hers are admitted. When these fifteen shall be dead the
convent--_Sacro Collegio_ they call it--will pass entirely into the
hands of the government, which now uses the greater part of it for a
school for the sons of poor teachers, who are sent here from all parts
of Italy.

Accompanied by a professor of the college, we went over that part of
the building not appropriated to the monks. It is a little town in
itself, and has something of the variety and contrasts of a town. To go
from the vast refectory to that upper part of the building called the
Ghetto, with its interminable low and narrow corridor and lines of
little chambers, is to see the two extremes of which building is
capable.

Without intending to write a statistical article, I may give a few of
the dimensions we took note of. The refectory is one hundred and ninety
feet long and forty wide, and is capable of seating at table five
hundred persons. The tables run around the room, with a single row of
seats against the wall, and are served from the centre of the hall.
Quite across one end extends a painting of the Last Supper. At one side
is a tiny pulpit, from which in the old time one would read aloud while
the monks ate.

The infirmary and rooms used for storing articles in ordinary use
occupy twenty large chambers. The five elementary school-rooms are each
fifty feet square, the kitchen is eighty-three feet square, and the
fencing-hall and garden adjoining contain together over sixty-six
hundred square feet. The cistern under the cloister is of nearly the
same size.

There is water in profusion--in the court, the kitchen, the boys'
wash-rooms, wherever it can be needed. In the entry from the principal
court is an odd fourteenth-century fountain which is a perfect
calendar. It is set against the wall, and is in twelve compartments,
answering to the twelve months of the year. In the frieze above are
carved roses, red stone on a white ground--in some compartments thirty,
in others thirty-one, answering to the days of the month. All the
fountains are made of the crimson-and-white stone of Asisi, which is
seen everywhere about the city--in vases for holy water, in pavements,
in garden-walls, in the foundations of houses. The stone, a red
sandstone, is found in plenty in the adjoining mountains, and has a
rich, soft crimson hue with irregular lines of white. But it is very
hard to work, and could scarcely be made to pay the expense of the
necessary machinery.