  BY A. BIRD. A CONTESTED ELECTION AT ROME. There are, I doubt not, thousands and thousands subject to our most gracious and protesting Queen—"Gentlemen of England"—ay, and Ladies too—"who live at home at ease," and fancy, poor simpletons! that the age of miracles is past. No such thing. Once in every hundred years there is in the Everlasting City a regular contested election in honour of the dead, each member being returned, as it were, to earth, in the character of saint, not as with the elect of this world, for words and promises of things to be, but for miracles done and recorded. The number of seats devoted to the saints is generally supposed to be three hundred and sixty-five, that is to say, one for every day in the year. And if we refer to the earliest period when first "The Romans had a happy knack, Of cooking up an almanack," we shall find that every seat was occupied. Where then, it may be asked, are the addenda to be placed at the end of each century? The question is by no means easy of solution. There is, to be sure, leap-year, with its odd day in February; yet this would only do for a bit of a saint, and coming like a comet at stated intervals, I incline to think that when "the Devil a saint would be," he takes that odd day to himself, and walks the earth with all the glories of his tail, an appendage which no true saint would acknowledge. But, as the French found room for "St. Napoleon," even while alive, I can only suppose that the longest day will hold more than the shortest, and any day hold more than one saint. When St. Nap was elected, it is clear some smaller saint must have been put in the background, and thus he remained—as we should say of an ex-minister—"out of place and out of favour," until the Bourbons returned, and included the ex-saint in their own restoration. Leaving, however, this knotty point to the Pope and his cardinals, I come at once to St. Peter's and the fact. It was in the merry month of May 1839 that I last entered that temple, alike unrivalled for its majesty and beauty—would that I had never seen it as I saw it then! The election was over, the chosen of one hundred years were decided upon, four new saints had been returned to earth; a fifth had been nominated, but after his claims had been duly canvassed, the votes were against him. An overwhelming majority declared that he had not performed sufficient miracles to be canonised, and his bones were doomed to rest in peace. Not so the successful candidates; their names were entered in the day-book of the Pope's elect, each saint and his miracle were put upon canvass, the likenesses were warranted, and the limner's art had done its best to show how saints in heaven were made by man on earth. There they were, only awaiting the ceremonies which were to confirm the intended honours, the chairing of themselves and deeds in effigy—(if thus we may speak of hanging those huge pictures on high)—the celebration of mass, the roaring of cannon from the Castle of St. Be our creed what it may, whether we approve or whether we condemn, our feelings are carried away by the feelings of the many, the thousands upon thousands who, with one accord, bare the head and bend the knee, when their Prince of the whole Christian world, their Pope, "Nostra Papa," appears! Jews, Turks, and Infidels must "off with their hat"—if they have one—but with the most rigid there is also an involuntary inclination to bend the knee. Who, unmoved, can watch a Roman procession wending its way towards the high altar, till it pauses beneath their Holy of Holies, the wondrous dome of St. Peter's! a strange anomaly, I grant—venerable priests of Christ, tottering beneath the weight of gold embroidered on their backs; cardinals, proud and stately, wearing their scarlet hats as knights who bore the helmet of the church; beautiful boys, with angel wings upon their shoulders; censers, waving clouds of incense, lending its perfume to the air, and, like a spirit loath to quit this lower world, wheeling, hovering, slowly rising in graceful circles of fantastic flight till it mingles with the sky, and is seen no more. "'Tis gone!" and as it passed I caught the costume of the warlike Swiss; the guards of him, the Pope who preaches peace on earth. I saw their nodding plumes of raven black, with scarlet tuft—their glittering halberts of an age gone by—their ruffs, rosettes, their belts of buff (the perfection of a painter's picturesque), armed and covered in the House of God!