The performance of ritual implies a certain measure of mechanism, and
the wonder is that in the Catholic churches it is not more mechanical
than it actually is. I was no great frequenter of functions, and I
cannot claim that my superior spirituality was ever deeply wounded;
sometimes it was even supported and consoled. I noted, without offence,
in the Church of San Giuseppe how the young monk, who preached an
eloquent sermon on the saint's life and character, exhausted himself
before he exhausted his topic, and sat down between the successive heads
of his discourse and took a good rest. It was the saint's day, which
seemed more generally observed than any other saint's day in Rome, and
his baroque church in Via Capo le Case was thronged with people, mostly
poor and largely peasants, who were apparently not so fatigued by the
preacher's shrill, hard delivery as he was himself. There were many
children, whom their elders held up to see, and there was one young girl
in a hat as wide as a barrel-head standing up where others sat, and
blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and
flaunting feathers.
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