"Solid fact as the performance of the _functions_ remains, for us it assumes a forcible unreality, through the impeding intervention of black dresses and veils, with what should be women under them. But as these creatures push like battering-rams, and caper like he-goats, we shall prefer to adjourn the question of their humanity, and to give it the benefit of a doubt. We must except, however, our countrywomen from dear Boston, who were not seen otherwise than decently and in order." A vivid description follows of the ceremonies of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, ending with the illumination of St. Peter's. "A magical and unique spectacle it certainly is, with the well-known change from the paper lanterns to the flaring _lampions_. Costly is it of human labor, and perilous to human life. And when I remembered that those employed in it receive the sacrament beforehand, in order that imminent death may not find them out of a state of grace, I thought that its beauty did not so much signify." In the Journal she writes, April 19: "It is the golden calf of old which has developed into the papal bull." At a concert she saw the Abbé Liszt, "whose vanity and desire to attract attention were most apparent." Though the sober light of middle age showed Rome less magical than of old, yet the days were full of delight. "In these scarce three weeks," she cries, "how much have we seen, how little recorded and described! So sweet has been the fable, that the intended moral has passed like an act in a dream--a thing of illusion and intention, not of fact. Impotent am I, indeed, to describe the riches of this Roman world,--its treasures, its pleasures, its flatteries, its lessons. Of so much that one receives, one can give again but the smallest shred,--a leaf of each flower, a scrap of each garment, a proverb for a sermon, a stave for a song. So be it; so, perhaps, it is best."