There are the
same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered prayers to beg; the
same miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at the doors;
the same blind men, rattling little pots like kitchen pepper-
castors: their depositories for alms; the same preposterous crowns
of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single saints and Virgins
in crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a mountain has a
head-dress bigger than the temple in the foreground, or adjacent
miles of landscape; the same favourite shrine or figure, smothered
with little silver hearts and crosses, and the like: the staple
trade and show of all the jewellers; the same odd mixture of
respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm: kneeling on the stones,
and spitting on them, loudly; getting up from prayers to beg a
little, or to pursue some other worldly matter: and then kneeling
down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where
it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her
prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music;
and in another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff,
arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who was growling at
another dog: and whose yelps and howls resounded through the
church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of
meditation--keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time,
nevertheless.
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