view from ten till three, on payment of a small fee to the keeper. In
each saloon you find catalogues of the pictures, amongst which the works
of Rubens, Titian, Correggio, and Vandyke are conspicuous.

Palace after palace, gallery after gallery; it is really _embarras de
richesse_, and one gets quite bewildered with the wealth of artistic
genius.

The churches are also very fine, but many of them are left in a very
unfinished condition. The Capuchin church of St. Annunziata, in the
Piazza del Annunziata, erected in 1587, has a portal upborne by marble
columns, while the brick facade is left quite unfinished, with great
holes between the brick and mortar, where seemingly the scaffold-poles
had been inserted, and in which the birds have built their nests. The
interior presents a striking contrast in its splendid and almost
over-gorgeous decorations. It is in the form of a cross, with a dome,
the vaulting supported by twelve fluted and inlaid columns, richly
gilded and painted. But a far more interesting church is the old
Cathedral of San Lorenzo, in the Piazza of the same name, and close to
the Via Carlo Felice. It is in the Gothic style, or rather represents
three different periods, the Romanique, the French Gothic, and the
Renaissance. It was mostly built about the year 1100, and restored in
1300. It has a triple portal, with deep-recessed, pointed arches. Above
these are several rows of arcades, a small rose window, and a tower
with a little dome at the top, two hundred feet high. At the south
corner above the central door is a bas-relief of the martyrdom of St.
Lawrence, its patron saint, and many quaint carvings of monsters. The
beautiful and curiously twisted columns, triple portals, arches, and
arcades, as well as the whole facade and front exterior, are of black
and white marbles; and there is some very fine bronze-work, painting,
and statuary. In the sacristy they show the Sacred _Catina_ (basin), a
six-sided piece of glass brought from Caesarea in 1101, and reported to
be that which held the Paschal lamb at the Last Supper of our Lord. It
was given out to be a pure emerald, till the mistake was detected by a
scientific judge. It may be seen for five francs--a large fee, evidently
charged in the hope of some day making up for its deceptive intrinsic
worth. Like Westminster Abbey, the interior of this church has the
impress of antiquity, especially in its worn columns. I was invited by
the old verger to view t