Ch. 14: Graglia - Page 2

nearer to Biella than Graglia is. He dedicated it to S. Maria della Neve--to St. Mary of the Snow. This became more frequented than Graglia itself, and the feast of the Virgin on the 5th August was exceedingly popular. Signor Muratori says of it:-

"This is the popular feast of Graglia, and I can remember how but a few years since it retained on a small scale all the features of the sacre campestri of the Middle Ages. For some time past, however, the stricter customs which have been introduced here no less than in other Piedmontese villages have robbed this feast (as how many more popular feasts has it not also robbed?) of that original and spontaneous character in which a jovial heartiness and a diffusive interchange of the affections came welling forth from all abundantly. In spite of all, however, and notwithstanding its decline, the feast of the Madonna is even now one of those rare gatherings--the only one, perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Biella-- to which the pious Christian and the curious idler are alike attracted, and where they will alike find appropriate amusement." {25}

How Miltonic, not to say Handelian, is this attitude towards the Pagan tendencies which, it is clear, predominated at the festa of St. Mary of the Snow. In old days a feast was meant to be a time of actual merriment--a praising "with mirth, high cheer, and wine." {26} Milton felt this a little, and Handel much. To them an opportunity for a little paganism is like the scratching of a mouse to the princess who had been born a cat. Off they go after it-- more especially Handel--under some decent pretext no doubt, but as fast, nevertheless, as their art can carry them. As for Handel, he had not only a sympathy for paganism, but for the shades and gradations of paganism. What, for example, can be a completer contrast than between the polished and refined Roman paganism in Theodora, {27} the rustic paganism of "Bid the maids the youths provoke" in Hercules, the magician's or sorcerer's paganism of the blue furnace in "Chemosh no more," {28} or the Dagon choruses in Samson--to say nothing of a score of other examples that might be easily adduced? Yet who can doubt the sincerity and even fervour of either Milton's or Handel's religious convictions? The attitude assumed by these men, and by the better class of Romanists, seems to have become impossible to Protestants since the time of Dr. Arnold.

I once saw a church dedicated to St. Francis. Outside it, over the main door, there was a fresco of the saint receiving the stigmata; his eyes were upturned in a fine ecstasy to the illuminated spot in the heavens whence the causes of the stigmata were coming. The church was insured, and the man who had affixed the plate of the insurance office had put it at the precise spot in the sky to which St. Francis's eyes were turned, so that the plate appeared to be the main cause of his ecstasy. Who cared? No one; until a