Then came the
Hallelujah Saturday, when at noon the mourning ended. It was a
breathless moment. The priests kneeled in gorgeous robes, chanting
monotonously, with their foreheads upon the altar-steps; and the hushed
multitude hung upon their lips, in concentrated ecstasy, waiting for
the coming joy. Suddenly burst the words, _Gloria in Excelsis_. In an
instant every door was flung open, every curtain withdrawn, the
great church was bathed in meridian sunlight, the organ crashed out
triumphant, the bells pealed, flowers were thrown from the galleries in
profusion, friends embraced and kissed each other, laughed, talked, and
cried, and all the sea of gay head-dresses below was tremulous beneath a
mist of unaccustomed splendor. And yet (this thought smote me) all the
beautiful transformation has come by simply letting in the common
light of day. Then why not keep it always? Clear away, Humanity, these
darkened windows, but clear away also these darkening walls, and show us
that the simplest religion is the best!
I cannot dwell upon the narrative of our many walks:--to the
Espalamarca, with its lonely telegraph-station;--to the Burnt Mountain,
with its colored cliffs;--to visit the few aged nuns who still linger
in what was once a convent;--to Porto Pim, with its curving Italian
beach, its playing boys and picturesque fishermen beneath the arched
gateway;--to the tufa-ledges near by, where the soft rocks are
honeycombed with the cells hollowed by echini below the water's edge, a
fact undescribed and almost unexampled, said Agassiz afterwards;--to the
lofty, lonely Monte da Guia, with its solitary chapel on the peak, and
its extinct crater, where the sea rolls in and out;--to the Dabney
orange-gardens, on Sunday afternoons;--to the beautiful Mirante ravine,
whenever a sudden rain filled the cascades and set the watermills and
the washerwomen all astir, and the long brook ran down in whirls of
white foam to the waiting sea;--or to the western shores of the island,
where we turned to Ariadnes, as we watched departing home-bound vessels
from those cliffs whose wave-worn fiords and innumerable sea-birds make
a Norway of Fayal.
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