At
Last, By Such A Lavish Expenditure As Ought Richly To Provide For The
Few Remaining Years Of Himself And His Horse, We Prevailed With Him To
Let Us Go, And Reached Our Hotel Glad, Almost Proud, To Arrive On Foot.
Hare tells me, now it is too late, that I may reach the Church of Santa
Maggiore by keeping straight on through the long, long straightness of
the Via Sistina.
I reached that church by quite another way after many
postponements; for I thought I remembered all about it from my visit in
1864. But really nothing had remained to me save a sense of the
exceptional dignity of the church, and the sole fact that the roof of
its most noble nave is thickly plated with the first gold mined in South
America, which Ferdinand and Isabella gave that least estimable of the
popes, Alexander VI. Now I know that it is far richer than any gold
could make it in the treasures of history and legend, which fairly
encrust it in every part. Doubtless some portion of this wealth my
fellow-sightseers were striving to store up out of the guide-books which
they bore in their hands and from which they strained their eyes to the
memorable points as they slowly paced through the temple. Some were
reading one to another in bated voices, and I thought them ridiculous;
but perhaps they were wise, and rather he was ridiculous who marched by
them and contented himself with a general sense of the grandeur, the
splendor.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 161 of 353
Words from 44173 to 44431
of 97259
