s the gallery of the bronzes. In this department the late finds
have been very numerous and extremely interesting. Among the objects
which will immediately attract the visitor's eye as he enters the
principal room are a litter and a biga or chariot. In both cases of
course only fragments of the bronze remain, but they are sufficient to
have enabled skilled antiquaries to reconstruct the entire litter and
the entire chariot. The latter is very specially interesting. The plates
of embossed and chiseled bronze which encased the body of the chariot
are figured with admirably-worked subjects in basso-rilievo, many of
them relating to the "wondrous tale of Troy." This invaluable specimen
was the gift to the museum of that eminent and liberal archaeologist,
Signor A. Castellani, of whose matchless collection of Etruscan jewelry
I wrote in a former number of this Magazine. The remaining portions of
the bronze- and iron-work of the litter, with its arrangement of poles
for carrying it, somewhat after the fashion of a sedan-chair, though the
whole of the apparatus is much lighter, are more fragmentary, but yet
sufficient for the reconstruction of a specimen illustrative to the
classical reader of many a passage in the ancient writers. Under No. 10
the visitor will find the small statue of an hermaphrodite in bronze,
fashioned as the bearer of a lamp--a statue of very great delicacy and
beauty.

The next room is that of the medals and coins, the number of which will
probably surprise the visitor not a little. The gold coins and the
better-preserved and more interesting specimens are shown single under
cleverly-arranged glass cases. The more ordinary results of the finds
which are almost daily being made have been consigned in promiscuous
heaps to huge glass vases, whose tops, however, are carefully sealed
down. The large collections of the _aes rude signatum_ of the consular
and of the imperial families, in bronze, in silver and in gold, together
with some mediaeval specimens, are ranged around the walls.

Then we come to the sculpture, the main scope of the new museum, which
is distributed in a large vestibule, in a noble octagonal central hall
and in a long gallery. It was an excellent idea, adding much to the
interest which every stranger in Rome will take in the museum, to place
on each specimen a placard specifying the locality in which it was
discovered and the date of the finding. And this information is
admirably suppleme