recumbent statue of the saint pierced with gilded arrows. The sculpture
is of the school of Bernini,--done after the design of Bernini himself,
Mrs. Jameson said, and is more agreeable and in better taste than most of
his works. We walked round the basilica, glancing at the pictures in the
various chapels, none of which seemed to be of remarkable merit, although
Mrs. Jameson pronounced rather a favorable verdict on one of St. Francis.
She says that she can read a picture like the page of a book; in fact,
without perhaps assuming more taste and judgment than really belong to
her, it was impossible not to perceive that she gave her companion no
credit for knowing one single simplest thing about art. Nor, on the
whole, do I think she underrated me; the only mystery is, how she came to
be so well aware of my ignorance on artistical points.

In the basilica the Franciscan monks were arranging benches on the floor
of the nave, and some peasant children and grown people besides were
assembling, probably to undergo an examination in the catechism, and we
hastened to depart, lest our presence should interfere with their
arrangements. At the door a monk met us, and asked for a contribution in
aid of his church, or some other religious purpose. Boys, as we drove
on, ran stoutly along by the side of the chaise, begging as often as they
could find breath, but were constrained finally to give up the pursuit.
The great ragged bulks of the tombs along the Appian Way now hove in
sight, one with a farm-house on its summit, and all of them
preposterously huge and massive. At a distance, across the green
campagna on our left, the Claudian aqueduct strode away over miles of
space, and doubtless reached even to that circumference of blue hills
which stand afar off, girdling Rome about. The tomb of Cecilia Metella
came in sight a long while before we reached it, with the warm buff hue
of its travertine, and the gray battlemented wall which the Caetanis
erected on the top of its circular summit six hundred years ago. After