hushed harmony with its burning crescendo, breaks on the stillness, it causes a thrill, as if a spiral steel lance were ploughing through the very marrow of one's bones. Very likely, nothing in our lives before ever gave us exactly such a sensation; but it is one that scarcely seems to come within the natural and appointed province of music to inspire. More elevating, surely, if less exciting, is the influence of one of Beethoven's symphonies, or Handel's choruses.

Every now and then the marvellous swell of the marvellous voices ceased, and alternated with a verse harshly intoned in unison. Then again, after a brief pause, came the rush of unearthly sound, the faint wail gradually bursting into the full chorus, with isolated voices ascending and descending, crowning the anguish of the strange discords with tones unlike those of human voices. Slowly the harmonies and discords gave place to one another. Apparently, they were bound by no rhythmic law. They melted into one another, diverged-met again on the sharp point, as it were, of some extreme chord, so that one almost writhed as with physical pain, to listen to it, and then blended again in a diapason, that by comparison was soft, and sweet, and painless.

So it went on for about half-an-hour by the clock, though so strange and unearthly was it all, that arbitrary divisions of time seemed to have nothing in connection with it. It was a scene not to forget the dim chapel-the faint light shining from the unseen choir the black-clad crowd all round, its darkness only illumined by the occasional glare of uniform, and flash of epaulettes-the eternal-looking Prophets and Sybils still discernible from over the windows, and the Last Judgment at the far end of the chapel, almost lost in the gloom, besides being partially concealed, as it always is, by the altar, but the one principal figure, with outstretched arm, eloquently prominent still.

At the last there was another silence, fiercely disturbed by the rude noises made to represent the "rending of the vail of the temple." And then it was all over for that day, and, half dead, we might stagger down to a carriage, and go home to revive at leisure.

The "Tenebria," as this particular service is called, takes place three times on successive days; but one describes the salient features of all. On the Thursday there are other ceremonies. The Pope washes the feet of thirteen priests, and waits upon them at table afterwards. On Friday, after the Miserere, his Holiness goes with a procession to pray at the tomb of St. Peter, and later, there are certain holy relics, fragments of the cross, &c., exhibited in St. Peter's. There could not fail to be much that was most picturesque in this scene. The dimly-lit vastness of the Basilica-the gleams of light here and there, and the crowds of people, which in the immensity looked only scattered groups, gave perhaps more impressiveness to this than to most of the solemnities we had witnessed.

But the climax of all this pomp and pageantry is reserved for Easter Day. Then, the ceaseless stream of people, soldiers, priests, men and women of all ranks, which pour into St. Peter's, is so great

that it seems as if, at last, even it must look "crowded." But no. Its stupendous proportions assert themselves still more triumphantly the more they are tested. The thousands of moving creatures collected or scattered about in various directions, look, in the immense space, innumerable, but insignificant, like a nation of ants when, suddenly surprised in their pursuits, we behold them from the height of our humanity.

It was a glorious day; and the great, solid, slanting ray of light which stretched, like the divine spear of some invisible angel, from one of the high windows, down the enriched and sculptured wall, to the marble floor of the vast aisle, all waved with human life, was indeed something never to forget. We would have been content to have gone through much to see that; but for the actual solemnitieswas the fault in us or in them, that we could not feel awed or impressed; prepared, even wishful as we were to be so? For it is not a happy thing to feel completely unable to share a solemn influence with our fellow-creatures; and we had always understood and believed that these grandest celebrations of the Romish Church could not be witnessed without some degree of emotion.

But the magnificent procession-the red and the purple, the gold, and the peacock's plumes-the throned, uncomfortable-looking Pope, his white robe, his glittering tiara, his crimson-clad bearers, and the sumptuous throng which accompanied him, when they all passed under that wonderful radiance, they looked so forlornly incongruous, unsubstantial, and out of harmony with what was real, eternal, and divine. The glorious spear seemed to pass through all the show, as a sword might cleave a white mist-the only reality of all. Then, the various ceremonies can scarcely be called interesting to us, who see no inner significance in them. The homage paid to the wearied-looking old man is something almost horrible to English eyes; while the putting on and taking off of his different robes and crowns, is surely nothing but tedious and absurd to those of our heretical way of thinking.

