SD1658. Ellen Twisleton to Dwight Family
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 368 (in part).
Como
May 23rd, 1853, Monday.
… Sunday morning, we went to the morning service at the [Milan] Cathedral, which is according to the Ambrogian Ritual, and a little peculiar, and of which the Milanese are very tenacious; … it regales with such music,
“Such service high and anthem clear,”
as I have heard nothing like, in any Catholic church, except the Sistine Chapel. Music, in these Cathedrals, is the most heart-stirring thing I know—the whole building is “petrified” music. We went up to the roof, a very easy ascent for one so high, and which Mrs. Browning charged me not to omit—she said she “went in the spirit of a martyr, was ill for three days afterwards, and had been glad of it, ever since!” You mount winding among whole forests of exquisite spires and pinnacles, of fair white marble. From the top, you see a vast extent of this great Lombard plain, bounded in all directions by mountains. …
Text: Letters of the Hon. Mrs. Edward Twisleton, ed. Ellen T.P. Vaughan (London, 1928), pp. 85–86.
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