a pedestal, before the tomb of Paul III. who sits above, in the attitude of giving the benediction-the tiara on his head, and on his finger the episcopal ring. The figure of the Pope is of bronze, but Justice and Prudence of white marblethe Latter, an aged Matron-the Former a youthful Virgin, so charming in native dignity and grace, that it was found indispensably necessary to cover a part of the body with a bronze drapery.

The Statuary of Michael Angelo and the Chevalier Bernini, at St. Peter's, is greatly inferior to these incomparable performances. You must therefore here study the genius of the Former in the aery concave of the Dome; and of the Latter, in the splendid designs, executed

in gilt bronze for the decoration of the High Altar, and the Papal Chair.

Ir requires an hour or two to walk round the sequestered Aisles; and contemplate at leisure the splendid Monuments of the latter Popes, and of such other Sovereign Princes, as have died at Rome-no meaner Dust being suffered to repose in state, beneath this Imperial Canopy.

The Cenotaph of Innocent VIII. whose pontificate, says his epitaph, was illustrated by the discovery of a New World; and that of Sixtus IV. both executed in bronze by Antonio Pollajolo, a Florentine Artist, of the Fifteenth Cen

tury,

tury, were brought hither from the Old Church (the floor of which had been arched over on building the New One) as monuments of art too precious to be left behind in its now subterranean re

cesses.

That of Sixtus is a low altar-tomb, upon the floor of the Chapel of the Sacrament, on which the Pope lies at length, in his pontifical robes, surrounded by emblematical personifications of the Arts and Sciences, exquisitely embossed, in demi-relief, upon its sloping sides.

Paul III. and Urban VIII. were the first eminent Popes actually inhumed in the new Edifice, both Sixtus V. and Paul V. though one of them finished the Dome,

Dome, and the other the Frontispiece, having chosen to be laid in Chapels of their own, under the more immediate protection, of the Virgin, at Santa Maria Maggiore.

Queen Christina of Sweden, that singular compound of ferocity and devotion, who abjured her religion, and abdicated her crown, to spend her days in visiting the churches and convents of Rome, lies here, beneath a splendid Monument, near the supposed Remains of the Countess Matilda, so famous for her princely donation to the Popes.

Here also repose the Reliques of Mary, Daughter of John Sobieski, King of Poland, and Wife of the Pretender-the

natural,

natural, or the lawful, Son of James II. who long resided at Rome, with the empty title of King of Great Britain.

Besides these Regal Mausoleums, the most remarkable tomb to an Observer who has more regard to the

of

progress information, than to the attributes of infallibility, or the perfections of art, is that of Gregory XIII. with a bas relief representing the Correction of the Kalendar, which was ordained by that Pontiff, in 1584; though it was not till 1752, that England, habitually suspicious of Papistical precedents, could be persuaded to adopt the alteration of the style." I do not like new-fangled notions," said the old Duke of B- when the measure was proposed to him, by the volatile Chesterfield,