he no longer ventures to estimate; and -glancing his eye along the transepts, to the right and left-draws backwardsatiated with magnificence.

Recovering himself, by degrees, he listens to the dying murmur of the Pigmies that surround him-absorbed in the profound recesses through which they are seen to enter or emerge-when suddenly, from a Side Chapel, before unnoticed, the anthems of the Choir arise, in measured cadence, and the aerial vaults resound with Seraphic Symphonies-now vibrating to single Voices, mellifluous as the breath of Zephyrs, through Eolian harps-now swelling, with the full-toned Organ, to Halleluiah's solemn as the music of the spheres.

His nerves thrill with rapture.—He looks downward to the hundred lamps that burn continually, in golden branches, around the Sanctuary; and (if a Catholic) he humbles himself at the shrine of St. Peter, as did the Queen of Sheba, in the temple of Solomon.

AROUND the rim of the lanthorn, in the centre of the Dome, three hundred and thirty feet from the pavement, is inscribed the dedication to St. Peter, by Sixtus the Fifth:

S. PETRI GLORIÆ SIXTUS PP. V. A. MDXC. PONTIF. V.

and upon the frieze of the entablature,

around

• To the glory of St Peter, Pope Sixtus the Fifth, in the year,

1590, the fifth of his Pontificate.

around the drum of the Cupola, is ostentatiously exhibited, in letters of gold, the ambiguous passage of St. Matthew:

TU ES PETRUS, ET SUPER HANC PETRAM ÆDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM; ET TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI COELORUM. *

although it is sufficiently obvious that the text refers not to Peter, the frail Disciple that afterward denied his Master, in the Hall of the High Priest; but to the Revelation of the Son, by the Father, as the sure foundation, upon which the Church of Christ should be built—a spiritual building-a house not made with hands

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church; and

I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven.

hands-against which the Gates of Hell should never be able to prevail.

ON entering, for the first time, this imposing edifice, the eye is too much dazzled by the splendour of the Nave, to remark its surrounding accompaniments, however commensurate; and the most attentive athwart the vast arcades, the vaulted roofs of the Side Chapels, glowing-at an awful elevation, with symbolic imageryfrom the Visions of Ezekiel-and the Revelations of John.

Observer scarcely descries,

In six elliptical compartments, three of them on either hand, are displayed, in brilliant mosaics, designed by the first Masters,

Dd

Masters, after the descriptions of the Prophets and Evangelists, the splendid emblems of supernatural agency, that visibly accompanied the promulgation of the Law of Moses, and the Gospel of Christ.—

The religious, or poetical, Enthusiast may stand astonished under the Flying-Chariot, of the river of Chebar; or, the Throne set in Heaven, of the Isle of Patmos-the descending Glory that announced the Promised Saviour, when he was baptized of John in Jordan; or, the opening Heavens-as when the Martyr Stephen beheld the Son of the Virgin, standing at the right hand of the Father, Almighty.

But the rainbow of the Nave is altogether independent of these sublime emanations;