_December 15._--Owing to the antiquity of our chapel, long since dedicated to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, the archbishop permitted us, as a particular favor, to celebrate the octave of this great festival of Mary with a sermon and benediction every evening. The whole chapel was daily illuminated, and the effect was magical when it was lighted up. Imagine arches of light, pillars wreathed in flame, altar covered with flowers and brilliant with immense wax candles; while in the midst gleamed the Virgin in a perfect bower of pure white lilies. And, just as the imagination is fired with so much brilliancy and taste, _Kyrie eleison!_ floats up with the incense in the most plaintive, heart-rending tones--a very tear of the heart dropped at the feet of Mary! It is the commencement of the litany of Maria Immaculata, chanted by the nuns in choir, and responded to by the crowds that fill the chapel without. Light and music are the two ideas of which Dante's Paradise is composed; and I felt with what true poetic instinct, when kneeling before that shrine of light, my ears listened to harmonies approaching those that swell for ever before the throne of God! This struck me from the first; and I have since found my thoughts expressed by another far better than I could express them. Leigh Hunt says: "It is impossible to see this profusion of lights, especially when one knows their symbolical meaning, without being struck with the source from which Dante took his idea of the beatified spirits. His heaven, filled with lights, and lights, too, arranged in figures, which glow with lustre in proportion to the beatitude of the souls within them, is the sublimation of a Catholic church. And so far it is heavenly indeed; for nothing escapes the look of materiality like fire. It is so airy, joyous, and divine a thing, when separated from the idea of pain and an ill purpose, that the language of happiness naturally adopts its terms, and can tell of nothing more rapturous than burning bosoms and sparkling eyes. The seraph of the Hebrew theology was a fire." * * * * *