Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
Small single oratories are scattered about all over the Canton Ticino, and indeed everywhere in North Italy, by the road-side, at all halting- places, and especially at the crest of any more marked ascent, where the tired wayfarer, probably heavy laden, might be inclined to say a naughty word or two if not checked. The people like them, and miss them when they come to England.
But such as lived at a distance, or from local inconveniences could not constantly repair to the place of general association, were allowed to build Proseuchiæ, or Oratories, in one of which our Saviour continued all night in prayer.
It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious France invented boudoirs. Women could not well have Virgil's willows in the economy of our modern dwellings. On the downfall of oratories, these little cubbies become boudoirs. This conjugal drama has three acts. The act of the prologue is already played.
Here, how many prayers we uttered, what abundance of tears we shed, what deep sighs we breathed forth, is only known to our Lord Jesus Christ. From the most glorious sepulchre of Christ, we were conducted to visit the other sacred monuments of the holy city; and saw, with weeping eyes, a great number of holy churches and oratories, which Achius the Soldan of Egypt had lately destroyed.
They had displaced some earlier Druidical or other sun-worshippers who had carried on their rites at this lonely spot; but the Roman innovation soon became a thing of the past and the Franks, after their conversion to Christianity, built on the rock two oratories, one to St Stephen and the other to St Symphorian. It was then that the name Mont-Jou was abandoned in favour of Mons-Tumba.
All the old apartments have been rechristened, as it were; the geography of the castle has been re-established. The guard-rooms, the bedrooms, the closets, the oratories have recovered their identity. Every spot connected with the murder of the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a small, shrill boy, who takes you from room to room and who has learned his lesson in perfection.
Another eager human soul on the threshold longing to find some suitable high work in the world, all unwitting of the fact that ideal strivings are everywhere despised and discouraged jerry-built cottages for the million being the day's demand and not oratories or palaces of art or temples for the spirit. Not the time for a "professor of æsthetics," one would say, and assuredly not the place.
This reminded me that I was now in Peter's patrimony, the holy land of Romanism; and where, it was presumed, the wayfarer would catch the spirit of devotion from the soil and air. The hour of prayer might be past, I know not; but I saw no one in these oratories.
Meanwhile the four already mentioned still prayed, day and night, at the Maha Phrasat. A service was likewise performed for the royal family twice a day, in an adjacent temporary chapel, where all the court attended, including the noble ladies of the harem, who occupy private oratories, hung with golden draperies, behind which they can see and hear without being seen.
Russia, which now held the country as a dependency, had sufficient sentiment left to leave it alone; it was true that the holy places had been desecrated, and remained now only as spots of antiquarian interest; the altars were gone but the sites were yet marked, and, although mass could no longer be said there, it was understood that private oratories were not forbidden.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking