soon all taken, and the ladies who come after seven are lucky if they can get within the charmed circle, and find a spot to sit down on a campstool.  They can then see only a part of the proceedings, and have a weary, exhausting time of it for hours.  This year Rome is more crowded than ever before.  There are American ladies enough to fill all the reserved places; and I fear they are energetic enough to get their share of them.

It rained Sunday; but there was a steady stream of people and carriages all the morning pouring over the Bridge of St. Angelo, and discharging into the piazza of St. Peter’s.  It was after nine when I arrived on the ground.  There was a crowd of carriages under the colonnades, and a heavy fringe in front of them; but the hundreds of people moving over the piazza, and up the steps to the entrances, made only the impression of dozens in the vast space.  I do not know if there are people enough in Rome to fill St. Peter’s; certainly there was no appearance of a crowd as we entered, although they had been pouring in all the morning, and still thronged the doors.  I heard a traveler say that he followed ten thousand soldiers into the church, and then lost them from sight:  they disappeared in the side chapels.  He did not make his affidavit as to the number of soldiers.  The interior area of the building is not much greater than the square of St. Mark in Venice.  To go into the great edifice is almost like going outdoors.  Lines of soldiers kept a wide passage clear from the front door away down to the high altar; and there was a good mass of spectators on the outside.  The tribunes for the ladies, built up under the dome, were of course, filled with masses of ladies in solemn black; and there was more or less of a press of people surging about in that vicinity.  Thousands of people were also roaming about in the great spaces of the edifice; but there was nowhere else anything like a crowd.  It had very much the appearance of a large fair-ground, with little crowds about favorite booths.  Gentlemen in dress-coats were admitted to the circle under the dome.  The pope’s choir was stationed in a gallery there opposite the high altar.  Back of the altar was a wide space for the dignitaries; seats were there, also, for ambassadors and those born to the purple; and the pope’s seat was on a raised dais at the end.  Outsiders could see nothing of what went on within there; and the ladies under the dome could only partially see, in the seats they had fought so gallantly to obtain.

St. Peter’s is a good place for grand processions and ceremonies; but it is a poor one for viewing them.  A procession which moves down the nave is hidden by the soldiers who stand on either side, or is visible only by sections as it passes:  there is no good place to get the grand effect of the masses of color, and the total of the gorgeous pageantry.  I should like to see the display upon a grand stage, and enjoy it in a coup d’oeil.  It is a fine study