The Fog Was So Dense Here, That The Spire Of The Far-Famed
Cathedral Might As Well Have Been At Bombay, For Anything That
Could Be Seen Of It At That Time.
But as we halted to refresh, for
a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, I had
ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its
majesty and beauty.
All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it! There are
many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo
has--if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject--'my warm
heart.' A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to
the poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the
bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour his
memory. I honour it none the less, because he was nearly slain by
a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar: in
acknowledgment of his endeavours to reform a false and hypocritical
brotherhood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo
Borromeo as it shielded him! A reforming Pope would need a little
shielding, even now.
The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo is
preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps,
as any place can show. The tapers which are lighted down there,
flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately
wrought by skilful hands, and representing the principal events in
the life of the saint.
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