midst, while the vast company lifted up their voices in singing, the band played, the bells rung, the cannon roared. It was a mighty choir in the open air, under the walls of a cathedral that had stood there a thousand years; the vast multitude were hushed to silence to hear the music of this holy band of monks and priests and women and children, and while the whole atmosphere was full of song, the pageant passed into the temple. My companions at the windows, the priests and their women, took leave of me, as they were in haste to take the railroad for Cologne. I stepped down into the court, and on the heels of the procession entered the cathedral. The relics were deposited in the holy places; the great golden chests were placed in front of the altar, and high mass was celebrated with the splendor of ceremonial becoming this great occasion. When the procession was finished, the holy relics in their several repositories for another seven years, and mass duly celebrated, I returned to the hotel to dinner. About twenty persons were at the table. On my right sat a party of French people, gentlemen and ladies, and the fun they made of what they had seen on the street was immense. They ridiculed as ludicrous in the extreme, and as the very height of absurdity and nonsense, the idea that the clothes and sponge and garments worn two thousand years ago, and constantly exposed to air and all the chances and changes of these eighteen centuries, should be here to-day in good condition; and, of course, the priests and church came in for a good share of denunciation. In front of me, and on my left, was an English-speaking party, the central and principal personage in the group being an English priest. His garb was that of Rome, and his conversation was becoming his garb; but whether he had ever been received into the full communion of Holy Mother, or was only aping her manners and wearing her vestments, it is impossible to say. It makes little difference, however. He was disgusted by the infidelity of these French people, and, supposing none at the table understood the English, he went on to say that it was highly improper to come into a foreign country and ridicule the customs and faith of the people. “For my part,” said he, “I think they are very stupid, as well as very ill-bred, to make such remarks at a public table where there are others who hold these relics in high honor as memorials of their holy religion.” The ladies of the party joined him fully in these sentiments, and, to my surprise, I soon discovered that the two ladies between whom he was sitting, and whom he always addressed as “My dear,” were both Americans, and evidently destined to become, if they had not already, excellent Romans. All of them, and the party was six or seven in number, had been gazing on the same spectacle that I had seen with mingled indignation and pity, and these enlightened, cultivated English and American people received the