antiquities so well arranged as in
the Vatican, and perhaps the orderly beauty of arrangement has as much
to do as anything else with the charm which pervades the whole. One is
brought into direct communication with Rome at its best, brilliant with
the last reflections of Hellenic light; and again one is brought into
contact with Rome at its worst, and beyond its worst, in its decay and
destruction. Amid the ruin, too, there is the visible sign of a new
growth in the beginnings of Christianity, from which a new power, a new
history, a new literature and a new art were to spring up and blossom,
and in the rude sculpture of the Shepherd, the Lamb and the Fishes lies
the origin of Michelangelo's 'Moses' and 'Pieta.' There, too, one may
read, as in a book, the whole history of death in Rome, graven in the
long lines of ancient inscriptions, the tale of death when there was no
hope, and its story when hope had begun in the belief in the
resurrection of the dead. There the sadness of the sorrowing Roman
contrasts with the gentle hopefulness of the bereaved Christian, and the
sentiment and sentimentality of mankind during the greatest of the
world's developments are told in the very words which men and women
dictated to the stone-cutter. To those who can read the inscriptions the
impression of direct communication with antiquity is very strong. For
those who cannot there is still a special charm in the long succession
of corridors, in the occasional glimpses of the gardens, in the
magnificence of the decorations, as well as in the statues and fragments
which line the endless straight walls. One returns at last to the outer
chambers, one lingers here and there, to look again at something one has
liked, and in the end one goes out remembering the place rather than the
objects it contains, and desiring to return again for the sake of the
whole sensation one has had rather than for any defined purpose.

At the last, opposite the iron turnstile by which visitors are counted,
there is the closed gate of the garden. It is very hard to get admission
to it now, for the Pope himself is often there when the weather is fine.
In the Italian manner of gardening, the grounds are well laid out, and
produce the effect of being much larger than they really are. They are
not, perhaps, very remarkable, and Leo the Thirteenth must sometimes
long for the hills of Carpineto and the freer air of the mountains, as
he drives round and round in the narro