ose tedious steps is forgotten. The distant view is
particularly fine; the green and fertile plains of Lombardy stretching
away from the city walls in all directions until they meet the
foot-hills of the Alpine range, or mingle with the horizon towards the
shores of the Adriatic. Mont Blanc, Mont Cenis, Mont St. Bernard, the
Simplon Pass, the Bernese Oberland range, and further to the northeast
the long range of the Tyrolean Alps, are recognized with their white
snow-caps glittering in the bright sunlight. The forest of pinnacles
beneath our feet, mingled with a labyrinth of ornamented spires,
statues, flying buttresses, and Gothic fretwork, piled all about the
roof, is seen through a gauze-like veil of golden mist.

Milan has several other churches more or less interesting, but the
visitor rarely passes much time in examining them. No traveller should
fail, however, to visit the Brera Palace, the one gallery of art in this
city. It was formerly a Jesuit college, but is now used for a public
school, with the title of Palace of Arts and Sciences, forming a most
extensive academy, containing paintings, statuary, and a comprehensive
library of nearly two hundred thousand volumes. There is also attached a
fine botanical garden, exhibiting many rare and beautiful exotics as
well as native plants. In the gallery of paintings the visitor is sure
to single out for appreciation a canvas, by Guercino, representing
Abraham banishing Hagar and her child. The tearful face of the deserted
one, with its wonderful expression, tells the whole story of her misery.
This picture is worthy of all the enthusiastic praise so liberally
bestowed by competent critics.

No picture is better known than Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper,"
millions of copies of which have been circulated in engravings, oil
paintings, and by photography. We find the original in the Dominican
monastery, where the artist painted it upon the bare wall or masonry of
a lofty dining-hall. It is still perfect and distinct, though not so
bright as it would have been had it been executed upon canvas. Da Vinci
was years in perfecting it, and justly considered it to be the best work
of his artistic life. The moment chosen for delineation is that when
Christ utters the words, "One of you shall betray me!" The artist said
that he meditated for two years how best to portray upon a human face
the workings of the perfidious heart of Judas, and ended at last by
taking for his model t