consideration made you go away much
modester than you came. "After all," you may have said, "it is not a
gallery; it is not a museum. It is a house of prayer," and you emerged,
let us hope, humbled, and in so far fitted for renewed joy in the
beauty, the glory of the sublime colonnades.

VII. CHANCES IN CHURCHES

[Illustration: 25 SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA]

If any one were to ask me which was the most beautiful church in Rome I
should temporize, and perhaps I should end by saying that there was
none. Ecclesiastical Rome seems to have inherited the instinct of
imperial Rome for ugliness; only, where imperial Rome used the instinct
collectively, ecclesiastical Rome has used it distributively in the
innumerable churches, each less lovely than the other. This position
will do to hedge from; it is a bold outpost from which I may be driven
in, especially by travellers who have seen the churches I did not see. I
took my chances, they theirs; for nobody can singly see all the churches
in Rome; that would need a syndicate.

If imperial Rome was beautiful in detail because it had the Greeks to
imagine the things it so hideously grouped, ecclesiastical Rome may be
unbeautiful in detail because it had not the Goths to realize the beauty
of its religious aspiration--that is, if it was the Goths who invented
Gothic architecture; I do not suppose it was. Anyway, there is said to
be but one Gothic church in Rome, and this I did not visit, perhaps
because I felt that I must inure myself to the prevalent baroque, or
perhaps from mere perversity. I can merely say in self-defence that, on
the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty
than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the
power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches
sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in sculpture,
in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the
roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches
are lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with
bronze gilded or silver plated, and precious stones wrought and
unwrought, that the soul, or if not the soul the taste, shrinks dismayed
from them. Execution in default of inspiration has had its way to the
last excess; there is nothing that it has not done to show what it can
do; and all that it has done is a triumph of misguided skill and power.
But it w