“On Easter Monday there was a great display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in good time, through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and all the avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great vessels full of burning tow were placed: glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them. The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, size, and speed: while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst - the Girandola - was like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle, without smoke or dust. In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the river; and half - a - dozen men and boys with bits of lighted candle in their hands: moving here and there, in search of anything worth having, that might have been dropped in the press: had the whole scene to themselves.”
Quote by Charles Dickens
Author
You May Also Like
Source: They Came to See a Poet: selected poems
Source: A Zany Slice of Italy
Source: Six Years of A Floating Life
Source: Mister Gregory
Source: Banker's Death: Temptation in Florence #3
Source: Death in August
“Learn to live within your means so that you will not lack peace within.”
Source: The Daily Dose of Motivational Quotes
Source: L'Italia in breve.
Source: L'Italia in breve.
“I am glad I will be leaving Italy. It costs too much to lover her.[The emigrant's lament]”
Source: Tomorrow or Never
