It is worth while for every one who goes to Rome to visit the Church
of St. Peter's; but it is scarcely worth while for me to describe
it, or for every one to go up into the bronze globe on the top of the
cupola. In fact, this is a great labor, and there is nothing to
be seen from the crevices in the ball which cannot be far more
comfortably seen from the roof of the church below.
The companions of our ascent to the latter point were an English lady
and gentleman, brother and sister, and both Catholics, as they at once
told us. The lady and myself spoke for some time in the Tuscan tongue
before we discovered that neither of us was Italian, after which we
paid each other some handsome compliments upon fluency and perfection
of accent. The gentleman was a pleasant purple porpoise from the
waters of Chili, whither he had wandered from the English coasts in
early youth. He had two leading ideas: one concerned the Pope, to
whom he had just been presented, and whom he viewed as the best and
blandest of beings; the other related to his boy, then in England,
whom he called Jack Spratt, and considered the grandest and greatest
of boys. With the view from the roof of the church this gentleman did
not much trouble himself. He believed Jack Spratt could ride up to the
roof where we stood on his donkey. As to the great bronze globe which
we were hurrying to enter he seemed to regard it merely as a rival in
rotundity, and made not the slightest motion to follow us.
I should be loth to vex the reader with any description of the scene
before us and beneath us, even if I could faithfully portray it. But I
recollect, with a pleasure not to be left unrecorded, the sweetness
of the great fountain playing in the square before the church, and
the harmony in which the city grew in every direction from it, like
an emanation from its music, till the last house sank away into
the pathetic solitude of the Campagna, with nothing beyond but the
snow-capped mountains lighting up the remotest distance. At the same
moment I experienced a rapture in reflecting that I had underpaid
three hackmen during my stay in Rome, and thus contributed to avenge
my race for ages of oppression.
The vastness of St. Peter's itself is best felt in looking down upon
the interior from the gallery that surrounds the inside of the dome,
and in comparing one's own littleness with the greatness of all the
neighboring mosaics. But as to the beauty of the temple, I could not
find it without or within.