esteem properly at Perugia), and some Peruginos that might well pass for the works of Raphael, so clear is the colouring and so admirable the drawing. One little picture of Christ and St. John, as children, painted by Raphael in his youth, is very interesting. Pale and dirty as it is, the forms are full of elegance.

After we left this church, we walked up a hill so steep, I decidedly expected never to get my breath again. There was a grand view before us, as everywhere near the walls, from the exceedingly elevated situation of the city. At last we came to the Porta Augusta, one of the grandest Etruscan monuments in the world. It is of immense size, and formed of stones actually gigantic; the walls of Fiesole are nothing to it: I cannot describe the solemn grandeur of this portal of unknown, almost fabulous antiquity, frowning down on the pigmy erections of later ages. There it stands in its glorious solidity until the day of judgment; nothing short of a universal convulsion can shake Over the arch are the letters "Augusta Perugia," looking at a distance like some cabalistic charm; on the left is an open gallery, and two massive towers surmount the centre. There is actually an awful look about it, like something seen in a hideous dream.

it.

Hard by is the College of the Belle Arti, containing the most curious Etruscan relics, wonderfully fresh and sharp in outline. Rooms there are filled with stone tombs, small, of course, in size, as the custom of burning the dead prevailed. All have some recumbent figure reposing on the lid, as invariably seen in the sepulchral remains of this people; vases, too, there are by hundreds; and a pillar in the centre of one room marvellously fresh. In an upper gallery are a few pictures, but of no peculiar interest. Below, a lonely botanical garden, planted with laurels, stretches out, terrace-like, over the walls-a place in which to meditate on the strange destiny of a people capable of such wonderful achievements in the various branches of art, leaving not a vestige of their history to enlighten posterity.

But I was obliged to rush away without any ceremony; and, taking a brusque leave of the Etruscan monuments, found myself suddenly turn up in the cinque-cento Sala del Cambio, covered with beautiful frescoes by Perugino. Here are depicted prophets, philosophers, and warriors, in an odd jumble; as well as the Nativity and the Transfiguration. I confess, I was not much interested in this apartment, reserving all my admiration for the chapel beyond, where there are some exquisite frescoes by Raphael-sybils and angels, of a grace and refinement marking them as beings of an order he alone could create, amid the most exquisite arabesque ornaments and fanciful devices. The ceiling being low, one can entirely enjoy these charming works. Here also are paintings by Perugino and Spagnoletto; but all sink into insignificance beside the fairy pencil of the great master.

After seeing something of the paintings at Perugia, one can estimate the influence exercised by the Umbrian schools over Italian art generally. The admiration of classical subjects, and the fall of the Romanesque school, caused by the obscurity and troubles of the middle ages, and the deplorable condition of Rome, the mistress of all civilisation-then degraded to a provincial city under the mistaken policy of the Eastern

emperors-superinduced the progress of the Byzantine style all over Italy. Success in this branch of art required no creative genius, there being an accepted type for every subject which it would have been scandalous not to follow. Art was cramped and confined into certain patterns, without drawing, form, or nature-long, lank, wo-begone spectres, whose only merit in our eyes is their extreme grotesqueness and antiquity. When art seemed degraded to a mere tradition, the impulse given to painting by the Tuscan school, in the persons of Cimabue, Giotto, and their immediate followers-whom we may call Naturalisti, from their simple imitation of nature, as contradistinguished to the Byzantine disregard for aught save servile copying at last produced a more healthy tone, and gave an impulse to art in the right direction. But the naturalistic tendency of this school caused, in progress of time, a move in an opposite direction, and from the over-appreciation of nature, and a tendency to reduce the holiest mysteries-nay, the very representation of the Trinity-into forms too common-place, arose the school of Umbria. These artists are distinguished for a certain deep and fervid piety, expressed in every lineament of the holy personages they portray. Like the blessed Fra Angelico du Frisole, they seem to have devoted their talents entirely to God, and to have made painting the subject of earnest prayer, as he is said to have done; never retouching his pictures, under the impression that he was inspired while painting.

The retired and secluded position of Umbria,—the small traffic her cities carried on beyond their own sphere (so unlike the busy life of Florence or Venice, where carnal tendencies soon were developed), -the immediate vicinity of Assisi and her enthusiastic inmates, followers of that mystical visionary St. Francis, all tended to strengthen and develop this religious tendency. None can look at the paintings of Pietro Perugino, Sassoferrato, or Pinturiccio, without perceiving their deep mysterious enthusiasm. They are, par excellence, devotional pictures; the subjects of their pencil are ideal in expression, bearing, indeed, the common human stamp, but entirely sanctified. This school reached its climax in Raphael, the pupil of Perugino, who created beings of another and a more celestial race--around whom seemed to hover the very airs of heaven-beings too pure for either the passions or the temptations of humanity. Still, to a certain degree, this was a false tendency. What his powerful genius could command at pleasure sank with him, and soon became among his followers but tame and maudlin affectation. All that is not nature must fall; and any school of painting, however charming, not founded on this great principle, is fated as prevenient to decay. Its very merit of extreme ideality and spiritualisation contains the germs of its destruc

tion.

