The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1896-08-20
ON THE DONE OF ST PETERS.
Almost = Panorama Of the World Stretch
ed Before the Beholder.

Almost = Panorama Of the World Stretch |
ed Before the BehOlder.
The strangest, most extravagant, !
most inoomprehensible, most dis
turbing sight of all is TO be seen /
from the upper gallery in the cupo-
la looking down to the church be-
low Hanging in midair, with moth
ing under ones feet, one sees the (
church projected in perspective
within huge circle. 1t Is as though
one saw it upside down and inside
out. Few men could bear TO stand
there without that bit of iron rail-
ing between them and the hideous
fall, and the inevitable slight diZzi-
ness which the strongest head feels
may make one doubt for a moment
whether what is really the floor be-
low may not be in reality a ceiling
above, and whether ones sense of
gravitation be not inverted in an
extraordinary dream. At that dis
tance human beings look no bigger
than flies, and the canopy of the
high altar might be an ordinary Ia
/ BILE.
And thence, climbing up between
the double domes, one may emerge
from the almost terrible perspective
to the open air and suddenly see all
Rome at ones feet, and all the Ro-
man mountains stretched out to
south and east, in perfect grace of
restful outline, shoulder to shoul-
der, like shadowy women lying side
by side and holding hands.
And the broken symmetry of
streets and squares ranges below,
cut by the winding ribbon of the
yellow Tiber; to the right the low
Aventine, with the dark Expresses
of the Protestant cemetery beyond,
} and the Palatine, crested with trees
and ruins; the Pinoian on the left,
with its high gardens, and the mass
of foliage of the Villa Medici behind
it; the lofty tower of the capitol in
the midst of the city, and the sun
; clasping all to its heart of gold, the
just and the unjust, the new and the
old alike, past and present, youth,
age and decay-generous as only the
5 sun can be in IN sordid and miser-
: ~ world, where bread is but anoth-
or name for blood and n rood of
growing corn means pound of hu-
' man flesh. The sun is the only good
J, thing in nature that always gives
itself to man for nothing but the
mere trouble of sitting in the sun
shine, and Rome without sunlight is
n a very grim and gloomy town today.
5 1t is worth the effort of climbing
so high. Four hundred feet in the
air you look down on what ruled
I half the world by force for ages and
l. on what rules the other half today
by faith-the greatest center of con-
quest and of discord and of religion
1t which the world has ever seen. A
n thousand volumes have been written
d. about it by a thousand wise men. i
word tells what it has been-hear'
80 of the world. Hither was drawn the
worlds blood by all the roads that
lead to Rome, and hence it was
] forced out again along the mighty
arteries of the Caesars roads to be
spilled in the Caesars battles-tC
redden the world with the Roman
name. Blood, blood, and more blood
that was the history of old Rome
the blood of brothers, the blood oi
foes, the blood of martyrs without
end. 1t flowed and ebbed in varying
tide at the will of the Just and tn,
unjust, but there was always NOR,
- to shed, and there were always NOR,
hands to shed it. And so it may b,
. again hereafter, for the name o
Rome has a heart stirring ring, an,
there has always been as much bloO'
spilled for the names of things a
for the things themselves Marion
Crawford in Century.