Within a few days, there have been many pilgrims in Rome, who come hither
to attend the ceremonies of holy week, and to perform their vows, and
undergo their penances. I saw two of them near the Forum yesterday, with
their pilgrim staves, in the fashion of a thousand years ago. . . . . I
sat down on a bench near one of the chapels, and a woman immediately came
up to me to beg. I at first refused; but she knelt down by my side, and
instead of praying to the saint prayed to me; and, being thus treated as
a canonized personage, I thought it incumbent on me to be gracious to the
extent of half a paul. My wife, some time ago, came in contact with a
pickpocket at the entrance of a church; and, failing in his enterprise
upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving fingers in the holy
water, and paid his devotions at a shrine. Missing the purse, he said
his prayers, in the hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him better
luck another time.


April 10th.--I have made no entries in my journal recently, being
exceedingly lazy, partly from indisposition, as well as from an
atmosphere that takes the vivacity out of everybody. Not much has
happened or been effected. Last Sunday, which was Easter Sunday, I went
with J----- to St. Peter's, where we arrived at about nine o'clock, and
found a multitude of people already assembled in the church. The
interior was arrayed in festal guise, there being a covering of scarlet
damask over the pilasters of the nave, from base to capital, giving an
effect of splendor, yet with a loss as to the apparent dimensions of the
interior. A guard of soldiers occupied the nave, keeping open a wide
space for the passage of a procession that was momently expected, and
soon arrived. The crowd was too great to allow of my seeing it in
detail; but I could perceive that there were priests, cardinals, Swiss