and a sensation of awe:--

"------the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And strike an aching dullness to the breast."

But the chapel of the Black Virgin is diminutive as a boudoir, and yet
retains the usual character of listening and awful stillness, the
ordinary impression of local sanctity. A few peasants were seen kneeling
in utter immobility and self-abstraction beneath a lamp, which seemed to
issue in a crimson flame from a colossal two-fold silver heart,
suspended from the ceiling--their untutored minds were elevated into the
belief of a heavenly commune.

In a glass case above the altar, is deposited this far-famed effigy of
the Holy Galilean virgin--a hideous female negro, carved in wood, and
holding an infant Jesus in her arms of the same hue and material; and
exhibited in its extremity of ugliness by the reflected glare of the
silver and diamonds, and gems of every description, by which she is
surrounded. Chests, mimic altars, models of ships, crowns and sceptres,
chalices and crosses of gold and silver and enamel, and enriched with

Turkish blue and emerald green,

and every jewel of every land, lie amassed in gorgeous profusion in the
adjoining cases, and seemed to realize the fabled treasures of the
preadamite Sultans. Boasting themselves as gifts of gratitude or
invocation from emperors and popes, kings, princes, palsgraves, and all
the other minor thrones and dominions of the earth, these splendid
offerings form the most plausible illustration of the miraculous power