Not being well, I spent a long morning at home, and then strayed into the church of the Santo Spirito, which is near our hotel.  There is in this church a fine copy of Michel Angelo’s Pieta, which a monk, whom I met in the church, insisted was the original.  But I believe the originalissimo group is at Rome.  There are also two fine pictures, a marriage of the Virgin, in a very sweet Guido-like style, and the woman taken in adultery.  This church is the richest in paintings I have seen here.  I remarked a picture of the Virgin said to be possessed of miraculous powers; and that part of it visible, is not destitute of merit as a painting; but some of her grateful devotees, having decorated her with a real blue silk gown, spangled with tinsel stars, and two or three crowns, one above another, of gilt foil, the effect is the oddest imaginable.  As I was sitting upon a marble step, philosophizing to myself, and wondering at what seemed to me such senseless bad taste, such pitiable and ridiculous superstition, there came up a poor woman leading by the hand a pale and delicate boy, about four years old.  She prostrated herself before the picture, while the child knelt beside her, and prayed for some time with fervour; she then lifted him up, and the mother and child kissed the picture alternately with great devotion; then making him kneel down and clasp his little hands, she began to teach him an Ave Maria, repeating it word for word, slowly and distinctly, so that I got it by heart too.  Having finished their devotions, the mother put into the child’s hands a piece of money, which she directed him to drop into a box, inscribed, “per i poveri vergognosi”—­“for the bashful poor;” they then went their way.  I was an unperceived witness of this little scene, which strongly affected me:  the simple piety of this poor woman, though mistaken in its object, appeared to me respectable; and the Virgin, in her sky-blue brocade and her gilt tiara, no longer an object to ridicule.  I returned home rejoicing in kinder, gentler, happier thoughts; for though I may wish these poor people a purer worship, yet, as Wordsworth says somewhere, far better than I could express it—­

    “Rather would I instantly decline
    To the traditionary sympathies
    Of a most rustic ignorance,—­
    This rather would I do, than see and hear
    The repetitions wearisome of sense
    Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place.”

The Ave Maria which I learnt, or rather stole from my poor woman, pleases me by its simplicity.

AVE MARIA.

Dio ti salvi, O Maria, piena di grazia!  Il Signore e teco! tu sei benedetta fra le donne, e benedetto e il frutto del tuo seno, GESU!  Santa Maria! madre di Dio!  Prega per noi peccatori, adesso, e nell ’ora della nostra morte! e cosi sia.[G]

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