in the entrance-hall the Aurora of Guercino, painted in fresco on the
ceiling. There is beauty in the design; but the painter certainly was
most unhappy in his black shadows, and in the work before us they give
the impression of a cloudy and lowering morning which is likely enough to
turn to rain by and by. After viewing the fresco we mounted by a spiral
staircase to a lofty terrace, and found Rome at our feet, and, far off,
the Sabine and Alban mountains, some of them still capped with snow. In
another direction there was a vast plain, on the horizon of which, could
our eyes have reached to its verge, we might perhaps have seen the
Mediterranean Sea. After enjoying the view and the warm sunshine we
descended, and went in quest of the gardens of Sallust, but found no
satisfactory remains of them.

One of the most striking objects in the first casino was a group by
Bernini,--Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily
bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft,
while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It
is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of
great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an analogy
to his works in sculpture, when great power is lavished a little outside
of nature, and therefore proves to be only a fashion,--and not
permanently adapted to the tastes of mankind.


March 27th.--Yesterday forenoon my wife and I went to St. Peter's to see
the pope pray at the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. We found a good many
people in the church, but not an inconvenient number; indeed, not so many
as to make any remarkable show in the great nave, nor even in front of
the chapel. A detachment of the Swiss Guard, in their strange,
picturesque, harlequin-like costume, were on duty before the chapel, in