgia, as a very God upon earth. Near the last column of the aisle is a colossal bronze statue of St. Peter, seated on a huge chair or throne. We noticed that every one (Roman Catholic) bowed before the image, and afterwards advanced and kissed one of the feet, the big toe of which is quite worn away with the friction of countless myriads of devout lips, and the general wiping of the sacred digit by each individual before venturing to kiss it. It would seem, alas! that the present generation is not so very far removed from the superstitions and absurdities of the past, after all!
In the Pietà Chapel is one of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture I have ever seen; it is Michael Angelo's Dead Christ. The Saviour's head rests on the knee of the Virgin Mother, whose face is full of the deepest pathos of holy love and intense sorrow. Truly a God-inspired work.
"Art is the gift of God, and must be used
Unto His glory. That in art is highest
Which aims at this."