was no priest in charge, only two bright little choristers (I suppose) in their white gowns; and perfect silence reigned in the chapel by the entrance of which I stood and saw several men and women kneeling. They got up one by one, and approaching the figure dropped again on their knees, and, stooping, kissed, some the nail-prints in the hands or feet, some the spear-wound in the side, but none the face. The most touching sight was the fathers or mothers when they rose from their knees lifting the children and teaching them to kiss the wounds. I stood there for at least twenty minutes, until the end of the service in fact, and must have seen at least a hundred men, women, and children enter. Of these, three only failed to kneel and kiss the cross, the first, a well-dressed, middle-aged woman, leading a restless small lap-dog, which pulled and whined whenever his mistress was not attending to him; the others, two young girls--but quite old enough to have known better--who marched in amongst the kneeling figures, open guide-book in hand, noticed something in the chapel to which it referred, and then marched out. They passed close enough for me to catch a word or two of their talk, which I am glad to say was not English. As I stood there and watched and listened, the distant voices seemed to be chanting that grand old monk’s-Latin hymn, the “Dies Iræ,” and I fancied (I am afraid it was pure fancy) I could hear:-- Quærens me sedisti lassus, Redeinisti crucem passas, Tantus labor non sit cassus! More than once I was haunted by the wish to enter and kneel and kiss the cross, by the side of some poor Italian woman and her child. I wish now that I had, but hope it was a genuine Protestant instinct which hindered me. At any rate I shall never have another chance. This crucifix is only brought out once a year--on Good Friday--and I shall never again be in St. John’s Lateran on that day for the “Tenebræ” service. JOHN TO JONATHAN An Address delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, on the 11th of October 1870