ghosts of perished magnificence. . . . . This chapter-house is the only
part of the church that is now used for the purposes of public worship.
There are several confessionals, and two chapels or shrines, each with
its lighted tapers. A priest performed mass while we were there, and
several persons, as usual, stepped in to do a little devotion, either
praying on their own account, or uniting with the ceremony that was going
forward. One man was followed by two little dogs, and in the midst of
his prayers, as one of the dogs was inclined to stray about the church,
he kept snapping his fingers to call him back. The cool, dusky
refreshment of these holy places, affording such a refuge from the hot
noon of the streets and piazzas, probably suggests devotional ideas to
the people, and it may be, when they are praying, they feel a breath of
Paradise fanning them. If we could only see any good effects in their
daily life, we might deem it an excellent thing to be able to find
incense and a prayer always ascending, to which every individual may join
his own. I really wonder that the Catholics are not better men and
women.

When we had looked at the old frescos, . . . . we emerged into the
cloister again, and thence ventured into a passage which would have led
us to the Chiostro Grande, where strangers, and especially ladies,
have no right to go. It was a secluded corridor, very neatly kept,
bordered with sepulchral monuments, and at the end appeared a vista of
cypress-trees, which indeed were but an illusory perspective, being
painted in fresco. While we loitered along the sacristan appeared and
offered to show us the church, and led us into the transept on the right
of the high altar, and ushered us into the sacristy, where we found two
artists copying some of Fra Angelico's pictures. These were painted on
the three wooden leaves of a triptych, and, as usual, were glorified with
a great deal of gilding, so that they seemed to float in the brightness