r, was
constantly "abroad."

The story, which Irving tells at considerable length, represents the
victor in the duel referred to as having suffered infinite remorse for
his murderous act, and that he was pursued night and day by a terrible
phantom visible only to himself. In vain was the severest self-imposed
penance, in vain the confessional, in vain his prayerful regrets. He
seemed doomed as a just punishment to endure a purgatory upon earth. The
great onus of the whole affair, however, as made to appear in the
narrative, was not the sacrifice of a human life under such
circumstances, but that the act should have been committed on Good
Friday!

CHAPTER XI.

The Famous Church of St. John.--By What Means it was
Decorated.--Grand Mosaic Floor.--Roman Catholic Ceremonials.
--Remarkable Relics.--Chapels of the Languages.--A Devout
Artist.--Church Treasures.--Thieving French Soldiers.--
Poetical Justice.--The Hateful Inquisition.--Churches of
Valletta.--A Forlorn Hope.--Heroic Conduct.--A Maltese
Pantheon.--A Rival Dome to St. Paul's, London.--Some Fine
Paintings.

After the Grand Palace of the Knights, described in the last chapter,
the next place of interest to a stranger in Malta is the church of St.
John, which stands upon an open square, shaded by graceful trees,
opposite the head of the Strada Santa Lucia. It is a little over three
centuries old, having been built by the order about the year 1576, at
great cost. The members of the fraternity vied with each other in its
elaborate adornment, and lavished untold sums of gold for this purpose.
Robbery upon the high seas, predatory invasions of unprotected coast
towns, and the sale into slavery of the captives--men, women, and
children--whom they thus got possession of, served to keep the purses of
the Knights full, and enabled them to indulge their wildest fancy to its
full extent. Perhaps the expenditure of their ill-gotten wealth in this
direction was the least harmful of all the ways in which it was
squandered. The piratical manner in which they procured the means for
the costly adornment of the church of St. John did not militate against
the acceptability of the same, on the part of the priesthood immediately
attached to the cathedral. What a satire upon the "holy" character of
this Romish temple, this church of St. John! "The church," says Goethe,
"has a good stomach; has never known a surfeit; the church