aspect to me unintelligible.  Whether these ideas be right or wrong, I am not able, nor do I care, to argue.  The Pontifical ceremonies, however, have not only a spiritual aspect, but a material and very matter-of-fact one.  They are after all great spectacles got up with the aid of music and upholstery and dramatic mechanism.  Now, how far in this latter point of view the ceremonies are successful or not, I think from some small experience I am pretty well qualified to judge; and if I am asked whether, as ceremonies, the services of the Church of Rome are imposing and effective, I answer most unhesitatingly, No.  I know that this assertion upsets a received article of faith in Protestant England as to the seductive character of the Papal ceremonies.  I remember well the time when I too believed that the shrines of the old faith were the haunts of sense-enthralling grandeur, of wild enchantment and bewitching beauty; when I too dreamt how amidst crowds of rapt worshippers, while unearthly music pealed around you and the fragrant incense floated heavenwards, your soul became lost to everything, save to a feeling of unreasoning ecstasy.  In fact, I believed in the enchantments of Papal pageantry, as firmly as I believed that a Lord Mayor’s feast was a repast in which Apicius would have revelled, or that an opera ball was a scene of oriental and voluptuous delight.  Alas!  I have seen all, and known all, and have found all three to be but vanity.

Now the question as to the real aspect of the Papal pageantry, and the effects produced by it upon the minds, not of controversialists, but of ordinary spectators, is by no means an unimportant one with reference to the future prospects of Italy and the Papacy.  Let me try then, not irreverently or depreciatingly, but as speaking of plain matters of fact, to tell you what you really do see and hear at the greatest and grandest of the Roman ceremonies.  Of all the Holy Week services none have a more European fame, or have been more written or sung about, than the Misereres in the Sistine Chapel.  Now to be present at these services you have to start at about one o’clock, or midday, in full evening costume, dress-coat and black trowsers.  Any man who has ever had to walk out in evening attire in the broad daylight, will agree with me that the sensation of the general shabbiness and duskiness of your whole appearance is so strong as to overcome all other considerations, not to mention your devotional feelings.  In this attire you have to stand for a couple of hours amongst a perspiring and ill-tempered crowd, composed of tourists and priests, for the Italians are too wise to trouble themselves for such an object.  During these two mortal hours you are pushed forward constantly by energetic ladies bent on being placed, and pushed back by the Swedish guards, who defend the entrance.  The conversation you hear around you, and perforce engage in, is equally unedifying, both religiously and intellectually, a