Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue: so
cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright: that all the previous bad
weather vanished from the recollection in a moment. I had seen the
Thursday's Benediction dropping damply on some hundreds of
umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred
fountains of Rome--such fountains as they are!--and on this Sunday
morning they were running diamonds. The miles of miserable streets
through which we drove (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's
dragoons: the Roman police on such occasions) were so full of
colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded aspect.
The common people came out in their gayest dresses; the richer
people in their smartest vehicles; Cardinals rattled to the church
of the Poor Fishermen in their state carriages; shabby magnificence
flaunted its thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the
sun; and every coach in Rome was put in requisition for the Great
Piazza of St. Peter's.
One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least! Yet
there was ample room. How many carriages were there, I don't know;
yet there was room for them too, and to spare.
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