of course, we are quite at home in your English services."
Very noticeable, whatever may be said to the contrary, is the devotion of the Italians at such a season as this. In Florence there are seven principal Churches to which all the faithful are supposed to go, giving a certain time to prayer in each. Wherever I went I found the places thronged, including many well-dressed men; there was no sort of attraction by way of music or preaching; all there on their knees in various parts of the church, quite free from that self-consciousness which clings to the Anglo-Saxon, taking no notice of others. On Thursday evening I found my way to the Church of Santa Maria Annunziata, and was scarcely able to edge myself in amongst a dark crowd of men standing in the nave. The church was in darkness, save for the glimmering light of some candles in a side chapel, in which there was a representation of the Burial of our Lord. Behind the reredos a solemn miserere was being sung by the choir. Suddenly there came a startling sound from the side aisles, as if someone were flogging the pillars with canes. "Would you tell me," I said to an Italian, "what that means?" "'Tis only the bones of Judas," he replied. During this week, all over Italy, the memory of Judas is execrated; little children with sticks, imitating their elders, beating the pillars of church porches.
Early on Easter morning, after the Celebration in the English Church, I saw a curious ceremony in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. In a transept stood a very large table, covered with plates and small baskets full of all sorts of provisions, eggs, butter, bread, fowls, fruit and cakes, brought by people,
