In the Basilica of San Spirito my mother came
upon several visible lovelinesses of elaborate devotion, which with
her limpid purity of justice she enthusiastically notes down. She
entered the church one day for coolness and rest, and, recognizing its
"noble" beauties, she described, in her journal already printed, "a
function going on before one of the side-chapels--the burial service
of a child. The coffin was covered with a white satin pall,
embroidered with purple and gold. The officiating priests were in
robes of white satin and gold, and the altar was alight with candles,
besides those borne by young boys in white tunics. This scene in the
aisle was a splendid picture in the soft gloom of the church; and when
the organ burst forth in a kind of tender rapture, rolling pearly
waves of harmony along the large spaces, and filling the dome with the
foam and spray of interlacing measures, it seemed as if angels were
welcoming the young child to heaven." The pettiness of a brief burial
service in a private parlor or in a meagre meeting-house would not
have touched her heart so profoundly, because it would not have
recalled heaven so impressively in all its grandeur and tenderness.
She evidently perceived here the sweet and even cheering veracity of a
devotion that is glad to remember all the possibilities of reverent
observance, each motion and aspect of which have a reference to God
and to religious history. Again San Spirito gave her an insight into
the dignity of painstaking worship.
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