ch is broader, and which a little while ago
was still called the Via dell' Angelo Custode--Guardian Angel Street. It
is an altogether insignificant little church, and strangers scarcely
ever visit it. But going down the Tritone, when your ears are splitting,
and your eyes are confused with the kaleidoscopic figures of the
scurrying crowd, you may lift the heavy leathern curtain, and leave the
hurly-burly outside, and find yourself all alone in the quiet presence
of death, the end of all hurly-burly and confusion. It is quite possible
that under the high, still light in the round church, with its four
niche-like chapels, you may see, draped in black, that thing which no
one ever mistakes for anything else; and round about the coffin a dozen
tall wax candles may be burning with a steady yellow flame. Possibly, at
the sound of the leathern curtain slapping the stone door-posts, as it
falls behind you, a sad-looking sacristan may shuffle out of a dark
corner to see who has come in; possibly not. He may be asleep, or he may
be busy folding vestments in the sacristy. The dead need little
protection from the living, nor does a sacristan readily put himself out
for nothing. You may stand there undisturbed as long as you please, and
see what all the world's noise comes to in the end. Or it may be, if the
departed person belonged to a pious confraternity, that you chance upon
the brothers of the society--clad in dark hoods with only holes for
their eyes, and no man recognized by his neighbour--chanting penitential
psalms and hymns for the one whom they all know because he is dead, and
they are living.

Such contrasts are not lacking in Rome. There are plenty of them
everywhere in the world, perhaps, but they are more striking here, in
proportion as the outward forms of religious practice are more ancient,
unchanging and impressive. For there is nothing very impressive or
unchanging about the daily outside world, especially in Rome.

Rome, the worldly, is the capital of one of the smaller kingdoms of the
world, which those who rule it are anxious to force into the position of
a great power. One need not criticise their action too hardly; their
motives can hardly be anything but patriotic, considering the fearful
sacrifices they impose upon their country. But they are not the men who
brought about Italian unity. They are the successors of those men; they
are not satisfied with that unification, and they have dreamed a dream
of amb