That they _did_ drink, however, was clear;
that they _had_ drunk was equally certain; and that they intended to
continue drinking seemed to come within the limits of probability. Sir Lionel Flamstead was a retired merchant--one of those high-souled,
high-principled traders, of whom our City was once so justly proud, and
of whom so few, in these days of railway bubbles, and other harebrained
speculations, can be found. His word was his bond--once passed, it was
sufficient; his acceptances were accounted safe as the Bank of England. Had Sir Thomas Gresham descended from his niche he could not have been
treated with greater consideration than attended Sir Lionel's appearance
on 'Change. All eyes followed the movements of his tall and stately
figure--all hats were raised to his courteous but ceremonious
salutation. Affable, yet precise, and tinctured with something of the
punctiliousness of the old school, his manners won him universal respect
and regard, even from those unknown to him. By his intimates he was
revered. His habits were as regular as clockwork, and the glass of cold
punch at Tom's, or the basin of soup at Birch's, wound him up for the
day. His attire was as formal as his manners, being a slight
modification of the prevalent costume of some five-and-thirty years ago. He had consented, not without extreme reluctance, to clothe his nether
limbs in the unmentionable garment of recent introduction; but he
resolutely adhered to the pigtail. There is something, by-the-bye, in a
pigtail, to which old gentlemen cling in spite of all remonstrance, with
lover-like pertinacity. Only hint the propriety of cutting it off to
your great-uncle or your grandfather, and you may rely on being cut off
with a shilling yourself. Be this as it may, Sir Lionel gathered his
locks, once sable as the riband that bound them, but now thickly strewn
with the silver "blossoms of the grave," into a knot, and suffered them
to dangle a few inches below his collar. His shoes shone with a lustre
beyond French polish, and his hat was brushed till not a wind dared to
approach it. Sir Lionel wore a white, unstarched cravat, with a thick
pad in it, sported a frill over his waistcoat, carried a black ebony
cane in his hand, and was generally followed by a pet pug-dog, one of
the most sagacious and disagreeable specimens of his species. Sir Lionel
Flamstead, I have said, was tall--I might have said he was very
tall--somewhat narrower across the shoulders than about the hips--a
circumstance which did not materially conduce to his symmetry--with
grey, benevolent eyes, shaded by bushy, intelligent brows--a lofty,
expansive forehead, in which, in the jargon of phrenology, the organs of
locality and ideality were strongly developed, and which was rendered
the more remarkable from the flesh having fallen in on either side of
the temples--with a nose which had been considered handsome and well
proportioned in his youth, but to which good living had imparted a
bottle form and a bottle tint--and cheeks from which all encroachment of
whiskers was sedulously removed, in order, we conclude, that his rosy
complexion might be traced from its point of concentration, upon the
prominent feature before mentioned, to its final disappearance behind
his ears. Such was Sir Lionel Flamstead. A NIGHT'S ADVENTURE IN ROME




CHAPTER I

SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE

    The Pope was saying the high, high mass,
      All on Saint Peter's day;
    With the power to him given by the saints in heaven
      To wash men's sins away. The Pope he was saying the blessed mass,
      And the people kneel'd around;
    And from each man's soul his sins did pass,
      As he kissed the holy ground. --_The Grey Brother._


Chancing to be in Rome in the August of 1830, I visited the gorgeous
church of Santa Maria Maggiore during the celebration of the anniversary
of the Holy Assumption. It was a glorious sight to one unaccustomed to the imposing religious
ceremonials of the Romish Church, to witness all the pomp and splendour
displayed at this high solemnity--to gaze down that glittering pile, and
mark the various ecclesiastical dignitaries, each in their peculiar and
characteristic costume, employed in the ministration of their sacred
functions, and surrounded by a wide semicircle of the papal guards, so
stationed to keep back the crowd, and who, with their showy scarlet
attire and tall halberds, looked like the martial figures we see in the
sketches of Callot. Nor was the brilliant effect of this picture
diminished by the sumptuous framework in which it was set. Overhead
flamed a roof resplendent with burnished gold; before me rose a canopy
supported by pillars of porphyry, and shining with many-coloured stones;
while on either hand were chapels devoted to some noble house, and
boasting each the marble memorial of a pope. Melodious masses proper to
the service were ever and anon chanted by the papal choir, and
overpowering perfume was diffused around by a hundred censers. Subdued by the odours, the music, and the spectacle, I sank into a state
of dreamy enthusiasm, during a continuance of which I almost fancied
myself a convert to the faith of Rome, and surrendered myself
unreflectingly to an admiration of its errors. As I gazed among the
surrounding crowd, the sight of so many prostrate figures, all in
attitudes of deepest devotion, satisfied me of the profound religious
impression of the ceremonial. As elsewhere, this feeling was not
universal; and, as elsewhere, likewise, more zeal was exhibited by the
lower than the higher classes of society; and I occasionally noted
amongst the latter the glitter of an eye or the flutter of a bosom, not
altogether agitated, I suspect, by holy aspirations. Yet methought, on
the whole, I had never seen such abandonment of soul, such prostration
of spirit, in my own colder clime, and during the exercise of my own
more chastened creed, as that which in several instances I now beheld;
and I almost envied the poor maiden near me, who, abject upon the earth,
had washed away her sorrows, and perhaps her sins, in contrite tears. As such thoughts swept through my mind, I felt a pleasure in singling
out particular figures and groups which interested me, from their
peculiarity of costume, or from their devotional fervour. Amongst
others, a little to my left, I remarked a band of mountaineers from
Calabria, for such I judged them to be from their wild and picturesque
garb. Deeply was every individual of this little knot of peasantry
impressed by the ceremonial. Every eye was humbly cast down; every knee
bent; every hand was either occupied in grasping the little crucifix
suspended from its owner's neck, in telling the beads of his rosary, or
fervently crossed upon his bare and swarthy breast. While gazing upon this group, I chanced upon an individual whom I had
not hitherto noticed, and who now irresistibly attracted my attention.