earnestness of action and variety of tones, insomuch that I fancied
sometimes that two priests were in the agony of sermonizing at once. He
had a pretty large and seemingly attentive audience clustered round him
from the entrance of the church, half-way down the nave; while in the
chapels of the transepts and in the remoter distances were persons
occupied with their own individual devotion. We sat down near the chapel
of St. Ignazio, which is adorned with a picture over the altar, and with
marble sculptures of the Trinity aloft, and of angels fluttering at the
sides. What I particularly noted (for the angels were not very real
personages, being neither earthly nor celestial) was the great ball of
lapis lazuli, the biggest in the world, at the feet of the First Person
in the Trinity. The church is a splendid one, lined with a great variety
of precious marbles, . . . . but partly, perhaps, owing to the dusky
light, as well as to the want of cleanliness, there was a dingy effect
upon the whole. We made but a very short stay, our New England breeding
causing us to feel shy of moving about the church in sermon time.

It rained when we reached the Capitol, and, as the museum was not yet
open, we went into the Palace of the Conservators, on the opposite side
of the piazza. Around the inner court of the ground-floor, partly under
two opposite arcades, and partly under the sky, are several statues and
other ancient sculptures; among them a statue of Julius Caesar, said to
be the only authentic one, and certainly giving an impression of him more
in accordance with his character than the withered old face in the
museum; also, a statue of Augustus in middle age, still retaining a
resemblance to the bust of him in youth; some gigantic heads and hands
and feet in marble and bronze; a stone lion and horse, which lay long at
the bottom of a river, broken and corroded, and were repaired by
Michel Angelo; and other things which it were wearisome to set down.
We inquired of two or three French soldiers the way into the