gels. Correggio was a famous Italian artist of the
sixteenth century, who painted cherubs like children who were just going
to heaven, and children like cherubs who had just come out of it. But
then, he had the Italian children for models, and they get the knack of
being lovely very young. An Italian child finds it as easy to be pretty
as an American child to be good.

One could not but be struck with the patience these little people
exhibited in their occupation, and the enjoyment they got out of it.
There was no noise; all conversed in subdued whispers and behaved in the
most gentle manner to each other, especially to the smallest, and there
were many of them so small that they could only toddle about by the most
judicious exercise of their equilibrium. I do not say this by way of
reproof to any other kind of children.

These little groups, as I have said, were scattered all about the
church; and they made with their tapers little spots of light, which
looked in the distance very much like Correggio's picture which is at
Dresden,--the Holy Family at Night, and the light from the Divine Child
blazing in the faces of all the attendants. Some of the children were
infants in the nurses' arms, but no one was too small to have a taper,
and to run the risk of burning its fingers.

There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, and the
church has understood this longing in human nature, and found means to
gratify it by this festival of tapers.

The groups do not all remain long in place, you may imagine; there is a
good deal of shifting about, and I see little stragglers wandering over
the church, like fairies lighted by fireflies. Occasionally they form
a little procession and march from one altar to another, their lights
twinkling as they go.

But all this time there is music pouring out of the organ-loft at the
end of the church, and flooding all its spaces with its volume. In front
of the organ is a choir of boys, led by a round-faced and jolly monk,
who rolls about as he sings, and lets the deep bass noise rumble about a
long time in his stomach before he pours it out of his mouth. I can see
the faces of all of them quite well, for each singer has a candle to
light his music-book.

And next to the monk stands the boy,--the handsomest boy in the whole
world probably at this moment. I can see now his great, liquid, dark
eyes, and his exquisite face, and the way he tossed back his long
waving hair whe