the hollow of the vault over the altar; all this, besides much sculpture;
and especially a group above and around the high altar, representing the
Magdalen smiling down upon angels and archangels, some of whom are
kneeling, and shadowing themselves with their heavy marble wings. There
is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant idea of the
magnificence of this church, in its details and in its whole. It was
founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contemplated
transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or building it anew as one.
The restored Bourbons remade it into a church; but it still has a
heathenish look, and will never lose it.

When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward towards
the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which
were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of
stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of
wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered
with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus,
or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep,
lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which
sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing
out of the gloom. The church, between the arches, along the nave, and
round the altar, was hung with broad expanses of black cloth; and all the
priests had their sacred vestments covered with black. They looked
exceedingly well; I never saw anything half so well got up on the stage.
Some of these ecclesiastical figures were very stately and noble, and
knelt and bowed, and bore aloft the cross, and swung the censers in a way
that I liked to see. The ceremonies of the Catholic Church were a superb
work of art, or perhaps a true growth of man's religious nature; and so
long as men felt their original meaning, they must have been full of awe
and glory. Being of another parish, I looked on coldly, but not