The Guns Upon The
Ramparts Of The Castle Of St. Angelo Proclaimed, Next Moment, That
The Benediction Was Given; Drums Beat; Trumpets Sounded; Arms
Clashed; And The Great Mass Below, Suddenly Breaking Into Smaller
Heaps, And Scattering Here And There In Rills, Was Stirred Like
Parti-Coloured Sand.
What a bright noon it was, as we rode away!
The Tiber was no
longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the old bridges,
that made them fresh and hale again. The Pantheon, with its
majestic front, all seamed and furrowed like an old face, had
summer light upon its battered walls. Every squalid and desolate
hut in the Eternal City (bear witness every grim old palace, to the
filth and misery of the plebeian neighbour that elbows it, as
certain as Time has laid its grip on its patrician head!) was fresh
and new with some ray of the sun. The very prison in the crowded
street, a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of
the day, dropping through its chinks and crevices: and dismal
prisoners who could not wind their faces round the barricading of
the blocked-up windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to
the rusty bars, turned THEM towards the overflowing street: as if
it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that way.
But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full moon,
what a sight it was to see the Great Square full once more, and the
whole church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with
innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture, and winking and
shining all round the colonnade of the piazza!
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