really a great picture. We walked round the church, looking at other
paintings and frescos, but saw no others that greatly interested us. In
the vestibule there are monuments to Carlo Maratti and Salvator Rosa, and
there is a statue of St. Bruno, by Houdon, which is pronounced to be very
fine. I thought it good, but scarcely worthy of vast admiration. Houdon
was the sculptor of the first statue of Washington, and of the bust,
whence, I suppose, all subsequent statues have been, and will be, mainly
modelled.

After emerging from the church, I looked back with wonder at the stack of
shapeless old brickwork that hid the splendid interior. I must go there
again, and breathe freely in that noble space.


February 20th.--This morning, after breakfast, I walked across the city,
making a pretty straight course to the Pantheon, and thence to the bridge
of St. Angelo, and to St. Peter's. It had been my purpose to go to the
Fontana Paolina; but, finding that the distance was too great, and being
weighed down with a Roman lassitude, I concluded to go into St. Peter's.
Here I looked at Michael Angelo's Pieta, a representation of the dead
Christ, in his mother's lap. Then I strolled round the great church, and
find that it continues to grow upon me both in magnitude and beauty, by
comparison with the many interiors of sacred edifices which I have lately
seen. At times, a single, casual, momentary glimpse of its magnificence
gleams upon my soul, as it were, when I happen to glance at arch opening
beyond arch, and I am surprised into admiration. I have experienced that
a landscape and the sky unfold the deepest beauty in a similar way; not
when they are gazed at of set purpose, but when the spectator looks
suddenly through a vista, among a crowd of other thoughts. Passing near
the confessional for foreigners to-day, I saw a Spaniard, who had just