anges tirent les rideaux. Au-dessus, dans une arcade ogivale, la Vierge et deux saints sont debout pour recueillir son âme. On ne peut rendre avec des paroles l'expression étonnée, enfantine et douloureuse de la Vierge; le sculpteur avait vu queique jeune fille en larmes au chevet de sa mère mourante, et, tout entier à son impression, librement, sans réminiscence de l'antique, sans contrainte d'école, il exprimait son sentiment. Taine, Voyage en Italie.'

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'A contrast is here established between the repose of the dead and the ever-watchful activity of celestial ministers. Sleep so guarded, the sculptor seeks to tell us, must have glorious waking; and when those hands unfold upon the resurrection morning, the hushed sympathy of the attendant angels will break into smiles and singing, as they lead the just man to the Lord he loved in life.'—7. A. Symonds.

At the end of the long street, outside the heavy but handsome Porta Romana, we reach the Benedictine convent of S. Pietro de Casinensi. It has a slender tower with a fringe of machicolation half-way up, and a low spire, conspicuous in all distant views of Perugia. Here the church, being complete as a picture gallery, has not been robbed of its. contents. It bears some resemblance to S. Maria Maggiore at Rome, and is an ancient basilica, built before 1007 by Vincioli, the first abbot of the convent. The nave is supported by eighteen granite and marble columns, with Ionic capitals, taken from S. Angelo. Above are pictures by Antonio Vassilacci, commonly called L' Aliense, a pupil of Tintoretto, who exactly copied his manner, and here carried. his style into his native place.

On the right of the entrance are pictures of S. Peter in prison, and S. Peter healing the lame man by Alfani. Over the third altar in the right aisle is a picture of S. Benedict giving his Rule, by Massolino da Panicale. In the chapel which opens from this aisle, is a Madonna with S. John and S. Elizabeth, a copy of Andrea del Sarto. Over the doors of the sacristies, on the right of the choir, are copies of saints of Perugino by Sassoferrato and a Holy Family by Bonifazio. A picture of the Resurrection is by Alfani.

In the sacristy are five exquisite little half-length figures by Perugino S. Scholastica, S. Ercolano, S. Pietro Abbate, S. Costanzo, and S. Mauro, which belonged to the sides of an

Ascension painted for the high-altar of this church, now in the gallery at Lyons; the predella is at Rouen; the lunette in S. Germain l'Auxerrois; and three more saints-Benedetto, Placido, and Flavia-are in the Vatican gallery. The best of those here are Scholastica and Costanzo, and the colouring of the latter is quite magnificent. He was bishop of Perugia in the 3rd and 4th century, and was martyred under Marcus Aurelius: he is much overrated in this part of Italy, and the district between Perugia and Foligno is still called Strada di Costanzo. Costanzo and Ercolano are both represented in the famous picture of Perugino called 'Madonna con Quattro Santi,' now in the Vatican. The picture of S. Francesca Romana is by M. A. Caravaggio. On the right wall is a Holy Family of Parmigianino, and in the corner the earliest known work of Raffaelle, S. John embracing the Infant Saviour. At the opposite corner is a head of Christ by Dosso Dossi.

The choir has beautiful stallwork with reliefs by Stefano da Bergamo, 1535, executed from designs of Raffaelle. The 24 choir books have admirable illuminations of 1400 and 1500 by the monks of the convent.

Entering the left aisle we have, at the end, the Dead Christ on the knees of his Mother between S. Leonard and S. Jerome, by Ben. Bonfigli, 1468. In the adjoining Cappella Vibi is a marble altar by Mino da Fiesole, 1473. The next chapel contains-The Agony in the Garden, by Guido Reni. Then, on the pillar, is a Judith, a very grand piece of colour by Sassoferrato, and in the third chapel three frescoes by Vasari, the Marriage at Cana, the Prophet Elisha curing the Sick, and S. Benedict re-assuring the monks of Monte Cassino when they were without food. S. Benedict giving his Rule, with the convent of Monte Cassino in the background, is by Fiamingo. On the next pillar is an Adoration of the Magi by Adone Doni (Eusebio di S. Giorgio); then an Assumption by Alfani ; an Annunciation by Sassoferrato; and a Pietà by Perugino.

