RAWN BY J.
HODGSON.]

A year afterward, as Tom, Ned Green, and Jonas were busy husking corn in
the calm stillness of the fall, when the stacks were all about them,
like Indian wigwams, and the stubble only of the golden pumpkins was
left in the field, and the beautiful river wound itself away in the
distance, bearing all kinds of craft, Tom told them about his day in the
city, and said he had concluded that the country was good enough for
him, and he meant to be a farmer all the days of his life.

A GREAT CATHEDRAL.

I remember well, when a child, hearing the Cathedral of St. Peter, in
Rome, spoken of as being so immense that I thought of an ideal cathedral
little less than a mountain in size, and the dome to be seen only as if
looking at the stars. When the real cathedral was seen, of course that
exaggerated idea had then long been tempered to something like the
reality. Yet it was not without a certain pleasure to find that to get a
good view, particularly of the dome, it was necessary for me to go from
it several miles--to the Pincian hill, or a terrace of the beautiful
Villa Doria-Pamfili. The latter view is one of the finest, as nothing
else of all Rome is seen. The cathedral stands on the site of Nero's
Circus, where many Christians were martyred, and where the Apostle Peter
is said to have been buried after his crucifixion. In the year 90 an
oratory was built there, and in 306 Emperor Constantine erected a
church. It was the grandest of that time, and exceeded in size all
existing cathedrals except two, yet was only half the size of the
present building.

This cathedral was begun in 1506, and after forty years all the
foundations were not built. Then Michael Angelo, though seventy-two
years old, was persuaded to be the architect. His predecessor had wasted
four years in making a model of the proposed edifice, at a great cost,
but he, with marvellous energy, completed his model in a fortnight.
Though the work went rapidly on, he knew he could not live to see his
cathedral finished, and he patiently made a wooden model of the great
dome of exact proportions. From this model his idea was carried out.
Twenty popes came and went, pressing the work to completion; eighteen
architects planned and replanned, and expended $100,000,000, brought
from the four quarters of the globe; and a hundred and fifty years
rolled around before St. Peter's was finished. Sixtus V. employed six
hundred men, night and day, ceas