streets.

[1] The present church was begun about 1229. In 1321 the
burghers fancied it was too small for the fame and
splendour of their city. So they decreed a new _ecclesia
pulcra, magna, et magnifica_, for which the older but as
yet unfinished building was to be the transept.

One most remarkable feature of the internal decoration is a line of
heads of the Popes carried all round the church above the lower
arches. Larger than life, white solemn faces they lean, each from
his separate niche, crowned with the triple tiara, and labelled with
the name he bore. Their accumulated majesty brings the whole past
history of the Church into the presence of its living members. A
bishop walking up the nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among
the waxen images of ancestors renowned in council or in war. Of
course these portraits are imaginary for the most part; but the
artists have contrived to vary their features and expression with
great skill.

Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the cathedral. It is
inlaid with a kind of _tarsia_ work in stone, setting forth a
variety of pictures in simple but eminently effective mosaic. Some
of these compositions are as old as the cathedral; others are the
work of Beccafumi and his scholars. They represent, in the liberal
spirit of mediaeval Christianity, the history of the Church before
the Incarnation. Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls meet us at the
doorway: in the body of the church we find the mighty deeds of the
old Jewish heroes--of Moses and Samson and Joshua and Judith.
Independently of the artistic beauty of the designs, of the skill
with which men and horses are drawn in the most difficult attitudes,
of the dignity of some single figures, and of the vigour and
simplicity of the larger compositions, a special interest attaches
to this pavement in connection with the twelfth canto of the
'Purgatorio.' Dante cannot have trodden these stones and meditated
upon their sculptured histories. Yet when we read how he journeyed
through the plain of Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied
floor, how 'morti i morti, e i vivi parean vivi,' how he saw 'Nimrod
at the foot of his great work, confounded, gazing at the people who
were proud with him,' we are irresistibly led to think of the Divine
comedy. The strong and simple outlines of the pavement correspond to
the few words of the poet. Bending over these pictures and trying to
learn their lesson, wit