In the evening, an illumination of St. Peter’s. We went between seven and eight o'clock to the Piazza, where there was a crowd of people: it was then illuminated with lanthorns, which cast a dim steady light on every part of it; they even contrive to place them in capitals of Corinthian pillars; and when every part is thus surrounded by a line of fire, they say it looks almost like a traced drawing. About nine, upon the signal of a bell tolling, in two minutes’ time (by all our watches), the church, from the top of the cross to the end of the colonnade, was in a blaze of light. A more magnificent spectacle can hardly be imagined; it greatly exceeded my expectations: the whole Piazza, even beyond the colonnade, is as light as day, and the magnificent building is seen to the greatest advantage.