Even the most cursory view of the pictures at Perugia must verify these remarks, and show the peculiar characteristic of the school of which this city formed the centre. It would be easy to spend at least a week in this most interesting place, divided between the Etruscan antiquities, the exquisite scenery, and the paintings, where Raphael first developed that surprising genius which still astonishes the nineteenth, as it did the sixteenth century; I was extremely grieved to leave Perugia so soon, but there was no help for it; the hardest part of our journey through the

great chain of Apennines that bounded the prospect, lay before us, and we must reach Rome on the morning of the sixth day.

One church I must mention, which I saw on returning to the Hotel San Dominico, with the grandest painted glass windows in the choir I ever beheld-the greens, and blues, and purples brilliant beyond expression. This is the only window I ever saw comparable to those three glorious sisters at Milan, where the whole Scriptures are depicted as in a magic mirror.

Supposing I have a vetturino who is not a beast-supposing I am not put to sleep in the room haunted with the shades of half the defunct crowned heads in Europe-and, finally, supposing the second Sicilian Vespers, prophesied by Mr. B. so earnestly, do not take place and make the very streams run aristocratic blood-supposing all this, I hope to visit Perugia again more at leisure.

The vetturino was at the door, and so was Mr. B., who would not look at a single thing, being solely interested in the meat, and the internal struggles of Italy. He was in a great fuss to be off, so in five minutes we were rattling through the gloomy old streets, out of the Roman gate, and down a tremendous descent, into the rich plain I had seen from the Frontone. After about an hour's drive, a lofty cathedral uprose before us; this was Santa Maria degli Angeli, the cradle of that great order founded by St. Francis, and built over the original cell where he first felt those mystical inspirations to which he so strangely abandoned himself. Begging and mendicancy generally being inculcated as a cardinal virtue by him and his followers, one could not be surprised that in this neighbourhood it flourishes gloriously. The moment our carriage stopped, we were beset by about thirty men, women, and children, of the most importunate description, who hovered about us like substantial gadflies. Never, even in Italy, did I see such boldness; they followed me into the church, pulled my sleeve, my hand, and all but laid violent hold on me. As it was impossible to see anything until this generation was disposed of, we came to a parley, declaring that we would distribute three pauls among the whole set, on condition of being afterwards unmolested. This was agreed to nem. con., and Mr. B. delivered over the money to a woman sitting at a small fruit-stall, who accepted the office. Around her they all instantly clustered, and such a quarrelling, screaming, and cursing began, as only Italians are capable of. One cried, another shrieked; then a couple of men began to fight, and, others joining, the affair seemed likely to end in a general mêlée; but as the fruit-seller stood her ground firmly, they all finally cooled down, and disappeared one by one into their respective lairs. This was the practical abuse of poor St. Francis's mendicant system, who boasted he had never refused alms to a beggar in his life!

After we had disposed of the importunate beggars, we turned to contemplate the noble and spacious church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, raised by the faithful over the rustic cell where St. Francis loved to offer up his devotions. Originally it was a solitary spot, distant from his native town, where he could retire unseen by every human eye, and abandon himself to those raptures which history scarce knows whether to denominate madness or ecstatic holiness. Here he came and passed days, nay,

even weeks, rapt in the contemplation of heavenly beatitude; and on this spot uprose the grand church which now lends so noble a feature to the surrounding plain, constructed so as to enclose his original chapel and cell within its precincts. The interior is perhaps too bare, from the excessive whiteness and simplicity of the massive pillars; but its size is commanding, and a noble dome rises in the centre. The present building is modern, the original church having been almost entirely destroyed in 1832 by an earthquake, which, however, respected the altar and cell of St. Francis, positively the only portions not reduced to ruin-a circumstance his followers of course attributed to a miracle. That more sacred portion of the church is railed off and locked up. While waiting for the sacristano, who was at dinner, I again fell a victim to some straggling beggars in the church, especially a woman in the pretty Romanesque costume, who pulled my cloak so perseveringly I was forced into attention. She informed me that, at the grand annual festa, ten or twelve thousand persons were frequently present, drawn from all the surrounding country by enthusiasm for the native saint. So intense, indeed, she said, was the crowd, that persons were frequently suffocated on these anniversaries. What the beggars must be on these solemn occasions I leave to the imagination of my readers; I confess myself quite at fault. At last the Franciscan brother appeared with the keys, and we entered the penetralia behind the screen. The deepest devotion was apparent in this man's deportment, as well as of others who chanced to pass us. He never mentioned the saint but in a whisper, at the same time raising his cap, and looked evidently with an annoyed and jealous eye at our intruding on the sacred precincts, heretics and unclean schismatics as we were. Near the grand altar is a small recess, where, as I understood, St. Francis died; paintings cover the walls, where burns a perpetual lamp, and the brother seemed to look on the spot with such devotion, I could not trouble him by a too impertinent curiosity.

