the frivolous vivacity of lighter ones. You cannot look at the walls
without feeling a solemn sadness steal over you, as you think of the
thousands of your fellow-creatures who have gazed on them with the same
freshness and fulness of life with which you now gaze on them, since
Raphael and Michel Angelo first clothed them with their own immortal
conceptions, three hundred years ago. It was in an assembly like this,
and perhaps in this very room, that the condemnation of Luther was
pronounced, that Henry was proclaimed "Defender of the Faith," and that
Cardinal Pole rejoiced with his brethren of the purple over the
approaching return of England to the bosom of the Church. And as you are
musing on these things, and centuries seem to pass before you like the
figures of a dream, the room gradually fills, the cardinals come in and
take their places, each clad in the simple majesty of the purple, and
last of all comes the Pope himself, the steel sabres of his guard
ringing on the marble floor with a clang that breaks the harmonious
silence most discordantly. Then in a moment all is hushed again. The
cardinals go one by one to pay their homage to their spiritual father,
kneeling and kissing the cross on his mantle, he blessing them all, as
duteous children, in return. If you are an American and a Catholic, you
look on devoutly, feeling, perhaps, at moments, although you take good
care not to say so, that, although highly edifying, it is a little dull;
if an American and a Protestant, you think of the morning prayer in
Congress, and members with newspapers or half-read letters in their
hands, a very busy one now and then forgetting that he is standing with
his hat on, and all of them in a hurry to have it over and enter upon
the business of the day,--or of a reception-night, perhaps, at the White
House, with the President shaking hands as fast as they can be held out,
and trying hard to smile each new-comer into the belief that the
"present incumbent" is the very best man he can vote for at the next
election.