This Apartment opens into the Great Stair-case. It is of Carrara marble, divided into three flights. One of them descends to the Library, the Garden, &c. and the other two lead to the Upper Galleries. It is decorated with twenty columns of granite, beside Statues, Vases, &c.

Ascending the marble steps you enter a long Gallery divided into six Apartments, by as many arches supported by Ionic columns. Each of them is lined with elegant Vases, Tripods, Candelabra, Demi-Columns, and Egyptian Idols of the rarest marbles.

But before you advance, an iron gate invites you to peep into a lesser Rotunda, still more richly decorated than the for

mer

mer and ennobled by a view of the Dome of St. Peter's, which is seen at a distance, through one of the windows. In the middle of the apartment is an Antique car, with two horses, driven by a Victor at the Olympic Games.

Passing through the six Divisions of the Gallery of Vases with a cursory glance at the innumerable objects they contain, you enter the Picture Gallery of the Belvidere, of which I shall say nothing, as every thing particularly valuable has been selected by the French.

Returning to the Great Stair-case you may descend into the Garden, if you choose but it contains nothing remarkable to a French, or an English, Traveller, excepting the Pedestal of the Column

of

of Antoninus Pius, which was raised to his memory by his adopted Sons, Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus.

It is a single Block of white marble, twelve or fourteen feet square, ornamented with superb Bas Reliefs. One of them represents the apotheosis of Antoninus and Faustina, with whom a powerful Angel ascends to Heaven. Below this Groupe, on one side is a Roma Triumphans, on the other a Figure of Eternity-embracing an obelisk.

LETTER XIII.

Roman Temples, and other Antique Edifices.

F the many Heathen Temples at

OF

Rome that have been converted in

to Christian Churches, although several are strikingly beautiful, yet none are comparable to the Pantheon, in respect either of sublimity, or preservation.*

This Majestic Rotunda has withstood the injuries of time and nature, ever

since the Age of the Consuls. By them the gigantic Concave was dedicated to Cybele-the fancied Mother of the Gods, and her numerous Progeny-celestialterrestrial-and infernal; as in after times by the Popes, to the Virgin Mary -and all the Saints of the Kalendar.

It was originally a simple Dome—a form of all others the least liable to decay-as if intended by its Founders to endure for ever.

The interior is a hundred and fifty feet diameter, and a hundred and fifty high, within solid walls of Roman brick, little less than twenty feet in thickness. They are perforated by a single Door, twenty feet wide, and a single Window, in the

centre