The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-03-09 00:00:00

tttratui•e.

POETRY.

SONNET.

(For the Liverpool Standard.)

"And now abideth these three, faith, hope, and charity; bu
he greatest of these is charity."---ST; PAUL.

What glorious form bursts on the astonished sight,
Robed in the brightest splendours of the sky?
'Tis Faith, whose gaze, fixed on the true and. right,
Steadfast, the world's tempt4tions can defy.
And who is she, whose mild, yet enger eye
Looks to heaven's mansions of eternal "est,
While from her heart escapes the wishful sigh?
'Tis Hope, fair charmer of the troubled breast.
And *ho last comes, with tearfal eyes; that glow
With love and pity for all human kind?-
Who thinks not evil, and on want and won
Assiduous waits to cheer, and bast
The worn and broken heart ?.
The greatest of the three—
Liverpool, February 26, 1847

to bind

who ig she i

'tis Chrity

SKETCHES OF A TRIP TO THE CONTINENT,
ITALY, AND EGYPT.
BY EDWIN KEET, E$Q.
No. VIII.

(Written for the. Liverpool Standard.)

There are the four cardinals to be made to-day in the Sis-
tine Chapel, all the Rite will be there. You must ,go in
full dress, you must present your ticket, and, passidg the
scrutiny, you will enter the sanctum sanctorum of eccle-
siastical elegance, pomp, and dignity. As upon. all great
occasions, ladies are only admitted without bonnets, their
heads and faces veiled. Did my fair countrriomen know
how much of public inferiority and degradation there is
inflicted upon them with all the private adulation, prying
curiosity, and fulsome insinuations into their most trivial
acts, over their thoughts, over their words ! They would
pause era they would run from Protestantisth to Puseyism
or Romanism.

But we are in the Sistine Chapel. There, in glorious
shadow, ill-defined, but half made out, is Michael Angelo's
Last Judgment. This wondrous work, now so palpably
obscure, is intentionally kept so. Michael placed one of
the cardinals in hell in his picture of the Last Judgment ;
this was enough to exasperate the learned conclave, and
to keep is picture in the shade, nevertheless there is
enough to command, if not your admiration, your awe !
And now the forty red-hatted, crimson-hosed cardinals
enter, passing in solemn state through the silent, august,
observing assembly. From underneath the sable veils
are heaving bosoms and sparkling eyes, like coals oaf liquid
fire. Ambassadors, senators, philosophers, lifstoilans,
and poets, are there, all are there, from various parts of
the world ; their orders glistening on their breasts, their
uniforms making sparkling the otherwise dark monotony
of the scene. Again the eunuchs, with their clear, thrill-
ing, piercing tones, fill the roof with harmony': and each
new cardinal, after the mysterious rite is performed, pass-
ing down the aisle, is kissed on the cheek by his forty
brethren, each of hom whispers softly and secretly to
the ear of his new brother, some oath, conjuration,
charge or admonition : what these several whispers were
to each new-hatted cardinal Heaven knows; but I dreamed,
or a whisper told me it might be,

" Thy hat, thy hose, a:
Thou to thy church,
Fight even when dvi'

T crimson red 1
thy faith art we

g, till t

t of that dimly-lighted
' Death, judgment,
;mall, crowded, but
e, was it to quietly
saunter doWn the gigantic proportions of Saint Peter's.
But from these alive and new cardinals, let us pass on to
the Palazzo Justiniana, where lies in state a dead cardi-
nal, lat of his race ! What matters that he might have
been descended from Justinian, who, by his general, Be-
lisarius, defeated the Persians, subdued the Goths, anni-
hilated the Vandals, in the sixth century, although he
condensed the 2000 volumes of Roman laws, into his code
of 50; built that masterpiece of architecture, St. Sophia's,
et' Constantinople, lived to 83, and reigned 39 years as
emperor. That first Justinian Caesar, and emperor, and
the last of his name, the cardinal, priest, are alike dust
Or perhaps our last Justinian mig
from the second of his nam
inuprimma sf

So paned the four nei
chapel, whom the Romans named
heaven, and hell;" and from that
rich oratory, how noble, ho

been descended

Nero, who was

'iardartes

Perchance he v
Bishop of Net,

as more
3, atm

immediately related to Justiniani,
ier to Francis 1., who perished at

sea; or to him of Venice, who wore the senator's robe at
nineteen, and wrote a history of that city. Or was he
t patriarch of Venice, who was

led from the t
,d in 1524 by

Aiexan
with tt,
lot—Cl

All these proud associations
n cannot ward off the common
ter, Alexander ! Let us
approach the palace bearing the name of the last of his
race. It is the death of a cardinal. The body is in full
as, in his habit as he lived, laid out 'upon a lofty,
*-- from the head to

Lud ea

14-canor

the feet, so considerable that you may see every minute
-part of the front of the corpse. Face, hands, legs, feet,
costume, all are palpaple to sight; and it is the custom to
allow the multitude, from the richest to the poorest, the
prince and the beggar, to walk through the palace. Lis-
ten to the solemn mi - -
chamber, for the reT

masses performing in the next
f the soul of the deceased. It

lemn sigl

Ling you with a

whisperilk crowd
_pi

irrounded by burning tapers, the
.ng slowly onward through the
bout its lord
of this public

,ond d

exhibition. ofiT.