I spent another Sunday morning in St. Peter’s.  High mass was being celebrated in one of the side Chapels, and a great number of the priesthood were present.  The music was simple, solemn, and very impressive, and a fine effect was produced by the combination of the full, sonorous voices of the priests, and the divine sweetness of that band of mutilated unfortunates, who sing here.  They sang with a full, clear tone, sweet as the first lispings of a child, but it was painful to hear that melody, purchased at the expense of manhood.

Near the dome is a bronze statue of St. Peter, which seems to have a peculiar atmosphere of sanctity.  People say their prayers before it by hundreds, and then kiss its toe, which is nearly worn away by the application of so many thousand lips.  I saw a crowd struggle most irreverently to pay their devotion to it.  There was a great deal of jostling and confusion; some went so far as to thrust the faces of others against the toe as they were about to kiss it.  What is more remarkable, it is an antique statue of Jupiter, taken, I believe, from the Pantheon.  An English artist, showing it to a friend, just arrived in Rome, remarked very wittily that it was the statue of Jew-Peter.

I went afterwards to the Villa Borghese, outside the Porta del Popolo.  The gardens occupy thirty or forty acres, and are always thronged in the afternoon with the carriages of the Roman and foreign nobility.  In summer, it must be a heavenly place; even now, with its musical fountains, long avenues, and grassy slopes, crowned with the fan-like branches of the Italian pine, it reminds one of the fairy landscapes of Boccaccio.  We threaded our way through the press of carriages on the Pincian hill, and saw the enormous bulk of St. Peter’s loom up against the sunset sky.  I counted forty domes and spires in that part of Rome that lay below us—­but on what a marble glory looked that sun eighteen centuries ago!  Modern Rome—­it is in comparison, a den of filth, cheats and beggars!

Yesterday, while taking a random stroll through the city, I visited the church of St. Onofrio, where Tasso is buried.  It is not far from St. Peter’s, on the summit of a lonely hill.  The building was closed, but an old monk admitted us on application.  The interior is quite small, but very old, and the floor is covered with the tombs of princes and prelates of a past century.  Near the end I found a small slab with the inscription: 

“TORQUATI TASSI
OSSA
HIC JACENT.”

That was all—­but what more was needed?  Who knows not the name and fame and sufferings of the glorious bard?  The pomp of gold and marble are not needed to deck the slumber of genius.  On the wall, above, hangs an old and authentic portrait of him, very similar to the engravings in circulation.  A crown of laurel encircles the lofty brow, and the eye has that wild, mournful expression, which accords so well with the mysterious tale of his love and madness.