safety upon the brazen Canopy of the Altar (itself ninety feet high) and into the sunken recesses of the Sanctuary, surrounded by kneeling Devotees.

At this elevation may be distinctly seen the mosaics of the Four Evangelists, with their appropriate symbols, occupying the angles that support the drum of the Dome. Of their enormous size an idea may be formed by that of the cross keys, an ornamental appendage, which is said to measure twenty-two feet in length.

The drum of the Dome is ornamented by coupled pilasters, between the windows, upon the continued basement of which, are Cherubs, supporting festoons.

Returning

Returning to the passage you turn to the right or left, for the avenues are double; and wind round the imperceptible circle, between an outer and an inner wall, until you come to a spiral stair-case, by which you mount perpendicularly fifty feet higher; and enter another gallery, within the Dome-just under the spring of the vault.

From this elevated scaffold, you can perceive the coarseness of the mosaic cubes, with which are formed the gigantic Figures of the concave; and you may thrust your hand into a gaping fissure-invisible from below.

You now ascend, diametrically, by unequal steps, practised between the inner and outer coping of the vault.

At the summit of the Dome, blind windows occasionally open into the Lanthorn, itself a cupola, twenty feet diameter, and fifty high.

of

From this stupendous elevation-little less than three hundred and fifty feet, if you venture to look down upon the pavement, the processions passing, to and fro, upon the chequered floor, remind you ants upon a mole-hill; and so contracted, in this bird's-eye view, is the perspective of the well of the Dome, that you mistrust, with apprehension, the perpendicularity of the walls, and suspect the sufficiency of the lessening pillars to support the superincumbent mass. 1

A rushing wind sets constantly from below, whenever these windows are opened;

opened; and you gladly mount ten feet higher, to the outer gallery of the lanthorn, from which you behold Rome at your feet, and stretch your eye over the deserted plains of the Campagna, to the Appenines, on one side, and the Mediterranean, on the other.

Here you ascend, fifty feet higher, by another flight of narrow steps, turned within one of the pillared butments which support the lanthorn, barely wide enough to admit a single person at time.

This winding passage lands you on the floor of a conical chamber, directly over the centre of the Dome, from which you pass into the upper gallery of the Cupola, or ascend, by a perpen

dicular

dicular ladder, into the hollow of the

Ball.

Within this brazen globe, a Man of six feet high, may stretch out his arms, or stand on tiptoe, while through accidental crevices in the beaten copper, he perceives the tremendous height, at which he is soaring in the air.

It takes ten minutes to descend from this stupendous elevation; and when you emerge from its dark passages, and

winding stairways, you are glad to find yourself, once more, upon the surface of the earth.

SUCH is this unrivalled Monument of Modern art, which bears no marks of

age,