I suspect, would
not thank me for doing worse what the guide-books have done better.
Below the great window in the apsis,--the same that contains what is one
of the earliest of modern commentaries on the Book of Revelation,--the
pavement was perforated by a number of small openings; and on looking
down, I could see a subterranean chamber, with burning lamps. Its wall
was adorned with pictures like the great temple above: and I could
plainly hear the low chant of priests issuing from it. I had lighted, in
short, upon a subterranean chapel; and here, in a shrine of gold and
silver, lay embalmed the body of a former Archbishop of Milan--San Carlo
Borromeo. Through the glass-lid of the coffin you could see the
half-rotten corpse,--for the skill of the embalmer had been no match for
the stealthy advances of decay,--tricked out in its gorgeous vestments,
with the ring glittering on its finger, and the mitre pressing upon its
fleshless skull. San Carlo Borromeo is the patron saint of Milan; and
hence these perpetual lamps and ceaseless chantings at his tomb. The
black withered face and naked skull grin horribly at the flaunting
finery that surrounds him; and one almost expects to see him stretch out
his skeleton hands, and tear it angrily in rags. The unusually short
period of thirty years was all that intervened betwixt the death and the
canonization of San Carlo; and his mother, who was alive at the time,
though a very aged woman, had the peculiar satisfaction of seeing her
son placed on the altars of Rome, and become an object of worship,--a
happiness which, so far as we know, has not been enjoyed by mortal
mother since the days of Juno and other ladies of her time. We do not
envy San Carlo his honours; but we submit whether it was judicious to
confer them just so soon. Before decreeing worship to one, would it not
be better to let his contemporaries pass from the stage of time?
Incongruous reminiscences are apt to mix themselves up with his worship.
San Carlo had been like other children when young, we doubt not, and was
none the worse of the castigation he received at times from the hand of
her whose duty it now became to worship him. His mother little dreamt
that it was an infant god she was chastising. "He was a pleasant
companion," said a lady, when informed of the canonization of St Francis
de Sales, "but he cheated horribly at cards." "When I was at Milan,"
says Addison, "I saw a book newly published, that was dedicat