There was fine singing. Before the great service commenced, we heard the distant chanting coming from one of the side-chapels, the voices flowing, now like a full tide into the great space of the aisle, and now receding with a rush, and then a murmur of lovely sound. And the first blast of the far-famed silver trumpets, shivering the silence that precedes it, is something to make the heart beat quicker for the moment. But the next minute-dare it be confessed ?-we were forced to recognise the human nature of the performers, whom, though we could not see, we could hear puffing uncelestial cheeks, and making strenuous efforts to avoid false notes, like any player upon mere brass. Perhaps this prosaic idea would hardly have obtruded itself if the actual music had been of a higher character. We naturally expected something appropriate sacred, if not grand -but, instead, our ears were outraged by the notes of a melodramatic quick "march" out of some second-rate opera. To some such music had we seen a regiment progress through the Highstreet of a country town. Not even trumpets of silver resounding

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under the wonderful dome of Michael Angelo could give grandeur or impressiveness to music like that.

Some of the chanted service was, however, beautiful; and the effect of the unaccompanied voices in that vast space was exceedingly fine. But, again-must it be confessed ?-some of us thought yearningly of certain cathedral choirs in far-away, "unmusical” England;—of the clouds of organ sound rolling up among dim arches and recesses, -a fitting voice for the mysterious and sublime beauty of the Gothic architecture out of which it seemed to grow. And beside that remembrance, the visible and audible beauty then present to us, seemed poor and unsatisfying. For not even the great Florentine could give to this Italian modification of Greek style that element of sublimity which only exists in the mysterious and indefinite. The colossal proportions of St. Peter's smite our humanity into nothingness, and insomuch produce in us fitting feelings of reverence and awe. But in its vastness consists its only grandeur. All the items of detail, elaborate and magnificent though they are, are disappointing in general effect. We see too much, and imagine too little, in this world-famed Temple of Rome. The old Pagans, who originated "classic architecture," were gifted with admirable instinct when, in their temples, above the rows of uniform pillars, the straight frieze, the angular lines and restraining limits on every earthly side, they left the roof open to the wide heavensso admitting the idea of something transcendant and infinite, which had been otherwise shut out. But these Italian fanes, built after this composite, compromising order, are, so to speak, less than Pagan, and lose the beauty of Olympus in striving after something better, of which they equally fall short.

This is digressive: we must return to our Easter Day at St. Peter's. The Benediction, after the High Mass, was the first really impressive sight of the day. The people poured out of the Basilica and congregated in the magnificent Piazza, which, together with the terrace of the Vatican and the steps of St. Peter's itself, was all waved and coloured with moving life: nearly one-third of the immense concourse being composed of soldiers. The bells clanged; the drums beat; the air hummed, as it were, with many voices. The sun shone with Roman fervour on the glittering bayonets and helmets; on the coloured uniforms; on the eager, upturned faces; and, brightest of all, on the sparkling, rainbowed waters of the great fountains; till, at a signal, these last ceased to flow, and sudden silence fell. The soldiers dropped on their knees with a rushing sound, as of a small earthquake; the Pope appeared on the balcony in front of St. Peter's, and pronounced the blessing in his extremely rich and sonorous voicethe chorused Amen bursting three times on the stillness. Then, the two copies of the Bull, or dispensation, were, as usual on this occasion, thrown to the crowd-a portion of which rushed to scramble for them; the soldiers rose to their feet again; drums beat, bells rang, clashed, jangled, as in riotous joy; and the great sea of

human life began tossing and swaying again. We waited on the steps of St. Peter's, and watched the greater part of the throng clear off. Cardinals with their trains swept down to their carriages, making the eyes ache with intensity of scarletness. How is it possible to make the uninitiated understand what colour is, in this Italy? No mist, light and impalpable, but still an existence, comes between our eyes and the red and blue, and green and golden. And those "neutral tints" that we are hardly aware of at home, strike us here with the force of new discoveries. Enough for a picture, here, only to see the house-roofs described against the blue of a morning sky; or the grey corner of a building abutting on a background of ilex-that most solemn, severe, and unfathomable of greens; or the dome of a church; or the indescribable richness of colour of obelisk or pillar, that we should be content, anywhere else, to describe as stone colour. In this land, one should as soon hope to give a graphic idea of the hue of an object by saying it was flower colour."

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Imagine, therefore, the effect of this immense throng in the St. Peter's Piazza, certainly one of the grandest of all public squares, with its noble crescent of colonnades, its fountains, obelisk, and, far away, the vista of many grey-coloured buildings, terminated by the imperial purple of one of the Alban hills rising up clear and stately from its twelve miles' distance. Then, the moving multitude that overflowed the Piazza-the people's faces making a great flash of colour below the steps; and the shining of steel, and glitter of accoutrements, and glowing of scarlet-and the sky like one great hollowed sapphire over it all! That was such a picture as might last a lifetime. It was the climax of all the "Easter sights" which Rome had shown us, or was yet to show.

And this we decided deliberately, after having witnessed the illumination of St. Peter's that same evening-in itself a most beautiful and unique spectacle. There was an enchanted, Arabian Nights-like effect in the first, or silver illumination; when pearl-like lamps described the architectural forms of the façade, the dome, and the two cupolas, besides the twin sweeps of colonnade, with the stone figures standing erectly along them. After an hour, and when entire darkness was in the sky, came the sudden, marvellous change; and in one moment each pearl leapt into a large living flame, and the whole building was alive with fire, that, nevertheless, knew its bounds, and kept duly within its symmetrical apportioned limits. Light, generous enough to satisfy the requirements of a moderate day, was regnant in the Piazza, and appeared, indeed, to be shed all over Rome. It was glorious to gaze up to the great blazing dome, looking like some strange fiery planet set in the sky; glorious, too, to look on it from the bridge of St. Angelo, with the castle frowning beside it, as if determined to act the part of night with extra grimness and blackness in the face of this unorthodox and unaccustomed day. But most beautiful of all, perhaps, it was from the Pincian Hill; with the dark city lying like a gulf at its feet, and this wondrous blaze throbbing and radiating in the midst of the darkness.

As we were watching it from this height, thinking, too, as it was impossible not to think, of the news which had arrived that morning, of the actual commencement of the war;-down in the Piazza, with the illuminated Basilica flaming on the scene, the first "demonstration" was taking place that poor, fettered Rome has dared to make for many a year. It is pitifully suggestive to know that it was unlawful for these people simply to express a spontaneous emotion by cheering the French general, and oh, most rash and unpardonable of all-daring to shout "Viva Italia!' But the Roman air is not used to that natural cry—yet.

Several arrests were made, in consequence, though not so many as the "Paternal Government" might have wished, probably. For it is wisely diffident of touching people who are not helpless; and this was no mere "mob" cry. The demonstration was almost entirely among gentlemen of fortune and position, many of whom had fought in the I terrible siege of ten years ago, and who, conquered, beaten back, crushed by irresistible force, have endured to remain in their captive city, waiting with a dreadful patience which has left its sign on many a dark, worn countenance, for that regeneration which, it may be, is drawing near, even now.

Most strange-most anomalous, that these men should on this evening, out of the irrepressible fulness of their hearts, have cheered the representative of that French power with which, ten years since, they were grappling, struggling, with all the desperate energy of desperate men! Such changes does time bring round. We, who amid our love for Italy, bear a special and peculiar love for this enslaved and darkened, but ever beautiful and glorious Rome, may well hope that other changes, brighter, of better omen, and more lasting, may be near at hand. It has been night with her, spiritually, politically, socially, for so long. Surely, surely, the dawn will come soon?

V.

TO EDGEWORTH-TOWN AND BACK.

I.

You must suppose us, gentle reader, seated in our four-wheel behind our little grey pony, Titania, one of the best little tits of her inches in Ireland. It sports a mane nearly two feet long, as large as that of any brewer's mammoth in London, and its tail almost sweeps the ground behind it. We bought it for its mane and tail, which are so characteristic and flowing, and which we would not