Next came friars and priests, all walking according to established rule and precedence—Capuchins, Franciscans, Carmelites, Dominicans, Augustinians, carrying lighted tapers and chanting litanies. Following these were more Capuchins, to whom was especially delegated the office of carrying all the objects belonging to the Crucifixion; and thus they passed on, white-bearded, tottering old men, bearing successively an emblem of this day's great sacrifice, profaned by being paraded, like some mummery of old, before the idle crowd, who gazed, and sneered, and talked, indifferent to the awful event thus commemorated. The crown of thorns, the purple robe, the scourge, the nails, the dice with which the soldiers had cast lots, the spear, were all carried slowly along; the sacred form itself, in the utter prostration of death, stretched upon a bier, coming next in view. A few knelt here, not one in twenty though; the rest all listless, unthinking, or unbelieving.
Some paces behind, upon a sort of platform, appeared a huge image of the Madonna, considerably above the size of life, dressed in violet robes, with long brown ringlets, and pierced through with seven daggers—all the spiritualized beauty with which the “blessed among women” should be invested, lost in the vulgarity of this most material representation. This, with the dignitaries and magistrates of the town walking two and two, closed the procession; after which marched more soldiers, those who had been stationed along the streets falling into the ranks, and the band performing a funeral-march—the same the Austrians always play after the interment of any of their comrades.
I have not exaggerated this description. To some enthusiastic poetic minds, to whom such things seem beautiful in the abstract, I know my account will prove distasteful. But thus it always is: a close insight into the countries where these time-honoured traditional ceremonies are still maintained, strips them of the mysterious charm with which, to a foreigner, they might seem to be invested, and accounts for the levity with which they are witnessed by those familiarized to them since their earliest childhood.
As another instance: there was the custom of blessing the houses on Easter Saturday, which I had heard of long before visiting Italy, and imagined must prove equally edifying and impressive. But when I saw a very dirty priest in his _alb_—I think that is the name—a sort of linen ephod worn over the black gown, attended by a still more dirty little boy carrying holy-water, walking hastily through the house, muttering a few unintelligible words on the threshold of each room, only pausing a little longer in the kitchen to crack a few jokes with the servants, without the least semblance of devotion on his side or of reverence on theirs—and gratefully accepting a few _pauls_ sent out to him by the family—why, I fell from the clouds, and my cherished illusions were dispelled. It seemed almost as hollow as blessing the horses on the 17th of January, the festival of St. Anthony, the patron of animals, which had previously greatly astonished me.