“We did not, however, drive to the Trinita de’ Monti, till after the exhibition of the girandola, or great fireworks, from the castle of St. Angelo, which commences by a tremendous explosion, that represented the raging eruption of a volcano. Red sheets of fire seemed to blaze upwards into the glowing heavens, and then to pour down their liquid stream upon the earth. This was followed by an incessant, and complicated display of every varied device that imagination could figure,—one changing into another, and the beauty of the first, effaced by that of the last. Hundreds of immense wheels turned round with a velocity that almost seemed as if demons were whirling them, letting fall thousands of hissing dragons, and scorpions, and fiery snakes, whose long convolutions, darting forward as far as the eye could reach in every direction, at length vanished into air. Fountains, and jets of fire, threw up their blazing cascades into the skies. “The whole vault of heaven shone with the vivid fires, and seemed to receive into itself innumerable stars and suns, which shooting up into it, in brightness almost insufferable,—vanished—like earth-born hopes. The reflection in the depth of the calm clear water of the Tiber, was scarcely less beautiful than the spectacle itself, and the whole ended in a tremendous burst of fire, which, while it lasted, almost seemed to threaten conflagration to the world. “The expense of the illumination of St. Peter’s, and of the girandola, when repeated two successive evenings, as they invariably are at the festival of St. Peter, is one thousand crowns; when only exhibited one night, they cost seven hundred. Eighty men were employed in the instantaneous illuminations of the lamps, which to us seemed the work of enchantment. They were so posted as to be unseen.” The conclusion of these ceremonies impresses one forcibly, with the same feelings as the termination of a theatrical performance, when the green curtain descends, and conceals from view the various actors of the drama, all as yet retaining their appropriate situations, and ready to recommence the exhibition, when the appointed period again comes round; while the spectators hasten away to their respective homes carrying with them vivid ideas of the pageantry with which they have been amused: thus was it with Rome, which, like a vast amphitheatre, now began to pour forth in all directions, the crowds of visitors, whom this scene of pleasure, or sentiments of devotion, had attracted.