opinion that a great deal of devout and reverential feeling is kept alive
in people's hearts by the Catholic mode of worship.

Soon leaving the Pantheon, a few minutes' walk towards the Corso brought
me to the Church of St. Ignazio, which belongs to the College of the
Jesuits. It is spacious and of beautiful architecture, but not
strikingly distinguished, in the latter particular, from many others; a
wide and lofty nave, supported upon marble columns, between which arches
open into the side aisles, and at the junction of the nave and transept a
dome, resting on four great arches. The church seemed to be purposely
somewhat darkened, so that I could not well see the details of the
ornamentation, except the frescos on the ceiling of the nave, which were
very brilliant, and done in so effectual a style, that I really could not
satisfy myself that some of the figures did not actually protrude from
the ceiling,--in short, that they were not colored bas-reliefs, instead
of frescos. No words can express the beautiful effect, in an upholstery
point of view, of this kind of decoration. Here, as at the Pantheon,
there were many persons sitting silent, kneeling, or passing from shrine
to shrine.

I reached home at about twelve, and, at one, set out again, with my wife,
towards St. Peter's, where we meant to stay till after vespers. We
walked across the city, and through the Piazza de Navona, where we
stopped to look at one of Bernini's absurd fountains, of which the water
makes but the smallest part,--a little squirt or two amid a prodigious
fuss of gods and monsters. Thence we passed by the poor, battered-down
torso of Pasquin, and came, by devious ways, to the bridge of St. Angelo;
the streets bearing pretty much their weekday aspect, many of the shops
open, the market-stalls doing their usual business, and the people brisk
and gay, though not indecorously so. I suppose there was hardly a man or