Angelo-psalmody, such as Rome alone can boast-processions wherein grandeur, littleness, gorgeous wealth, torches, and tinsel, struggle for mastery, yet form in the whole a most striking and impressive inconsistency. Be our creed what it may, whether we approve or whether we condemn, our feelings are carried away by the feelings of the many, the thousands upon thousands who, with one accord, bare the head and bend the knee, when their Prince of the whole Christian world, their Pope," Nostra Papa," appears! Jews, Turks, and Infidels must "off with their hat”— if they have one-but with the most rigid there is also an involuntary inclination to bend the knee. Who, unmoved, can watch a Roman procession wending its way towards the high altar, till it pauses beneath their Holy of Holies, the wondrous dome of St. Peter's! a strange anomaly, I grant-venerable priests of Christ, tottering beneath the weight of gold embroidered on their backs; cardinals, proud and stately, wearing their scarlet hats as knights who bore the helmet of the church; beautiful boys, with angel wings upon their shoulders; censers, waving clouds of incense, lending its perfume to the air, and, like a spirit loath to quit this lower world, wheeling, hovering, slowly rising in graceful circles of fantastic flight till it mingles with the sky, and is seen no more. ""Tis gone! and as it passed I caught the costume of the warlike Swiss; the guards of him, the Pope who preaches peace on earth. I saw their nodding plumes of raven black, with scarlet tufttheir glittering halberts of an age gone byof their ruffs, rosettes, their belts of buff (the perfection of a painter's picturesque), armed and covered in the House of God!-Yes, this, and much untold, of that which forms a Romish procession at Rome, strange and anomalous though it be, is most striking and impressive as a whole. A.Bird deb. The mere recollection has carried me with it, and turned aside for the moment the malediction I contemplated on the dressing up of St. Peter's. Would, I repeat, that I had never seen it! to gild the virgin gold were a venial blunder in comparison-it would still be gold, and look like gold; but to veil the majesty, the stern uncompromising beauty of St. Peter's columns with flaunting silk, to ornament perfection with tinsel hangings and festoons, this was indeed a profanation in honour of the saints elect. St. Peter's, with me, had been a passion from the moment I first looked upon its wondrous beauty: it was love, love at first sight, but growing with my growth-a passion, holy and enduring, such as can be only felt when we stand in the presence of fancied perfection. Judge, then, of my horror when I saw this desecration !-but there is no blank so dark that we may not find a ray of light. I bless the saints for one thing they taught me how to build a brace of angels, and in so doing they taught me the stupendous proportions of that temple, which, though built by human hands, has in it a sublimity which awes and humbles the proud heart of little man. Nay, the very portraits of their very saints diverted my angry thoughts by teaching the self-same lesson. There was one-a monstrous ugly fellow-who, preparatory to his chairing, was left to lean against a column. The proportions of this miracle-worker were so gigantic, that I deemed it some mighty caricature, painted on the main-sail of a man-of-war, till, looking at his fellows raised to their proper elevation, they seemed in their oval frames but medallions stuck upon the walls! The angel manufactory, however, was still more striking. To give effect to the intended ceremonies, the head decorator suggested a brace of angels, to be placed on each side of the nave of St. Peter's, behind the altar. The lazy cardinals nodded assent, and the question was carried nem. con. They do all things well at Rome in honour of the church, even their greatest follies are on a scale of grandeur-their fireworks, fountains, illuminations, are all unrivalled-so are their angels, when they make them. First, an able artist is employed to sketch a design, then able workmen to build, painters to paint, and lastly, robemakers to clothe the naked. The construction is curious: a skeleton figure, after the late fashion of single-line figures, is prepared with a strong rod of iron, which is fixed into a large block of wood, and this may be termed the building foundation. The next step-oh! most anti-angelic notion! is to collect haybands (enough for a hay-market), and therewith to mould the limbs and body. It were vain to attempt, by words, to describe the ludicrous effect produced; but, by the aid of the foregoing cut, it may be conceived. Good-bye to sublimity for that day! omne ignotum pro magnifico-it never answers to go behind the scenes; and if it be true that in some cases "ignorance is bliss," how much more truly do the Latin words tell us that "ignorance is ever the key-stone to sublimity." It is true, that as I looked upon the gigantic saint, as yet unhung, and compared him with his fellows, the elect on high; as I watched this monster of miracles, raised by pulleys till he dwindled into a pretty miniature; as I saw the pigmy workmen wheeling the huge angels to their places, it must be confessed that I had found "a sliding scale," which, in this case, answered admirably. It enabled me to measure the proportions of the stupendous pile which towered above me to judge of its most beautiful symmetry, with greater force and stronger conviction than I had ever felt whilst gazing on the children which support the holy water, the sweet babes with arms as thick as the thigh of man! That knowledge was interesting-the angel-making was amusing, but the solemn tone of mind suited to St. Peter's was destroyed. In vain I stood before the lions of Canova; the one which slept could not inspire the repose which breathed through the sleeping marble; the one which watched, the sleepless sentinel, guarding the ashes of the dead, even this could not scare the demon of ridicule that played on hallowed ground. I turned to the mosaics, those fadeless pictures which seem as painted for eternity; no, not these-not Guido's Archangel, that wondrous type of heavenly beauty in the form of man-of power to conquer with the will to do-not even this could tame the merry sin within me. I stood before that statue which frenzied with undying passion the priest who gazed upon its beauties-the emblem of "Justice," but so lovely in its nakedness, that man, impure and imperfect, became a worshipper, and obliged the Pope to hide Justice from his children. The ridiculous prevailed; I smiled to think that the form as well as eyes of "Justice at Rome" must be hid from sight. And I laughed outright at woman's curiosity, when I thought how Lady See prevailed upon the Pope to lift the veil and show her the form which made a Pygmalion of a priest ! The demon was in me for the day; it had been raised by-to use a fashionable word—the desecration of the temple, and nothing could lay the evil spirit. Iturned to my hotel, ordered horses for the morrow, and fled. My course was set for Naples. As I traversed the Pontine Marshes, cheek by jowl with the sluggish stream which the pride of Popes has wedded to the road and given to the traveller's eye, what a contrast did these waters, this cold, dark, silent chain of " Mal-aria," present to the stream of life, the roar of cannon, the music, festival, and holiday, which fancy pictured in the Eternal City! But the comparison was in favour of the waters; there is, thought I, at least some use in these, for, as they drag their weary length along, death, the tyrant, fettered and subdued, is borne on their course from plains where once his rule was absolute. Filled with these reflections, and sometimes dreaming that I saw the captive monarch in a phantom ship, with skeleton crew-sometimes that I heard the sullen splash of muffled oars; thus dreaming and reflecting, the journey seemed short to Naples; and there it was I chanced upon A Miracle of Modern Days," which, however, must be reserved until the Omnibus shall start again. MRS. TODDLES. Ir is the cherished wish of our heart, more especially at the moment when we are entering upon a new-year, and opening a fresh account with Time, to be at peace with all men; but Col. Talker-(is his name Talker or Walker ?)-has certainly done his utmost to uproot and scatter to the winds this pacific feeling. His conduct at the office, the day after our last publication, was extremely violent; and his threats intermingled with terrible oaths, such as "Dash my buttons," "Burn my wig," &c., were quite discreditable to him. And all on account of the dozen words we have said of him-for he is now cool enough on the score of Mrs. T.'s supposed grievance. This is the way with all your gallant champions! We hope Col. W. has not torn his shirt frill, nor injured his urnbrella past repair. We hope too that he is not a confirmed duellist. Trusting that we shall yet live to be on amicable terms with Col. W., we shall now describe his gallant conduct in escorting Mrs. Toddles to Bow, to spend their Christmas eve in that favoured vicinity, her dear native place, which, it appears, she has been vainly endeavouring to reach these last nine months. Resolved however to have nothing to do with an "omnibus," they found out one of the old-fashioned stages, but, being too late (as usual!) to secure inside places, were compelled to go outside. Mrs. T. and the colonel seated themselves very comfortably in the basket or dickey. Scarcely however had they advanced on their journey beyond Aldgate pump, when, lamentable to relate, the dickey, affected by old age or by a violent jolt, suddenly separated itself from the coach, and down it came crash with Mrs. T. into the road; the gallant colonel springing to the roof as nimbly as a lamplighter. The feelings of both, as Hamlet remarks, may be more easily conceived than described. Happily however no serious injury was sustained by Mrs. T. beyond a slight fracture of the bonnet, not likely to prove fatal to its shape; her dress cap too which she was carrying in paper was also a little crumpled, and there was a crash of something in her pocket which, she most positively alleged, was not a bottle. Colonel W., as soon as the coach could be stopped, descended and returned to the scene of the accident in time to snatch that lady from the risks to which her delicacy was exposed, which was shocked only to the extent of proclaim ing a fact previously known perhaps to many, that she wore black stockings. We are truly happy to state that after a little delay they reached their place of destination together in perfect safety; and the very best security which we can offer to the friends of Mrs. Toddles that she suffered nothing from the untoward occurrence, is, that she was enabled in the course of the delightful evening which she spent, to take part in a cotillon with her friend the gallant Colonel; and when they were last seen, they were dancing away gloriously together. SONNET TO MRS. SARAH TODDLES. THOUGH short thou art in stature, Sarah dear, And thou wilt see thy Heavisides no more,- Lightfoot's and Heaviside's surviving half!! V.D.L. POSTSCRIPT. MR. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK here concludes the first volume of his "Omnibus," by wishing all his friends and readers a “happy new year.” An arrangement entered into, a twelvemonth ago, with MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH, and now resumed, with a view to its being carried into effect on the 1st of February, prevents the re-appearance of the "Omnibus" upon the plan of monthly numbers; but the estimation and success it has obtained, encourage him to pursue the object with which he started, by presenting his second volume in the form of an Annual. That object was, to produce a FIRESIDE MISCELLANY-here it is; and if he and his literary associates herein should meet the reader as agreeably in an Annual, as in a Monthly form, he trusts it will be 尺 AS BROAD AS IT'S LONG. |