- The Verger With The Silver Mace Who Precedes The Vicar
To The Desk; The Two Chaplains Of My Lord Archbishop,
Who bow over
his Grace as he enters the communion-table gate; even poor John,
who follows my Lady with
A coroneted prayer-book, and makes his
conge as he hands it into the pew. What a chivalrous absurdity is
the banner of some high and mighty prince, hanging over his stall
in Windsor Chapel, when you think of the purpose for which men are
supposed to assemble there! The Church of the Knights of St. John
is paved over with sprawling heraldic devices of the dead gentlemen
of the dead Order; as if, in the next world, they expected to take
rank in conformity with their pedigrees, and would be marshalled
into heaven according to the orders of precedence. Cumbrous
handsome paintings adorn the walls and chapels, decorated with
pompous monuments of Grand Masters. Beneath is a crypt, where more
of these honourable and reverend warriors lie, in a state that a
Simpson would admire. In the altar are said to lie three of the
most gallant relics in the world: the keys of Acre, Rhodes, and
Jerusalem. What blood was shed in defending these emblems! What
faith, endurance, genius, and generosity; what pride, hatred,
ambition, and savage lust of blood were roused together for their
guardianship!
In the lofty halls and corridors of the Governor's house, some
portraits of the late Grand Masters still remain: a very fine one,
by Caravaggio, of a knight in gilt armour, hangs in the dining-
room, near a full-length of poor Louis XVI., in Royal robes, the
very picture of uneasy impotency. But the portrait of De
Vignacourt is the only one which has a respectable air; the other
chiefs of the famous Society are pompous old gentlemen in black,
with huge periwigs, and crowns round their hats, and a couple of
melancholy pages in yellow and red. But pages and wigs and Grand
Masters have almost faded out of the canvas, and are vanishing into
Hades with a most melancholy indistinctness. The names of most of
these gentlemen, however, live as yet in the forts of the place,
which all seem to have been eager to build and christen: so that
it seems as if, in the Malta mythology, they had been turned into
freestone.
In the armoury is the very suit painted by Caravaggio, by the side
of the armour of the noble old La Valette, whose heroism saved his
island from the efforts of Mustapha and Dragut, and an army quite
as fierce and numerous as that which was baffled before Gibraltar,
by similar courage and resolution. The sword of the last-named
famous corsair (a most truculent little scimitar), thousands of
pikes and halberts, little old cannons and wall-pieces, helmets and
cuirasses, which the knights or their people wore, are trimly
arranged against the wall, and, instead of spiking Turks or arming
warriors, now serve to point morals and adorn tales. And here
likewise are kept many thousand muskets, swords, and boarding-pikes
for daily use, and a couple of ragged old standards of one of the
English regiments, who pursued and conquered in Egypt the remains
of the haughty and famous French republican army, at whose
appearance the last knights of Malta flung open the gates of all
their fortresses, and consented to be extinguished without so much
as a remonstrance, or a kick, or a struggle.
We took a drive into what may be called the country; where the
fields are rocks, and the hedges are stones - passing by the stone
gardens of the Florian, and wondering at the number and
handsomeness of the stone villages and churches rising everywhere
among the stony hills. Handsome villas were passed everywhere, and
we drove for a long distance along the sides of an aqueduct, quite
a Royal work of the Caravaggio in gold armour, the Grand Master De
Vignacourt. A most agreeable contrast to the arid rocks of the
general scenery was the garden at the Governor's country-house;
with the orange-trees and water, its beautiful golden grapes,
luxuriant flowers, and thick cool shrubberies. The eye longs for
this sort of refreshment, after being seared with the hot glare of
the general country; and St. Antonio was as pleasant after Malta as
Malta was after the sea.
We paid the island a subsequent visit in November, passing
seventeen days at an establishment called Fort Manuel there, and by
punsters the Manuel des Voyageurs; where Government accommodates
you with quarters; where the authorities are so attentive as to
scent your letters with aromatic vinegar before you receive them,
and so careful of your health as to lock you up in your room every
night lest you should walk in your sleep, and so over the
battlements into the sea - if you escaped drowning in the sea, the
sentries on the opposite shore would fire at you, hence the nature
of the precaution. To drop, however, this satirical strain: those
who know what quarantine is, may fancy that the place somehow
becomes unbearable in which it has been endured. And though the
November climate of Malta is like the most delicious May in
England, and though there is every gaiety and amusement in the
town, a comfortable little opera, a good old library filled full of
good old books (none of your works of modern science, travel, and
history, but good old USELESS books of the last two centuries), and
nobody to trouble you in reading them, and though the society of
Valetta is most hospitable, varied, and agreeable, yet somehow one
did not feel SAFE in the island, with perpetual glimpses of Fort
Manuel from the opposite shore; and, lest the quarantine
authorities should have a fancy to fetch one back again, on a
pretext of posthumous plague, we made our way to Naples by the very
first opportunity - those who remained, that is, of the little
Eastern Expedition.
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