Lord Nelville, from all that the Romans had said to him, expected to be more affected by the ceremonies of Holy Week.  He regretted the noble and simple festivals of the Anglican church.  He returned home with a painful impression; for nothing is more sad than not being moved by that which ought to move us; we believe that our soul is become dry, we fear that the fire of enthusiasm is extinguished in us, without which the faculty of thinking can only serve to disgust us with life.

Chapter iv.

But Good Friday soon restored to Lord Nelville all those religious emotions, the want of which he so much regretted on the preceding days.  The seclusion of Corinne was about to terminate; he anticipated the happiness of seeing her again:  the sweet expectations of tender affection accord with piety; it is only a factious, worldly life, that is entirely hostile to it.  Oswald repaired to the Sixtine Chapel to hear the celebrated miserere, so much talked of all over Europe.  He arrived thither whilst it was yet day, and beheld those celebrated paintings of Michael Angelo, which represent the Last Judgment, with all the terrible power of the subject and the talent which has handled it.  Michael Angelo was penetrated with the study of Dante; and the painter, in imitation of the poet, represents mythological beings in the presence of Jesus Christ; but he always makes Paganism the evil principle, and it is under the form of demons that he characterises the heathen fables.  On the vault of the chapel are represented the prophets, and the sybils called in testimony by the Christians,

     Teste David cum Sibylla.

A crowd of angels surround them; and this whole vault, painted thus, seems to bring us nearer to heaven, but with a gloomy and formidable aspect.  Hardly does daylight penetrate the windows, which cast upon the pictures shadow rather than light.  The obscurity enlarges those figures, already so imposing, which the pencil of Michael Angelo has traced; the incense, whose perfume has a somewhat funereal character, fills the air in this enclosure, and every sensation is prelusive to the most profound of all—­that which the music is to produce.

Whilst Oswald was absorbed by the reflections which every object that surrounded him gave birth to, he saw Corinne, whose presence he had not hoped to behold so soon, enter the women’s gallery, behind the grating which separated it from that of the men.  She was dressed in black, all pale with absence, and trembled so when she perceived Oswald, that she was obliged to lean on the balustrade for support as she advanced; at this moment the miserere began.