THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETERS.

Waikato Argus, Volume I, Issue 59, 21 November 1896, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETERS.

TiiK new number of the Century Magazine opens with an article on the Cathedral of St. Fetor's, in Home, by MiMarion Crawford. "We who have known St. Peter's since the old days," says the writer, '• cannot go in under the portico without iccalling vividly the splendid pageants we have seen pass in and out by the same gate. Even before reaching it we glance up from tiie vast square to the high balcony, remembering how from there Pius IX used to chant out the pontifical beiicdicti'in to the city and the world, while iu the silence below one could hear the breathing of a hundred thousand human beings. That is all in ghost-land now, and will soon 1 e beyond the reach of memory. In the coach houses behind the Vatican the old State coaches are mouldering ; and the Pope in his great mini ycslalorla, the bearers, the fan-men, the princes, the cardinals, the guards, and the people will not iu our time be again seen together under the Roman sky. Old fashioned persons sigh for the pageantry of those days when they go up the steps into the church. '' The heavy leathern curtain fads by its own weight, and the air is suddenly changed. A hushed, half rhythmic sound, as of a world breathing in its sleep, makes the silence alive. Ihe light is not dim or ineffectual, but very soft and high, and it is as rich as floating golddust in the far distance und in the apse, an eighth of a mile from the door. There is a blue and hazy atmospheric distance, as painters call it, up in the lantern of the cupola, a twelfth of a mile above the pavemeut. "It is all very big. The longest ship that crosses the ocean could lie in the nave between the door and the apse, and her masts would scarcely top the canopy of the high altar, which looks so small under the super-possible vastness of the immense dome. Wc unconsciously measure dwellings made with hands by our own bodily stature. But there is a limit to that. No man standing for the first time, upon the pavement of St. Peter's can make even a wide guess at the size of what he sees, unless he knows the dimensions of some one object. It is literally too great and wonderful. " It needs 50,000 persons to make a crowd in St. Peter's. Ii is believed that at least that number have been present in the church several times within modern incmoiy ; but it is thought that the building would hold 80,000—as many as could be scateel on the tiers in the Coliseum. Such a concourse was there at the opening of the (Ecumenical Council in December 1860, and at the two jubilees celebrated by Leo XII 1; and on all three occasions there was plenty of room in the aisles, besides the broad spaces which were required for the functions themselves.

"To feel one's own smallncss, and realise it, one need only go and stand beside the marble cherubs that support the holy water basins against the fust pillar. Tl.ey look small, if not graceful; but they are of heroic size, anel the bowls arc as big as baths. Everything in tlic placeis vast; all the statues are colossi), all the pictures enormous ; the smallest de tail of the ornamentation would dwarf any other building in the world, and anywhere else even the chapels would hi churches. The eye strains at everything, anel at tirst the mind is shocked out of its power of comparison. '• But the strangest, most extravagant, most incomprehensible, most disturbing sight e>f all is to be seen from the upper gallery in the cupola looking down to the chinch below. Hanging iu mid-air, with nothing under one's feet, on.; sees the church projected in perspective within a huge circle. It is as though one saw it upside down and inside out. Few men coubl bear to stand there without that bit of iron railing between them and the hideous fall, and the inevitable slight dizziness which the strongest feels may make one doubt for a moment whether whit is really the lloor below may not be in reality a ceiling above, and whether one's sense of gravitation be not inverted in an e.xtraonlinaiy ilreani. At that (lis tauce hitman beings look no bigger than Hies, and the canopy of the high altar might be an ordinary table. " And thence, climbing up betweeu the double domes, one may emerge from the almost terrible perspective to the open air, ami sudelenly see Rome at one's feet, and all the Roman mountains stretched cut to south and east, iu perfect grace of restful outline, shoulder to shoulder, like shadowy women lying side by side and holding hands.

•' It is worth the ell'ort of climbing so high. Foi.r hundred feet in the air, you look down on what ruled half the world by force fer ages, and on what rules the other half to-ilay by faith—the greatest centre of conquest and of discord and of religion which the world has ever seen. A thousand volumes have been writen abemt it by a thouson I wise men. A Word will tell what it has been —the heart of the world. Hither was drawn the world's blood by all the ro.uls that lead to Borne, ami hence it Mas forced out again along the mighty arteries ot the Ciosars' battles—to redden the world with the Roman name. Blocd, blooel, and more blooel—that was the history of old Home : the blood of brothers, the blooel ot locs, the blood of martyrs without end. It flowed and ebbed in vary ing tide at the will of the just ami the unjust, but there was always more to sheil, and there were always more hands to shed it. Ami so it may be again hercalter, for the name of Boine has a heart-stirring ring, anil there lias always been as much blood spilled for the names of things as for the things themselves."