woman who had not heard mass, confessed, and said their prayers; a thing
which--the prayers, I mean--it would be absurd to predicate of London,
New York, or any Protestant city. In however adulterated a guise, the
Catholics do get a draught of devotion to slake the thirst of their
souls, and methinks it must needs do them good, even if not quite so pure
as if it came from better cisterns, or from the original fountain-head.

Arriving at St. Peter's shortly after two, we walked round the whole
church, looking at all the pictures and most of the monuments, . . . .
and paused longest before Guido's "Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer."
This is surely one of the most beautiful things in the world, one of the
human conceptions that are imbued most deeply with the celestial. . . . .

We then sat down in one of the aisles and awaited the beginning of
vespers, which we supposed would take place at half past three. Four
o'clock came, however, and no vespers; and as our dinner-hour is
five, . . . . we at last cane away without hearing the vesper hymn.


February 23d.--Yesterday, at noon, we set out for the Capitol, and after
going up the acclivity (not from the Forum, but from the opposite
direction), stopped to look at the statues of Castor and Pollux, which,
with other sculptures, look down the ascent. Castor and his brother seem
to me to have heads disproportionately large, and are not so striking, in
any respect, as such great images ought to be. But we heartily admired
the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, . . . . and looked at
a fountain, principally composed, I think, of figures representing the
Nile and the Tiber, who loll upon their elbows and preside over the
gushing water; and between them, against the facade of the Senator's
Palace, there is a statue of Minerva, with a petticoat of red porphyry.