conception, spent some time in the Eternal City studying the
various details. But the real architect, it may be said, who made the
plans and supervised and directed the building of the sacred monument,
was Rev. Father Michaud, of the St. Viateur Order. To raise the funds
necessary for the initial work, every member of the immense diocese was
taxed; and even now, after a lapse of thirty years, it is still
unfinished, so great has been the expense involved. The handsome facade
is elaborately columned in cut-stone, for which only blocks of the most
perfect kind were used.

Like the colossal dome at Rome, this one towers above every other
structure in the city, with the height of the cross included, being
forty feet higher than the lofty towers of _Notre Dame_. It is seventy
feet in diameter, and two hundred and ten feet above the pavement. It is
after the work of Brunelleschi, whose exquisite art and genius flung the
airy grace of his incomparable domes against Florentine and Roman skies.

There is none of the "dim, religious light" in the interior decoration
of white and gold, the subtle colouring of the symbolic frescoing and
the brilliance of the gold and brazen altar furnishing. At a service
celebrated especially for the Papal Zuaves, the picturesque red and grey
of their uniform, the priests in gorgeous canonicals of scarlet, stiff
with gold, the acolytes in white surplices and the venerable archbishop
in cardinal and purple, with a chorus from Handel ringing through the
vaulted roof, a full conception of the Papal form of worship can be
obtained; while a squaw in blanket and moccasins kneeling on the floor
beside a fluted pillar seems the living symbol of the heathendom the
early fathers came to convert.

In Canada the Jesuits have always been prominent in its history,
signalizing themselves by extraordinary devotion and self-sacrifice, and
were among the earliest explorers of the Continent, the first sound of
civilization over many of the lakes and rivers being the chant of the
capuchined friar. Fathers Breboeuf and Lalemant, burnt by the Indians;
Garreau, butchered; Chabanel, drowned by an apostate Huron, and others
hideously tortured, testified with their blood to their devotion. From
the Atlantic to the prairies, from the bleak shores of the Hudson Bay to
the sunny beaches of Louisiana, they suffered, bled and died.

It is said the Jesuits have a genius for selecting sites, and certainly
the situation of thei