Going down to Arundel for Holy Week and Easter, I read in _The Times_ Hugh Macnaghten's strangely moving lines on Hector Macdonald,[11] whose tragic death was announced this week. Easter was late this year, the weather balmy, and the spring advanced; and the park and the whole countryside starred with daffodils and anemones, primroses and hyacinths. Between the many church services we enjoyed some delightful rambles; and the Duke's marriage had made no difference to his love of croquet and of the inevitable game of "ten questions" after dinner. The great church looked beautiful on Easter morning, with its wealth of spring flowers; and the florid music was no doubt finely rendered, though I do not like Gounod in church at Easter or at any other time. I refrained, however, when my friend the organist asked me what I thought of his choir, from replying, as Cardinal Capranica did to a similar question from Pope Nicholas V.--"that it seemed to him like a sack of young swine, for he heard a great noise, but could distinguish nothing articulate!"[12] {14} All the clergy of St. Philip's church dined at the castle on Easter Sunday evening; and the young Duchess, wearing her necklace of big diamonds (Sheffield's wedding present), was a most kind and pleasant hostess. Two days later my friend Father MacCall and I left England _en route_ for Rome, crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe in three-quarters of a gale. _Infandum jubes_.... The boat was miserable, so was the passage; but we survived it, hurried on through France and Italy (our _direttissimo_ halting at all kinds of unnecessary places), and reached Rome at the hour of Ave Maria, almost exactly twenty-six years since my previous visit. What memories, as from our modest _pension_ in the Via Sistina we looked once again on the familiar and matchless prospect! My companion hurried off at once to the bedside of a fever-stricken friend; and my first pilgrimage was of course to St. Peter's. I felt, as I swung aside the heavy "baby-crusher,"[13] {15} and entered, almost holding my breath, that strange sense of exhilaration which Eugénie de Ferronays described so perfectly.[14] Preparations were on foot for the coming _festa_,[15] and the "Sanpietrini" flying, as of old, a hundred feet from the floor, hanging crimson brocades--a fearsome spectacle. On Sunday we Benedictines kept the Gregorian festival at our own great basilica of St. Paul's; but the chief celebration was next day at St. Peter's, where Pope Pius X. himself pontificated in the presence of 40,000 people, and a choir of a thousand monks (of which I had the privilege of being one) rendered the Gregorian music with thrilling effect. All was as in the great days of old--the Papal March blown on silver trumpets; the long procession up the great nave of abbots, bishops, and cardinals, conspicuous among them Cardinals Rampolla, with his fine features and grave penetrating look, and Merry