beautiful and good!" Saint Apollonia was martyred by having all her teeth pulled out, and she is, therefore, always represented holding a tooth in a forceps. This distinctive symbol is well-known to all good Catholics, and the custode was quite shocked by my not thus at once recognizing the Dentist-tortured saint. But the gem of the gallery is Murillo's Madonna and Child; less brilliant than the Dulwich one, but very beautiful, as she looks full in the face with sad presages in her eyes. you

The nine rooms which contain these pictures are magnificent of themselves, with their Venetian floors, which look like one immense slab of variegated marble, their chairs of crimson velvet and gold, and their fine prospects over all Rome.

Opposite to the palace is the Villa Farnesina, on the walls of which the favorite story of the loves of Cupid and Psyche is well told in the frescoes of Raphael. The scenes of their history, from the time when Psyche is first shown to Cupid by Venus, till her ascent to Olympus after her various trials, are depicted in the lunettes of the ceiling on a blue ground which emblems the heavens. Wreaths of flowers separate the subjects, and the corners are filled up by sporting Genii. In the next room Galatea appears, riding on a sea-shell car, drawn by dolphins, and surrounded by nymphs and tritons, while over her are hovering cupids with stretched bows and arrows about to be let fly. In one corner is Michael Angelo's visiting card-a colossal head sketched in charcoal by

that artist, who, on calling here one day, and finding his

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fellow painter absent, " made his mark" thus characteristically. It is honorable to the taste of those concerned, that it has never been effaced during the three centuries since it was executed. An upper room contains the Marriage of Roxana and Alexander, and in another, over the fire-place, is appropriately painted the Forge of VulWhat captivating substitutes are such decorations for the bare white walls, or tasteless papers, of most modern houses!

can.

Mounting the Janiculum hill, we find near its summit the church of San Pietro in Montorio, for which Raphael painted his Transfiguration, and which now receives a pension as a compensation for the picture being transferred to the Vatican. In its cloister stands the beautiful little Temple of Bramante, erected at the expense of Ferdinand of Spain on the precise spot where Saint Peter is believed to have been crucified head downwards. In the centre of the pavement of the temple is a hole in which the cross is said to have stood, and out of it a monk scraped up some of the consecrated earth, which he gave me, as a precious relic, in an envelope, stamped with the seal of the church, and inscribed, "Earth collected in the Temple of Bramante; the place in which was crucified the Prince of the Apostles, Saint Peter, and in which, for every mass that is performed, a soul is liberated from Purgatory."

While on this side of the river, it is convenient to visit

the Villa Pamfili-Doria, a mile beyond the Gate of San Pancrazio. Its casino contains much ancient sculpture, and its picturesque grounds are four miles in circuit, shaded by noble stone pines and divided by hedges of laurel and cypress. In one place fifty fountains gush from as many urns, and run into a stream, which is led down several cascades (under one of which is a subterraneous and subaqueous passage), and then allowed to spread into an irregular lake. When I visited the Villa in the middle of January, icicles hung from the urns, and the wind blew almost as bleakly as in New York, though on New Year's day I had been writing beside an open window; but, according to the Priests, "the cold was a mortification peculiar to the holy season of Lent, and would continue till Easter, because it was cold when Peter sat by the fire in the house of the High Priest before the cock crew!"

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XII.

CARDINALS, MONKS, BEGGARS AND ROBBERS.

THE CARDINALS of Rome monopolize all the offices and power of the Government. They choose the Pope out of their own body by a majority of two-thirds, in secret conclave, though Austria, France and Spain, have each the right to put a veto on one candidate. From the remainder of the "Sacred college” are taken the Governors of provinces, the Cardinal Chamberlain, the Cardinal Secretary of State, the Cardinal Chancellor, the Cardinal Prefect, and so on. Not content with this, one of them is also Clerk of the Weather, and, like a new Joshua, prescribes the hours at which the sun shall daily set; on the first of December, for example, he published an order fixing the time of sunset for the next forty days at half-past four, " French time." The Roman day was therefore to begin at five P. M., and noon to be "nineteen hours of the day," for those forty days; the sun being supposed to stand still during that interval.

One of the Cardinals-Prince Spada-died in December, and his funeral was therefore an extra boon to foreign sight-seers. He was over ninety years old, and

was the last of the Cardinals who had accompanied Pope Pius VII. to Avignon. His trials had taught him benevolence (though it is innate in almost every Italian), and in his will he left ten thousand dollars to the Brotherhood of Mercy, of which he was a member, so as to give it the means of defending before the tribunals the honest poor who could not afford to fee lawyers. His body was taken in the evening to the magnificent Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, after lying in state at his palace for two days. A troop of cavalry cleared the way, and behind them came the deceased Cardinal's gilded carriage, in which was placed his coffin, on each side of which sat a priest holding a torch and chaunting funeral prayers. The coffin was carried up the steps of the church, a passage through the immense crowd being opened by soldiers. I followed close behind it, and as the mob closed in, a pickpocket, on the very steps of the church, pulled out my handkerchief so clumsily that I felt the tug distinctly, though I could not seize the thief in the darkness and confusion. With this small loss I reached the church-door, but found it guarded by two soldiers, who refused admission to every one, even to priests. I slipped a paul in the hand of one of the soldiers, and the door opened for me as if by magic, while the priests, who had not invoked the potent St. Paul, were kept outside. The coffin was surrounded with candles, but, after a prayer was chaunted, the re