service are the enormous pillar-covered buttresses built against the great dome? If they were placed there to support it, they have ill fulfilled their office, for the dome is split. These buttreses give it the ungraceful appearance of being too wide for its height. A staircase, as good as possible, leads up the body of the dome; and a perpendicular ladder passes through the trunk on which the ball rests. A man, if not too fat, can ascend, without much difficulty, this ladder; and bend himself, if he has not the rheumatism, in the ball above: this I have often heard described as being of far more capacious dimensions. From hence the sea is descried on fine days; it is unnecessary to add that there is an extensive bird's-eye view of the town, the Campania, and the surrounding hills.

Descending from the dome, I endeavoured to make the tour of the church; this was no easy matter. My progress was first arrested by the sacristy, built by Pius VII. on the south side of the Basilica, and joined to it by a gallery, which, on the inside, is very handsome, but which intercepts the exterior view of the church. Farther on is a small white house placed in the center of an open space, from which, if it were removed,

the Western end and the South side would be seen to advantage. At the Western end, the Vatican hill has been cut away to procure a sufficient extent of level ground; but so little space is left between the wall of the church and the perpendicularly-cut side of the hill, that it appears as if, as at the Coliseum, only so much earth had been cleared away as was necessary to enable the once-buried wall to be seen. To get round the Northern side, I was obliged to traverse the damp courts of the Vatican palace, and to pass under the windows that lead from the church to the museum. Seen from the front of the Basilica, this ugly, bulky palace, communicating with the church, and presenting a greater mass of building than the front of the church itself, looks, from its elevated situation, like the habitation of the seigneur, the great man, towering by the side of his newly-erected private chapel.

How different would this edifice have been, had the plan of Michael Angelo been followed; had it been built in the form of a Greek cross, fronted by a portico similar to that of the Pantheon! Paul V.-"Borghesius"-deviated from this plan; and, having erected the ante-room and façade, recorded the deed by an inscription,

in which his own name is blazoned forth, at full length, in the center place; while, on the remainder of the frieze, broken up into various right angles, is inscribed little more than the initials of those in whose honour the building is raised! But all these reflections fade away before the thought that this Basilica has caused the schism of onethird of Europe; an unforeseen event, for the sole purpose of recording which the edifice may be fancied to exist; for, in other respects, it is the most useless church in Rome, which is saying a great deal; but of this inutility I shall hereafter have occasion to speak. Adieu.

"tius." This address struck me as much as that of the washerwoman-" vicino alla Rocca "Tarpeia"-did Corinne.

Having ended my business with him, I drove to the tomb of C. Cestius, and the ruins of the Basilica of S. Paul. How curious is this often occurring partition of the day,-between visits to the relics of ancient Rome, and to the populous streets risen around and above them!

A pyramid is a grand and imposing object, and particularly adapted to be a funeral monu

ment. But why break open this tomb? Because its tenant died near two thousand years ago? Ought his remains to be less respected on that account? Are they rather not consecrated by the time that has passed over them? Would not this tomb be looked upon with much greater awe, was it known still to contain the remains of a fellow creature, than now that it is despoiled of these remains, and broken open and plundered, in love of the fine arts forsooth?

The neighbourhood of this sepulchre is well chosen for a burying ground; but the inscriptions on many of the tombs of the Protestants

or

"Riformati," in general, appeared to me

affected and out of place.

Not far from the Pyramid of C. Cestius, the Basilica of S. Paul formerly stood. This church was burnt down on the night of the 16th of June, of the summer before my arrival: from what now remains of it, it must have been a most splendid structure. At this time I saw the ground covered with large heaps of rubbish, out of which rose the crumbling ruins of the exterior walls, and several most magnificent Corinthian pillars; but these latter were all either broken off, at a greater or less height, or split