and the bust was followed by a mule, on which, in a snuff-coloured coat, black tights, white neckcloth, and a beef-eater’s hat, the whole sheltered beneath a green carriage umbrella, rode His Excellency the Governor of the district.  Behind him walked his secretary, the Syndic of Subiaco, four gendarmes, and three broken-down, old livery-clad beadles, who carried the umbrellas of these high dignitaries.  In truth, had it not been for the unutterable shabbiness of the whole affair, I could have fancied I saw the market scene in “Martha,” and “The Last Rose of Summer” seemed to ring unbidden in my ears.  Not a score of un-official spectators accompanied the procession from the convent, and the interest caused by it appeared but small; the devotion absolutely none.  The fact which struck me most throughout was the utter apathy of the people.  Not a person in the place I spoke to—­and I asked several—­had any notion who the governor was.  The nearest approach that I got to an answer was from one of the old beadles, who replied to my question, “Chi sa?” “E una roba da lontano;” and with this explanation that the governor was “a thing that came from a distance,” I was obliged to rest satisfied.  When the procession reached the town the band joined in, the governor got off his mule, room was made for our party in the rank behind him, I suppose, as “distinguished foreigners;” and so with banners flying, crosses nodding, drums beating, priests and choristers chanting, we marched in a body into the church, where the female portion of the crowd and all the beggars followed us.  I had now, however, had enough of the “humours of the fair,” and left the town without waiting to try my luck at the tombola, which was to come off directly High Mass was over.

CHAPTER XV.  THE HOLY WEEK.

The nil admirari school are out of favour.  In our earnest working age, it is the fashion to treat everything seriously, to find in every thing a deep hidden meaning, in fact, to admire everything.  Since the days of Wordsworth and Peter Bell, every petty poet and romantic writer has had his sneer at the shallow sceptic to whom a cowslip was a cowslip only, and who called a spade a spade.  I feel, therefore, painfully that I am not of my own day when I express my deliberate conviction, that the ceremonies of Holy Week at Rome are—­the word must come out sooner or later—­an imposture.  This is not the place to enter into the religious aspect of the Catholic question, nor if it were, should I have any wish to enter the lists of controversy as a champion of either side.  I can understand that for some minds the ideas of Church unity, of a mystic communion of the faithful, and of an infallible head of a spiritual body have a strange attraction, nay, even a real existence.  I can understand too, that for such persons all the pomps and pageantry of the Papal services present themselves under an