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I do not recollect being in a room with any other ecclesiastics, except a Priest at Castro-Giovanni in Sicily, who called on me when I was ill, and with whom I wished to hold a controversy. As to Church Services, we attended the Tenebræ, at the Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere; and that was all. My general feeling was, "All, save the spirit of man, is divine."
From that time only Allegri's and Bai's were sung in the Pope's chapel; till Pius VII directed the celebrated Baini to compose a new Miserere, which has received well-merited applause. Since the year 1821 all three, viz.
Gentlemen who are in evening dress are admitted to stand in the reserved places inside the lines of soldiers. For the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel tickets are also issued. As there is only room for about four hundred ladies, and a thousand and more tickets are given out, you may imagine the scramble. Ladies go for hours before the singing begins, and make a grand rush when the doors are open.
Here is a very fine Early English and Perpendicular church with a lofty spire. Notice the beautiful modern mosaics depicting the Prophets and Apostles. Also the old miserere seats and an ancient muniment chest. The window under the tower is in memory of Robert Southey whose daughter married a onetime vicar of Tarring. Another incumbent here was Stripe the historian.
Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its center the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it.
We must mark, also, with what freedom his lamentations spring from the ground, to carry even to the feet of the Creator the overwhelming weight of earthly woe. Ary Scheffer's picture is like the epitaph destined some day for the obsequies of the world; it breathes of death, and has the sombre harmony of the Miserere.
I could not have borne to see a man again. However many years I might have lived, no sound but the Miserere " "But, Eva! I thought thou wert going to die in a month." "It is very rude to interrupt, Marie. No sound but the Miserere would ever have broken the chill echoes of my lonely cell, nor should any raiment softer than sackcloth have come near my seared and blighted heart!"
But does it not occur to you that one may love truth as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better than even the sympathy and approbation of many good men whom he honors, better than sleeping to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the repetition of an effete Confession of Faith? The three learned professions have but recently emerged from a state of quasi barbarism.
Deronda, having looked enough at the German translation of the Hebrew in the book before him to know that he was chiefly hearing Psalms and Old Testament passages or phrases, gave himself up to that strongest effect of chanted liturgies which is independent of detailed verbal meaning like the effect of an Allegri's Miserere or a Palestrina's Magnificat.
I stayed five hours to-day to see the Pope wash feet, which was very silly; for I saw mother wash them much more effectually twenty years ago! "The crowd is better worth seeing than the ceremony, if one could only see it without being in it. I shall not try to hear the 'Miserere' I have given up the study of music! Since I failed to appreciate Mario, I sha'n't try any more!
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