Richland beacon. [volume] (Rayville, La.) 1869-1890, 1873-08-09
st. Peters.

AsR mere promenade, st. Peters is
unequaled. It is better than the Boule-
wards, than Piccadilly or Broadway,
and if it were not the most beautiful
place in the world, it would be the most
entertaining. Few great works of art
last longer to ones curiosity. You
think you have taken its measure but
it expands again and leaves your vision
shrunken. I never let the pOnderous
leather curtain hang down behind me,
without feeling as if all former visits
were but vague provision, and this the
first crossing of the threshold. Tourists
will never ceased to be asked, I suppose,
If they have not been disappointed in
the size of st. Peters; but q few modest
spirits here and there, I hope, will never
cease to say, No. It seemed to me
from the first the hugest thing conceiva-
BILE, q real exaltation of ones idea of
space, 80 that ones entrance, even from
the great empty square, glaring beneath
the deep blue sky or cool in the far-cast
shadow of the immense facade, seems
not 80 much q going-in somewhere as o
going.out. I Ishould confidently recon-
mend first glimpse of the interior to a
man of pleasure in quest OF new sensa-
tions, as one of the strongest the world
affords. There are days when the vast
nave looks vaster than at others, and
the gorgeous baldachino long journey
beyond the far spreading tesselated
plains of the pavement, when the light
has quality that lets things look their
largest, and the scattered figures mark
happily the scale of certain details.
Then you have only to stroll and stroll,
and gaze and gaze, and watch the balda-
chino lift its bronze architecture, like a
temple within temple, and feel your
self, at the bottom of the abysmal shaft
of the dome, dwindle to crawling dot.
Much of the beauty of st. Peters re-
sides, think, in the fact that it is all
general beauty, that you are appealed
to by no specific details, that the de-
tails, indeed, when you observe them,
are often poor and sometimes ridiculous.
The sculptures, with the exception of
Michael AngelO's s admirable Picta, which
turks obscurely in dusky chapel, are
either bad or Indifferent; and the uni
versal incrustation of marble, though
sumptuous enough, has less brilliant
effect than much later work of the same
sort, that, for instance, of st. Paul's,
without the walls. The supreme beauty
of the church is its magnifcently sns-
tanned simplicity. 1t seems, as it is, a
realization of the happiest mood of a
colossal imagination. The happiest
mood, 1 say, because this is the only
one of Michael Angeles works in the
presence of which you venture to be
cheerful. You may smile in st. Peters
without a sense of sacrilege, which you
can hardly do, if you nave tender
conscience, in Westminster abbey OF
Notre Dame. The abundant of enclosed
light has much to do with your smile.
There are no shadows to speak of, NO
marked effect of shade but effects OF
light innumerable, points at which the
light seems to mass itself in airy density,
and scatter itself in enchanting grada-
tions and cadences. 1t performs the
office of shadow in Gothic churches
hangs like a rolling mist along the
gilded vault of the nave, melts into
bright interfusion the mosaic scintilla.
tions of the dome, clings and clusters
ana fingers auu VlViucS tue Wuoic, NnS'
atmosphere. A good Catholic, I sup
pose, is a good Catholic anywhere, in
the grandest as we'll as the humblesi
churches but to a traveller not special
ly pledged to be devout, st. Peters
speaks more of cOntentment than of as
piration. The mind seems to expand
there immensely, but on its own level
as We may say. 1t marvels at the reacf
of the human imagination and the vast
heaven enough, we say; what it lack!
in beauty it makes up it certainty. Ant
vet if ones half-hours at st. Peters ar,
not actually spent on ones knees, th'
ka,pd rverts to its tremendous presence
aee~sa ardor deeply akin to passion
L., in 1AsAf faith.-Henry James