Crowds of Devotees collect every evening to chant the Litany, before a portrait of the Weeping Virgin,* in a little Chapel of the Piazza Colonna.

But the privileged Performers of the Papal Cathedral do not even affect the semblances of zeal. Noviciates are often seen to smile at the awkwardness of initiation, and the Canons themselves sometimes slumber in their stalls.

The splendid mosaic of the Chapel, glistens with the tapers of the Altar, which is served with vessels of silver, and covered with cloth of gold. On either hand is a gallery for the Musicians,

• Mater Dolorissima.

cians, in which I have often heard thirty Performers, at a time, arrayed in linen vestments, chanting alternately the responses of the Choral service, in which the Canons and the Clerks occasionally join, from three rows of ascending desks, parallel with the galleries; before which benches are placed transversely for Spectators: but so few attend at St. Peter's that a philosophical Observer may speculate, at his ease, upon the ceremonies of the Choir, where no mark of co-operation, or obeisance, is expected from Strangers.

If this were not the case, the doubts of a Protestant, or the scruples of a Dissenter, might be lulled to rest, by the inscription over the organ loft, selected

selected from the pious rhapsodies, of the sweet Singer of Israel:

PSALLITE DEO NOSTRO. •

But when the song of praise ascends, in measured notes, from the graduated Band of voices and instruments, Scepticism, itself, might listen, with rising fervor, to repeated Halleluiahs; and bow to the valedictory ascription of,

Gloria Patri! et Filio! et Spirito Sancto!

St. Peter's, and its appendages, are supposed to have cost twenty Millions sterling-a Sum which (however prodi

gal)

· Sing unto our God.

gal) has been exceeded in a Protestant Nation, for the armaments of a single year. As many Centuries of progressive ingenuity must have preceded the bold design; and successive Generations have concurred to raise, and to decorate, this magnificent Temple; which concentrates the sublime conceptions of a Raphael, a Canova, and a Michael Angelo-the Painter, the Sculptor, and the Architect, of a revolving Period of the Arts, which returns (if it returns at all) like the Comet of Newton-in an ellipsis of Ages.

Ii

LETTER XII.

The Palace of the Vatican.

'HE morning of Yesterday was fully

THE

employed in rambling over the endless apartments of the Papal Palace, the number of which (you are gravely told) exceeds eleven thousand. Be that as it may, they have remained unoccupied ever since the departure of Pius VI. the present Pope residing altogether in the Quirinal, or summer palace; in which his state can be maintained with a far less expensive Establishment, than would be necessary to people the twenty Courts, and two hundred Stair-cases of the Vatican.