The Chapel of S. Martino in the adjoining convent has

frescoes by Lo Spagna and Pinturicchio. Close by, inside the neighbouring gate of S. Costanzo, is a charming little Passeggiata ('La Veduta '), with a glorious view over hill and valley.

'Perugia is the empress of hill-set Italian cities. Southward from its high-built battlements and church towers, the eye can sweep a circuit of the Apennines unrivalled in its width. From cloud-like Radicofani, above Siena in the west, to snow-capped Monte Catria, beneath whose summit Dante spent those saddest months of solitude in 1313, the mountains curve continuously in lines of austere dignity and tempered sweetness. Assisi, Spoleto, Todi, Trevi, crown lesser heights within the range of vision. Here and there the glimpse of distant rivers lights a silver spark upon the plain. Those hills conceal Lake Thrasymene; and here lies Orvieto, and Ancona there: while at our feet the Umbrian champaign, breaking away in the valley of the Tiber, spreads in all the largeness of majestically converging mountain slopes. This is a landscape which can never lose its charm. Whether it be purple golden summer, or winter with sad tints of russet woods and faintly rosy snows, or spring attired in tenderest green of new-fledged trees and budding flowers, the air is always pure and light and finely tempered here. City gates, sombre as their own antiquity, frame vistas of the laughing fields. Terraces, flanked on either side by jutting masonry, cut clear vignettes of olive-hoary slopes, with cypress-shadowed farms in hollows of the hills. Each coign or point of vantage carries a bastion or tower of Etruscan, Roman, mediaeval architecture, tracing the limits of the town upon its mountain plateau. Everywhere art and nature lie side by side in amity beneath a sky so pure and delicate, that from its limpid depth the spirit seems to drink new life. What air-tints of lilac, orange, and pale amethyst are shed upon those vast ethereal hills and undulating plains! What wandering cloud-shadows sail across their sea of olives and of vines, with here and there a fleece of vapour or a column of blue smoke from charcoal burners on the mountain flank! To southward, far away beyond those hills, is felt the presence of eternal Rome, not seen, but clearly indicated by the hurrying of a hundred streams that swell the Tiber.'-7. A. Symonds.

A great building which occupies a projecting buttress of hill upon the right, now the Military Hospital, was the Convent of S. Giuliana. Its church, a fine Gothic edifice, with a grand rose window, was built in 1253 by Cardinal Giovanni di Toledo.

At the base of the hill on which Perugia stands, about two miles from the city, on the road to Rome, is the famous Tomb of the Volumniï, which none must fail to visit. Those who drive to Assisi may take it on the way.'

'You descend a long flight of steps to the entrance, now closed by a door of wood: the ancient one, a huge slab of travertin, which was placed against it—a mere "stone on the mouth of the sepulchre now rests against the rock outside. You enter,-here is none of the chill of the grave, but a warm, damp atmosphere. On one of the doorposts, which are slabs of travertin, an inscription in Etruscan characters catches your eye, and so sharply are the letters cut, and so bright is the red paint within them, that you can scarcely credit the epitaph to have anything like an antiquity of two thousand years.

‘Daylight cannot penetrate to the further end of the tomb; but when a torch is lighted you perceive yourself to be in a spacious chamber with a very lofty pitched roof, carved into the form of beam and rafters. On this chamber open nine others, of much smaller size, and all empty, save one at the further end, opposite the entrance, where a party of revellers, each on a snow-white couch, with chapleted brow, torque-decorated neck, and goblet in hand, lie-a petrifaction of conviviality-in solemn mockery of the pleasures to which for ages on ages they have bidden adieu.

