marble columns resembling malachite. A rich balustrade of tumbago connects the altar and the choir. The picture of the Virgin, in the central nave, was painted by Cabrena in 1700, and a St. Sebastian, in one of the chapels, by Balthasor de Echavi in 1645. The glory of the cupola was painted by Simeno de Planes; on the first plane are placed the ancient patriarchs and the celebrated women of the Old Testament, the colours being as vivid at this moment as when laid in. The balustrade surrounding the grand altar is also of tumbago, as are the sixty-two statues which serve as chandeliers. The high altar is approached by seven steps, the tabernacle is supported by eight ranges of pillars in the form of a colonnade, on the first of which stand the statues of the Apostles and the Evangelists, while those of numerous saints occupy the second range. On the third appear groups of angels, and, rising from the midst, the Mother of God.

The sacristy is fitted up with oak, black as ebony from age, with several large pictures. I often looked into it, and one day I found two or three priests indulging in a quiet chat after Mass, while the attendants folded away the rich vestments. A padre, seeing I was a stranger, offered to show me the magnificent set of vestments worked for the Cathedral by command of Isabella of Spain; they are of cloth of gold, encrusted with gems, and in panels passages from Holy Writ are worked exquisitely in silk, so as to have the effect of the finest painting; it is only on close inspection that I could discover the traces of the needle. These gorgeous vestments are useless for practical purposes,

for they are so heavy that no man of ordinary dimensions could sustain their immense weight for more than a few minutes. Saying mass, or even pronouncing the benediction in them, is out of the question. By the kindness of the padre I was also permitted to view the great council chamber, part and parcel of the Cathedral, in which the councils of the bishops were held, the Archbishop of Mexico presiding on a great gilded throne. This is indeed a noble apartment; it has an open groined roof, and around the walls are portraits of suffragan bishops of Mexico-copies only, for the originals are hung in a sort of secret chamber, to which I was subsequently conducted. This chamber was approached through the gates of a side altar, and the cicerone touched a-to me-invisible spring; a door of maximum thickness slowly opened to admit us to a sort of crypt, with formidably barred windows, around which hang the original portraits of the bishops from first to last, in splendid preservation. In this apartment was a massive oaken table, with a sort of funnel in the middle of it. It is on this table that the offerings of the faithful, after a collection, are deposited, counted, and dropped through the funnel into huge, grim-looking, iron-bound boxes, which stood about the room.

During my stay in Mexico excavations were being made in front of the Cathedral to convert the paved ground into a garden, and but a few feet below the surface some octagonal columns of the first church were discovered; also two heads of large stone serpents, some ten feet long and five feet in depth and in thickness; the carving of the feathered

ornaments on the heads was perfect; they had originally been the capitals to the doorposts of the pagan temple of Montezuma, and these interesting fragments of both temple and primitive church were conveyed with much labour and care to the National Museum.

THE WHIPPLE HOUSE, IPSWICH

W. H. DOWNES

HE old house bought by the Ipswich Historical So

THE

ciety is the best surviving example in New England of the earliest Seventeenth-Century colonial architecture. There are several finer and grander specimens of the domestic architecture of later periods in Essex County, but in all the category of colonial houses there is no such perfectly preserved and authentic type of the domestic architecture of the middle of the Seventeenth Century. The exact date of its erection is unknown, but all the valid evidence available, in the absence of documentary records bearing directly on this point, indicates that it was built as early as 1650, and there are architects who believe that it was erected still earlier. The extreme rarity of houses dating from that remote period, so soon after the settlement of Massachusetts, is due primarily to the limited longevity of wooden building, and secondarily to the fact that the colonists were at first obliged by the paucity of proper building materials to erect only temporary cabins of logs, which were subsequently abandoned and neglected, after more comfortable dwellings were made possible by the establishment of saw-mills and forges and roads. Ipswich was settled in 1633. The first saw-mill in the town was established in 1649. The great posts and girders, with other surviving timbers of the frame of the old house in question, bear no marks of the axe or