But as regarded the general aspect of the basilica, the decent
glories of its earlier days seemed irrevocably departed and destroyed.
After what has been said of the edifice, the reader will have little
difficulty in imagining that the square in which it stood lost whatever
elevation of character it might once have possessed, with even greater
rapidity than the church itself. If the cathedral now looked like an
immense toyshop, assuredly its attendant colonnades had the appearance
of the booths of an enormous fair.
The day, whose decline we have hinted at in the preceding chapter, was
fast verging towards its close, as the inhabitants of the streets on the
western bank of the Tiber prepared to join the crowds that they beheld
passing by their windows in the direction of the Basilica of St. Peter.
The cause of this sudden confluence of the popular current in once
common direction was made sufficiently apparent to all inquirers who
happened to be near a church or a public building, by the appearance in
such situations of a large sheet of vellum elaborately illuminated,
raised on a high pole, and guarded from contact with the inquisitive
rabble by two armed soldiers.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134