—Yes, this, and much untold, of that which forms a Romish procession at Rome, strange and anomalous though it be, is most striking and impressive as a whole. The mere recollection has carried me with it, and turned aside for the moment the malediction I contemplated on the dressing up of St. Peter's. Would, I repeat, that I had never seen it! to gild the virgin gold were a venial blunder in comparison—it would still be gold, and look like gold; but to veil the majesty, the stern uncompromising beauty of St. Peter's columns with flaunting silk, to ornament perfection with tinsel hangings and festoons, this was indeed a profanation in honour of the saints elect. St. Peter's, with me, had been a passion from the moment I first looked upon its wondrous beauty: it was love, love at first sight, but growing with my growth—a passion, holy and enduring, such as can be only felt when we stand in the presence of fancied perfection. Judge, then, of my horror when I saw this desecration!—but there is no blank so dark that we may not find a ray of light. I bless the saints for one thing— The angel manufactory, however, was still more striking. To give effect to the intended ceremonies, the head decorator suggested a brace of angels, to be placed on each side of the nave of St. Peter's, behind the altar. The lazy cardinals nodded assent, and the question was carried nem. con. They do all things well at Rome in honour of the church, even their greatest follies are on a scale of grandeur—their fireworks, fountains, illuminations, are all unrivalled—so are their angels, when they make them. First, an able artist is employed to sketch a design, then able workmen to build, painters to paint, and lastly, robe-makers to clothe the naked. The construction is curious: a skeleton figure, after the late fashion of It is true, that as I looked upon the gigantic saint, as yet unhung, and compared him with his fellows, the elect on high; as I watched this monster of miracles, raised by pulleys till he dwindled into a pretty miniature; as I saw the pigmy workmen wheeling the huge angels to their places,—it must be confessed that I had found "a sliding scale," which, in this case, answered admirably. It enabled me to measure the proportions of the stupendous pile which towered above me to judge of its most beautiful symmetry, with greater force and stronger conviction than I had ever felt whilst gazing on the children which support the holy water, the sweet babes with arms as thick as the thigh of man! That knowledge was interesting—the angel-making was amusing, but the solemn tone of mind suited to St. Peter's was destroyed. In vain I stood before the lions of Canova; the one which slept could not inspire the repose which breathed through the sleeping marble; the one which watched, the sleepless sentinel, guarding the ashes of the dead, even this could not scare the demon of ridicule that played on hallowed ground. I turned to the mosaics, those fadeless pictures which seem as painted for eternity; no, not these—not Guido's Archangel, that wondrous type of heavenly beauty in the form of man—of power to conquer with the will to do—not even this could tame the merry sin within me. I stood before that statue which frenzied with undying passion the priest who gazed upon its beauties—the emblem of "Justice," but so lovely in its nakedness, that man, impure and imperfect, became a worshipper, and obliged the Pope to hide Justice from his children. The ridiculous prevailed; I smiled to think that the form as well as eyes of "Justice at Rome" must be hid from sight. And I laughed outright at woman's curiosity, when I thought how Lady See —— prevailed upon the Pope to lift the veil and show her the form which made a Pygmalion of a priest! The demon was in me for the day; it had been raised by—to use a fashionable word—the desecration of the temple, and nothing could lay the evil spirit. I turned to my hotel, ordered horses for the morrow, and fled. My course was set for Naples. As I traversed the Pontine Marshes, cheek by jowl with the sluggish stream which the pride of Popes has wedded to the road and given to the traveller's eye, what a contrast did these waters, this cold, dark, silent chain of "Mal-aria," present to the stream of life, the roar of cannon, the music, festival, and holiday, which fancy pictured in the Eternal City! But the comparison was in favour of the waters; there is, thought I, at least some use in these, for, as they drag their weary length along, death, the tyrant, fettered and subdued, is borne on their course from plains where once his rule was absolute. Filled with these reflections, and sometimes dreaming that I saw the captive monarch in a phantom ship, with skeleton crew—sometimes that I heard the sullen splash of muffled oars; thus dreaming and reflecting, the journey seemed short to Naples; and there it was I chanced upon "A Miracle of Modern Days," which, however, must be reserved until the Omnibus shall start again. |
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