If you are an American and a Catholic, you
look on devoutly, feeling, perhaps, at moments, although you take good
care not to say so, that, although highly edifying, it is a little dull;
if an American and a Protestant, you think of the morning prayer in
Congress, and members with newspapers or half-read letters in their
hands, a very busy one now and then forgetting that he is standing with
his hat on, and all of them in a hurry to have it over and enter upon
the business of the day,--or of a reception-night, perhaps, at the White
House, with the President shaking hands as fast as they can be held out,
and trying hard to smile each new-comer into the belief that the
"present incumbent" is the very best man he can vote for at the next
election.
But hush! the Pope is speaking,--not always as orators speak, it is
true, but gravely, at least, and with that indefinable air of dignity
which the habit of command seldom fails to impart. The language is
sonorous, and if you have had the good sense to unlearn your barbarous
application of English sounds--cunningly devised by Nature herself to
keep damp fogs and cold winds out of the mouth--to Italian vowels, which
the same judicious mother framed with equal cunning to let soft and
odoriferous airs into it, you will probably understand what he says, for
his speech is generally in Latin, and very good Latin too.
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