The chapel is quite unenclosed, except by an
openwork balustrade of marble, on which the carving looks very ancient.
Nothing could be more convenient for the devotions of the crowd in the
piazza, and no doubt the daily prayers offered at the shrine might be
numbered by the thousand,--brief, but I hope earnest,--like those
glimpses I used to catch at the blue sky, revealing so much in an
instant, while I was toiling at Brook Farm. Another picturesque thing
about the Palazzo Publico is a great stone balcony quaintly wrought,
about midway in the front and high aloft, with two arched windows opening
into it.
After another glimpse at the cathedral, too, I realize how utterly I have
failed in conveying the idea of its elaborate ornament, its twisted and
clustered pillars, and numberless devices of sculpture; nor did I mention
the venerable statues that stand all round the summit of the edifice,
relieved against the sky,--the highest of all being one of the Saviour,
on the topmost peak of the front; nor the tall tower that ascends from
one side of the building, and is built of layers of black and white
marble piled one upon another in regular succession; nor the dome that
swells upward close beside this tower.
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