292 PRÆTERITA-II

following passage, which I think must have been one of the first to startle the complacency of my Puritan creed. My since experience in theological writing furnishes me with no more terrific example of the absence alike of charity and understanding in the leading masters of that sect, beyond all others into which the Church has ever been divided:-

“If it be for a moment forgotten that in every bell, and bowl, and vest of the Romish service there is hid a device against the liberty and welfare of mankind, and that its gold, and pearls, and fine linen are the deckings of eternal ruin; and if this apparatus of worship be compared with the impurities and the cruelties of the old Polytheistic rites, great praise may seem due to its contrivers.... All the materials of poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the genius and taste of the Italian artists until a spectacle has been got up which leaves the most splendid shows of the ancient idol worship of Greece and Rome at a vast distance of inferiority.”

Yet I cannot distinctly remember being shocked, even at this passage, and I know there was much in the rest of the book that pleased me; but I had already the advantage over its author, and over all such authors, of knowing, when I saw them, sincere art from lying art, and happy faith from insolent dogmatism. I knew that the voices in the Trinita di Monte did not sing to deceive me; and that the kneeling multitude before the Pontiff were indeed bettered and strengthened by his benediction.

Although I had been able, weather favouring, to see the Easter ceremonies without danger, there was no sign, take all in all, of gain to my health from Roman winter. My own discouragement was great; and the first cautious journeyings back by Terni and Foligno were sad enough; the night at Terni very deeply so. For in the evening, when we came back from seeing the falls, the servant of a young Englishman asked to speak with us, saying that he was alone in charge of his master, who had been stopped there by sudden, he feared mortal, illness. Would my father come and see him? My father went, and found a beautifully featured Scottish youth of three or four and

[Version 0.04: March 2008]