We get our London papers here as regularly as you do, only forty-eight hours later, and I see that readers at home have been able to follow the course of the services in St. Peter’s and the Roman Churches during Passion Week about as well as we who are on the spot, and so to appreciate the thoroughness which the priesthood, from cardinals downwards, for I am sorry to say the Pope is still unable to take his usual part, throw into the attempt to reproduce the supreme drama of our race, so far as this can be done, day by day, almost hour by hour. I have not, however, noticed any mention of the “Tenebræ” at St. John Lateran, a service of rather more than an hour, from 4.30 to 5.30, on the afternoon of Good Friday, when the last words have fallen from the cross, and Joseph of Arimathæa, with the faithful women, has borne away the scarred and bleeding body of the Lord of Life to his own grave, in which no man has yet lain-- All the toil, the sorrow done, All the battle fought and won, as Arthur Stanley says, in one of the noblest hymns in the English language. We had the good fortune the day before to meet one of the Monsignori, an old friend, formerly a hard-working and successful London incumbent, who suggested that we should go, and to whom I shall always feel grateful for the advice. We accordingly were at the door of that splendid, but to my mind too sumptuously decorated church, punctually at 4.30. The procession had already reached the chancel, and were taking their allotted places. Most of your readers will probably be familiar with the church, but for those who are not, I may say that the chancel is wider, I think, than that in any of our cathedrals, and that the whole space from the high altar to the solid marble rails--about three and a half feet high, which divide the chancel from the rest of the church--is open, with the sole exception of the row of stalls which run along each sidewall, and which are reserved for, and were now filled by, priests. For this particular service, however (and for this only, as I was told), a row of chairs was placed just within the chancel-rails, for the Monsignori and other priests of the Pope’s household, who were already seated, all in deep black, with their faces to the altar and their backs to the congregation. They remained seated during the whole service (though several of the priests from the side-stalls stepped down at intervals and took part in the service), thus, it seemed to me, emphasising the division between priests and people, and impressing on us beyond chancel-rails, the fact that we were there rather as sightseers, spectators of a solemn ceremony, than joint-sharers in an act of worship.