'There are seven urns in this chamber, five with recumbent figures of men, one with a female in a sitting posture, and one of a peculiar character. All, except the last, are of travertin, coated over with a fine stucco; they are wrought, indeed, with a skill, a finish, and a truth to nature by no means common in Etruscan urns. The inscriptions show them all to belong to one family, that of " Velimnas," or Volumnius, as it was corrupted by the Romans. Four of the urns are very similar, seeming to differ in little beyond the ages of the men, each of whom is reclining, in half-draped luxury, on his banqueting couch; but here it is not the sarcophagus or urn itself which represents the couch, as is generally the case; but the lid alone, which is raised into that form, hung with drapery, and supported by elegantly-carved legs, while the receptacle for the ashes forms a high pedestal to the couch. On the front of each of these ash-chests are four paterae, each with a Gorgon's head in the centre.

'The fifth male, who occupies the post of honour at the upper end of the feast, lies on a couch more richly decorated than those of his kinsmen, and on a much loftier pedestal. His urn is the grand monument of the sepulchre. In the centre is represented an arched doorway, and on either hand sits, at the angle of the urn, the statue of a winged Fury, half draped, with bare bosom and a pair of snakes knotted over 'The keys are kept in a house close to the tomb.

her brows. One bears a flaming torch on her shoulder, and the other probably bore a similar emblem, but one hand, with whatever it contained, has been broken off. They sit cross-legged, with calm but stern expression, and eyes turned upwards, as if looking for orders from on high respecting the sepulchres they are guarding. The archway is merely marked with colour on the face of the monument, and within it are painted four females-one with her hand on the door-post, and eyes anxiously turned towards the Furies outside, wishing, it would seem, to issue forth, but not daring to pass the threshold through dread of their stern gaolers. The whole scene has a mysterious Dantesque character eminently calculated to stir the imagination.

'The sixth urn belongs to a female, who is distinguished from the lords of her family by her position, for she sits aloft on her pedestal like a goddess or queen on her throne; indeed, she has been supposed to represent either Nemesis or Proserpine, an opinion which the frontlet on the brow and the owl-legs to the stool beneath her feet are thought to favour. This is, however, more probably an effigy of the lady whose dust is contained in the urn, and whose name is inscribed on the lid.

'Lastly, you are startled on beholding among these genuine Etruscan monuments an urn in marble, in the form of a Roman temple, with a Latin inscription on the frieze. But while you are wondering at this, your eye falls on the roof of the urn, and beholds, scratched in minute letters on the tiles an Etruscan inscription, which you perceive at once to correspond to the Latin-"P. Volvmnivs, A. F. Violens Cafatia Natus." That is, Publius Volumnius, son of Aulus, by a mother named Cafatia.

'The roof of the chamber is coffered in concentric recessed squares, and in the centre is an enormous Gorgon's head, hewn from the dark rock, with eyes upturned in horror, gleaming from the gloom, teeth bristling whitely in the open mouth, wings on the temples, and snakes knotted over the brow. Depending by a rod from the lintel of the doorway, hangs a small winged genius of earthenware, and to its feet was originally attached a lamp of the same material, with a Medusa's head on the bottom. . . . On each side of the entrance to the inner chamber, a crested snake or dragon projects from the rocky wall, darting forth its tongue, as if to threaten the intruder into this sanctuary. These reptiles are of earthenware, but their tongues are of metal.

'Never shall I forget with what strange awe I entered this dark cavern- - gazed on the inexplicable characters in the doorway-descried the urns dimly through the gloom-beheld the family party at their sepulchral revels-the solemn dreariness of the surrounding cells. The figures on the walls and ceilings strangely stirred my fancy. The Furies, with their glaring eyes, gnashing teeth, and ghastly grins; the snakes, with which the walls seemed alive, hissing and darting their tongues at me; and, above all, the solitary wing (on one side of the entrance),