That was Sterling's habit.It is expected in this Nineteenth Century that a man of culture shall understand and worship Art:among the windy gospels addressed to our poor Century there are few louder than this of Art;--and if the Century expects that every man shall do his duty,surely Sterling was not the man to balk it!Various extracts from these picture-surveys are given in Hare;the others,I suppose,Sterling himself subsequently destroyed,not valuing them much.
Certainly no stranger could address himself more eagerly to reap what artistic harvest Rome offers,which is reckoned the peculiar produce of Rome among cities under the sun;to all galleries,churches,sistine chapels,ruins,coliseums,and artistic or dilettante shrines he zealously pilgrimed;and had much to say then and afterwards,and with real technical and historical knowledge I believe,about the objects of devotion there.But it often struck me as a question,Whether all this even to himself was not,more or less,a nebulous kind of element;prescribed not by Nature and her verities,but by the Century expecting every man to do his duty?Whether not perhaps,in good part,temporary dilettante cloudland of our poor Century;--or can it be the real diviner Pisgah height,and everlasting mount of vision,for man's soul in any Century?And I think Sterling himself bent towards a negative conclusion,in the course of years.Certainly,of all subjects this was the one I cared least to hear even Sterling talk of:indeed it is a subject on which earnest men,abhorrent of hypocrisy and speech that has no meaning,are admonished to silence in this sad time,and had better,in such a Babel as we have got into for the present,"perambulate their picture-gallery with little or no speech."Here is another and to me much more earnest kind of "Art,"which renders Rome unique among the cities of the world;of this we will,in preference;take a glance through Sterling's eyes:--"January 22d,1839.--On Friday last there was a great Festival at St.
Peter's;the only one I have seen.The Church was decorated with crimson hangings,and the choir fitted up with seats and galleries,and a throne for the Pope.There were perhaps a couple of hundred guards of different kinds;and three or four hundred English ladies,and not so many foreign male spectators;so that the place looked empty.The Cardinals in scarlet,and Monsignori in purple,were there;and a body of officiating Clergy.The Pope was carried in in his chair on men's shoulders,wearing the Triple Crown;which I have thus actually seen:it is something like a gigantic Egg,and of the same color,with three little bands of gold,--very large Egg-shell with three streaks of the yolk smeared round it.He was dressed in white silk robes,with gold trimmings.
"It was a fine piece of state-show;though,as there are three or four such Festivals yearly,of course there is none of the eager interest which breaks out at coronations and similar rare events;no explosion of unwonted velvets,jewels,carriages and footmen,such as London and Milan have lately enjoyed.I guessed all the people in St.Peter's,including performers and spectators,at 2,000;where 20,000would hardly have been a crushing crowd.Mass was performed,and a stupid but short Latin sermon delivered by a lad,in honor of St.Peter,who would have been much astonished if he could have heard it.The genuflections,and train-bearings,and folding up the tails of silk petticoats while the Pontiff knelt,and the train of Cardinals going up to kiss his Ring,and so forth,--made on me the impression of something immeasurably old and sepulchral,such as might suit the Grand Lama's court,or the inside of an Egyptian Pyramid;or as if the Hieroglyphics on one of the Obelisks here should begin to pace and gesticulate,and nod their bestial heads upon the granite tablets.
The careless bystanders,the London ladies with their eye-glasses and look of an Opera-box,the yawning young gentlemen of the _Guarda Nobile_,and the laugh of one of the file of vermilion Priests round the steps of the altar at the whispered good thing of his neighbor,brought one back to nothing indeed of a very lofty kind,but still to the Nineteenth Century."--"At the great Benediction of the City and the World on Easter Sunday by the Pope,"he writes afterwards,"there was a large crowd both native and foreign,hundreds of carriages,and thousands of the lower orders of people from the country;but even of the poor hardly one in twenty took off his hat,and a still smaller number knelt down.A few years ago,not a head was covered,nor was there a knee which did not bow."--A very decadent "Holiness of our Lord the Pope,"it would appear!--Sterling's view of the Pope,as seen in these his gala days,doing his big play-actorism under God's earnest sky,was much more substantial to me than his studies in the picture-galleries.To Mr.Hare also he writes:"I have seen the Pope in all his pomp at St.Peter's;and he looked to me a mere lie in livery.The Romish Controversy is doubtless a much more difficult one than the managers of the Religious-Tract Society fancy,because it is a theoretical dispute;and in dealing with notions and authorities,I can quite understand how a mere student in a library,with no eye for facts,should take either one side or other.But how any man with clear head and honest heart,and capable of seeing realities,and distinguishing them from scenic falsehoods,should,after living in a Romanist country,and especially at Rome,be inclined to side with Leo against Luther,Icannot understand."[20]