or a horse’s tooth—­what it is neither you nor any one else can guess at that distance.  If the whole congregation knelt down in adoration, the artistic effect would unquestionably be fine, but then not one person in seven does kneel, and therefore the effect is lost.  So it is with the washing of the high altar.  If one priest alone went up and poured the wine and oil over the sacred stone, and then cleansed the shrine from any spot or stain, the grandeur of the idea would not be marred by the monotony of the performance; but when some four hundred priests and choristers defile past, each armed with a chip besom, like those of the buy-a-broom girls of our childhood, and each gives a dab to the altar as he passes, the whole scene becomes tiresome, if not absurd.  The same fatal objection applies to the famous washing of the feet at the Trinita dei Pellegrini.  As a mere matter of simple fact, there is nothing very interesting in seeing a number of old women’s feet washed, or in beholding a number of peasants who would be much better if the washing extended above their feet, engaged in gulping down an unsavoury repast.  The whole charm of the thing rests in the idea, and this idea is quite extinguished by the extreme length and tediousness of the whole proceeding.  The feet have too evidently been washed before, and the pilgrims are too palpably got up for the occasion.

The finest ceremony I have ever witnessed in Rome is the High Mass at St Peter’s on Easter-day; but as a theatrical spectacle, in which light alone I am now speaking of it, it is marred by many palpable defects.  Whenever I have seen the Pope carried in his chair in state, I can never help thinking of the story of the Irishman, who, when the bottom and seat of his sedan-chair fell out, remarked to his bearers, that “he might as well walk, but for the honour of the thing.”  One feels so strongly that the Pope might every bit as well walk as ride in that ricketty, top-heavy chair, in which he sits, or rather sways to and fro, with a sea-sick expression.  Then the ostrich feathers are so very shabby, and the whole get-up of the procession is so painfully “not” regardless of expense.  You see Cardinals with dirty robes, under the most gorgeous stoles, while the surplices are as yellow as the stained gold-worked bands which hang across them.  There is, indeed, no sense of congruity or the inherent fitness of things about the Italian ceremonials.  A priest performs mass and elevates the host with muddy boots on, while the Pope himself, in the midst of the grandest service, blows his nose on a common red pocket-handkerchief.  The absence of the organ detracts much from the impressiveness of the music in English ears, while the constant bowings and genuflexions, the drawling intonations, and the endless monotonous psalms, all utterly devoid of meaning for a lay-worshipper, added to the utter listlessness of the congregation, and even of the priests engaged in celebration of the service, destroy the impression the gorgeousness of the scene would otherwise produce.