And What A Sense Of
Exultation, Joy, Delight, It Was, When The Great Bell Struck Half-
Past Seven--On The
Instant--to behold one bright red mass of fire,
soar gallantly from the top of the cupola to the extremest
Summit
of the cross, and the moment it leaped into its place, become the
signal of a bursting out of countless lights, as great, and red,
and blazing as itself, from every part of the gigantic church; so
that every cornice, capital, and smallest ornament of stone,
expressed itself in fire: and the black, solid groundwork of the
enormous dome seemed to grow transparent as an egg-shell!
A train of gunpowder, an electric chain--nothing could be fired,
more suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumination; and when
we had got away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards
it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, shining and
glittering in the calm night like a jewel! Not a line of its
proportions wanting; not an angle blunted; not an atom of its
radiance lost.
The next night--Easter Monday--there was a great display of
fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an
opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in good time,
through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and
all the avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by which
the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the
rapid Tiber below.
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