IN THE EUROPEAN ATMOSPHERE 1853-1856 549 



going through a low mass, with a small congregation of 

 delayed worshipers, and we took our place back of these. 

 The priest raced through the service at the highest 

 possible speed. His motions were like those of an autom 

 aton: he kept turning quickly to and fro as if on a pivot; 

 clasping his hands before his breast as if by machinery ; 

 bowing his head as if it moved by a spring in his 

 neck; mumbling and rattling like wind in a chimney; 

 the choir-boy who served the mass with him jingling 

 his bell as irreverently as if he were conducting a green 

 grocer s cart. My Anglican companion immediately be 

 gan to be unhappy, and was soon deeply distressed. He 

 groaned again and again. He whispered, &quot;Good hea 

 vens, is it like this? Is this the way they do it? This 

 is fearful!&quot; As we came from the church he was very 

 sorrowful, and I administered to him such comfort as 

 I could, but nothing could remedy this most painful dis 

 enchantment. 



And here I may say that I have never been able to un 

 derstand how any Anglican churchman can feel any in 

 sufficiency in the Lord s Supper as administered in his 

 own branch of the church. I have never taken part in 

 it, but more than once I have lingered to see it, and even 

 in its simplest form it has always greatly impressed me. 

 It is a service which all can understand; its words have 

 come down through the ages ; its ceremonial is calm, com 

 prehensible, touching; and the whole idea of communion 

 in memory of the last scene in the Saviour s life, which 

 brings the worshiper into loving relation not only with 

 him, but with all the church, militant and triumphant, 

 is, to my mind, infinitely nobler and more religious than 

 all paraphernalia, genuflexions, and man-millinery. How 

 any Protestant, however &quot;high&quot; in his tendencies, can 

 feel otherwise is incomprehensible to me. 



At that first of my many visits to Rome, there had 

 come one experience which had greatly softened any of 

 my inherited Protestant prejudices. Our party had been 

 lumbering along all day on the road from Civita Vecchia, 