But the most interesting portion of the building was St. Francis's cell, outside the church, in a small court at the end of a long stone passage, now converted into a chapel. Under the altar there is a deep narrow hole, visible through bars of iron, where the saint performed his flagellations, and lay as a penance for hours and days without eating or speaking. The legend goes, that the instrument of flagellation was the stem of a white rose-bush, growing in a little garden hard by (still visible), and that after his blood had tinged the broken branch the tree ever after blossomed of a deep red. It is also added, that a certain royal lady, within the last few years, after great difficulty, procured a slip of this rose-tree, which, when transferred from its native soil, returned to the original colour, and became again a white rose,

As we were returning into the church, the entire convent of nearly two hundred monks passed along the stone passage to the refectory, walking two and two, and singing. Their voices sounded hollow and melancholy as the chant echoed through the vaulted space; the dark dress of brown serge, and pale and downcast countenances, gave one but a melancholy impression of an order requiring all the enthusiastic devotion of its founder to render it palatable. The younger monks passed first, and our sacristan desired us ladies to conceal our dangerous faces behind the door;

the rear being brought up by aged and infirm brethren, who were considered well seasoned to like temptations, we were permitted to re-enter the passage into the church. These monks, I understand, fast to an extraordinary extent, and further exercise their self-denial by sitting for a long time repeating prayers, with their scanty food spread out before them, waiting until appetite be thoroughly conquered ere they allow themselves any nourishment. These unnecessary mortifications are a melancholy specimen of the weakness of mankind. Placed by a beneficent Creator in a beauteous, and especially in Italy a luxuriant and abundant earth, we are enjoined by Him to use the good things he has created for our enjoyment, and not abuse them. The deluded monk, thinking to serve the Almighty by a life of idleness and self-denial, passes a wretched existence below, under the mistaken impression of celestial happiness being the certain reward of such unreasonable penances.

St. Francis himself was by his life and character an exception to all ordinary rules-a man who voluntarily renounced parents, home, and the advantages of a worldly position, exposing himself to contempt and ridicule, and from this lowly cell, or rather hole, where he began his impassioned career, finally leaving more than 150,000 followers at his death,—is so singular an example of the force of religious enthusiasm and power of persuasion, that the usual string of arguments are at once silenced. The classical Eustace draws a parallel between him and Lycurgus, boasting that the saint gave to his laws a longer duration and more extensive influence than the legislator; ergo, he must have been a more extraordinary person, and have derived from natural talent and accomplished eloquence still greater and more magical powers of persuasion. Lycurgus, too, had obedience to the laws and worldly advantages on his side; while the rules of St. Francis were painfully repugnant to proud humanity, inculcating utter poverty and humiliation, involving a literal practice of the grandest but most difficult precepts of the Gospel, "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor." The extraordinary resolution with which he himself worked out these precepts from the age of twenty-one years, with unflinching fortitude, during a period of nearly half a century, is an unanswerable argument for his deep and earnest sincerity. All the enthusiasm and warmth of a glowing Italian nature-all the fervid passions of a being born in the burning plains of the Romagna-was devoted in virgin purity to God; and none acquainted with his life, be they Catholic or Protestant, can deny that the practical goodness of his entire life, the privations that devotion called on him to endure, and which brought him to the grave blind and worn with disease, must command the deepest sympathy.

His deep humility, bordering on moral pusillanimity, joined to an eloquence lofty and ardent, and a matchless courage in the path of duty, form a singular and exceptional character. I confess I never could make up my mind as to the mystical part of his history. When I read the wellauthenticated accounts of his receiving the stigmata-especially the minute description of the wound emitting blood, and the form of the nails" black like iron"-I cannot but feel staggered at the unanswerable evidence, and the impossibility of deceit from so pure a soul as that of St. Francis. The details of his body being raised in the air, sometimes to the height of the ceiling, during his pious raptures, are utterly incredible. The question