JUNE. (continued 4)
Reading edition
“Viewed from the Trinità de’ Monti, its effect was unspeakably beautiful: it seemed to be an enchanted palace hung in air, and called up by the wand of some invisible spirit. We did not, however, drive to the Trinità de’ Monti till after the exhibition of the girandola, or great fire-works from the castle of St. Angelo, which commenced by a tremendous explosion that represented the raging eruption of a volcano. Red sheets of fire seemed to blaze upwards into the glowing heavens, and then to pour down their liquid streams upon the earth. This was followed by an incessant and complicated display of every varied device that imagination could figure—one changing into another, and the beauty of the first effaced by that of the last. Hundreds of immense wheels turned round with a velocity that almost seemed as if demons were whirling them, letting fall thousands of hissing dragons, and scorpions, and fiery snakes, whose long convolutions, darting forward as far as the eye could reach in every direction, at length vanished into air. Fountains and jets of fire threw up their blazing cascades into the skies. The whole vault of heaven shone with the vivid fires, and seemed to receive into itself innumerable stars and suns, which, shooting up into it in brightness almost insufferable, vanished, like earth-born hopes. The reflection in the depth of the calm clear waters of the Tiber, was scarcely less beautiful than the spectacle itself; and the whole ended in a tremendous burst of fire, that, while it lasted, almost seemed to threaten conflagration to the world.
“The expense of the illumination of St. Peter’s, and of the girandola, when repeated two successive evenings, as they invariably are at the festival of St. Peter, is one thousand crowns; when only exhibited one night they cost seven hundred. Eighty men were employed in the instantaneous illuminations of the lamps, which to us seemed the work of enchantment: they were so posted as to be unseen.”[201]
Dr. Forster, in certain remarks on the excitement of the imagination, cites some “Verses by a modern poet, on an appearance beheld in the clouds,” which may aptly come after the glowing description of the illumination of St. Peter’s:—
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city—boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth Far sinking into splendour, without end! Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt With battlements, that on their restless fronts Bore stars—illumination of all gems! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified; on them, and on the coves, And mountain steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded—taking there Their station under a cerulean sky.
Chronology.
363. The emperor Julian died, aged thirty-two. He was denominated the apostate, from having professed Christianity before he ascended the throne, and afterwards relapsing to Paganism. He received his death wound in a battle with the Persians. Dr. Watkins in his “Biographical Dictionary” says, that he was virtuous and modest in his manners, and liberal in his disposition, an enemy to luxury, and averse to public amusements.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Yellow Rattle. Rhinanthus Galli. Dedicated to St. Peter.
June 30.
St. Paul, the Apostle. St. Martial, Bp. of Limoges, 3d Cent.
St. Paul.
Paul, the apostle, was martyred, according to some accounts, on the 29th of June, in the year, 65; according to others in the month of May, 66.[202] A Romish writer fables that, before he was beheaded, he “loked vp into heuen, markynge his foreheed and his breste with the sygne of the crosse,” although that sign was an after invention; and that, “as soone as the heed was from the body,” it said “Jesus Christus fyfty tymes.”[203] Another pretends from St. Chrysostom, that “from the head of St. Paul when it was cut off there came not one drop of blood, but there ran fountains of milk;” and that “we have by tradition, that the blessed head gave three leaps, and at each of them there sprung up a fountain where the head fell: which fountains remain to this day, and are reverenced with singular devotion by all Christian Catholics.”[204] The fictions of the Romish church, and its devotions to devices, are innumerable.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Yellow Cistus. Cistus Helianthemum. Dedicated to St. Paul.
