squares, and at various tables all down the room different workmen were occupied, each with a copy of one of these squares before him, in "setting it up" in little glass type, just as in the old days, we used to "set up" copy in the composing-room of the Daily Stiletto. The newer or poorer members of the "craft" had the inferior parts of the work, the sky, the floor, the architectural bits, etc. The old hands were given the more important sections: and I stood for half an hour watching one grey-headed, spectacled old chap, who was doing the head of Valerius Flaccus, who, as you may remember, is looking down sadly on the corpse of Sta. Petronilla. He had a great deal of trouble with the eyes, and while I watched him he more than once took out, with a fine pair of pincers, some hundred or so of "smalta" from the putty which forms the back of his "stick," and began to make the eye all over again, so as to give it just the right expression. It was very interesting (though I felt rather as if iny own eye was being operated upon), and I wondered as I stood looking at him whether he thought

(as I did), that the finished picture would be imperishable, and would look down from the walls of the great Cathedral upon generation after generation of "articulately-speaking men," long after he and I had been

laid, like Sta. Petronilla, in our graves, and turned again to the dust from which we rose. One could make a very pretty sermon about it, if one were in that "line of business."

I think that if I had to be a prisoner, and could select my place of incarceration, I should choose to join the illustrious "prisoner of the Vatican," in that largest of palaces, provided I might have (as I suppose he

Think of living in a house containing (as the guide books tell us), 20 courts and 11,000 rooms, many a single one of which contains enough of priceless worth to make the best of our American museums seem poor by comparison.

True, the Sistine Chapel is so overloaded with decoration as to produce a sense of bewilderment and fatigue rather than of pleasure; and as for the Stanze of Raphael, I cannot but agree with Taine, that "the painter here is secondary; the apartment was not made for his work, but it for the apartment. The light is dim, and half of the frescoes are in shadow. The ceiling is overcharged-the subjects stifle each other; and nineteen out of twenty of those who visit the place must certainly be disenchanted." Can you recall his criticism of the "Incendio del Borgo?" If not, it is worth re-reading. Considered as a representation of a terrific conflagration, the picture is simply ludicrous, but as a series of studies of "the human form divine" in various and always striking attitudes, it is superb. The Liberation of St. Peter from Prison," though placed in the worst possible place for light-for you remember its position just over the principal window of the room-is magnificent, and grows upon one more the longer one studies it.

But it is when you visit the Sculpture Galleries (the entrance is now away at the back of St. Peter's, half a mile, at least, from the end of the tramway), that you feel thankful that the Popes of the Renaissance and later periods, were so rich and such munificent patrons of art. Is there anything finer anywhere in the world than that Sala Rotonda of Pius VI, where one does not know whether to admire most, the Jupiter from Otricoli, the grandest realization in marble of a heathen's conception of God, or the Barberini Juno, or that lovely head of Antinous, or the colossal sitting statue of Nerva, of which Merivale says:

"Among the treasures of antiquity preserved in modern Rome, none surpasses-none sitting statue of Nerva, which draws all eyes perhaps equals - in force and dignity, the in the Rotonda of the Vatican, embodying the highest ideal of a Roman magnate, the finished warrior, statesman, and gentleman of an age of varied training and wide, practical experience."

Speaking of Nerva reminds me how familiar and "at home" one grows to feel with these old Roman Emperors, meeting them almost daily in the Museums of the Vatican, the Capitol, the Casino Borghese, and in so many similar places. As Story says in "Roba di Roma":

"At Rome the Emperors become as familiar as the Popes. Who does not know the curly-headed Marcus Aurelius, with his lifted brow and projecting eyes, from the full round beauty of his youth, to the more haggard look of his latest years? Are there any more modern portraits more familiar to us than the severe, wedge-like head of Augustus, with his sharp-cut lips and nose, or the dull phiz of Hadrian, with his hair combed down over his low forehead, or the vain, perking face of Lucius Verus, with his thin nose, low brow and profusion of curls.- -or the brutal head of Caracalla, or the bestial, bloated features of

Vitellius?

"These men, who were but lay figures to us at school, mere pegs of names to hang historic robes upon, thus interpreted by the living history of their portraits, the incider.tal illustrations of the places were they lived monuments which they had erected, become and moved and died, and the buildings and like men of yesterday. Art has made them our contemporaries. They are as near to us

as Pius VII or Napoleon.

There is a head of Nero here, in this "Hall of Busts," which makes me sure that history (as in the case of our own Cromwell), has grossly maligned that poor young fellow. No man with such an angelic countenance could possibly have been wicked "one little bit. Just as the thermometer has been the ruin of our Canadian North-West, I believe that (but for those wretched historians), Nero (judging from his face), might have been canonized and worshipped as a saint. Indeed, that very fate did befall two of the statues in this same "Hall of Busts." They are two life-sized sitting figures, now

considered to represent the Greek comic poets, Posidippus and Menander, and probably once stood in the temple of Athene on the Acropolis. Having been early carried to Rome they were lost, until about the time of Sixtus V., when they were dug up somewhere on the Viminal Hill, and placed in the church of St. Lorenzo Pane e Perna, where they were worshipped under the belief that they were statues of saints, a belief which arose from their having metal discs over their heads, a practice which prevailed with many Greek statues intended for the open air. The marks of the metal pins for these discs may still be seen, as well as those for a bronze protection for the feet, to prevent their being worn away by the kisses of the faithful, as on the statue of St. Peter at St. Peter's.

I think it was in the "New Gallery," the other day, that we heard an American girl in front of the bust of Julius Cæsar, looking with interest at the clearcut,intellectual face, with its strongly marked lines, Rom

an nose, and sharply defined lower jaw, and saying to her gray-haired, softhatted companion in a tone of frank (not shy) surprise, "But, poppa, surely Cæsar didn't believe in all those heathen gods and goddesses," as she indicated with a wave of her well-gloved hand the adjacent statues of Mercury, Minerva Medica and Proserpine.

I was reminded of another American female of the "Emancipated Woman" type, whom we had met a few days before in the Borghese Picture Gallery, standing in front of Elizabeth Sirani's picture of Lucretia, the usual school picture of a fat, middle-aged lady of sad expression, and with a dagger in one hand (sometimes the right one), the point directed to

In one respect Rome is far behind Toronto, viz., in the management of its civic affairs. With us, as you know, these things are largely managed by three or four irresponsible newspaper reporters, who dictate policy to the Mayor, solve all engineering problems for the City Engineer, and give their opinions upon finance ex cathedra, through the medium of (chiefly) evening papers, to the City Treasurer.

In Rome they have not yet " caught on" to this simple and eminently satisfactory method of conducting civic business.

The best citizens there think it an honor to be elected members of the "giunta" or Board of Aldermen, and the present mayor ("Sindaco "), is a Prince belonging to an old and honorable Roman family.

In fact the municipal government here is still something like our old system in Toronto in the days when men like Sir Adam Wilson, Sir Oliver Mowat, the Hon. John Hillyard Cameron, the Hon. Henry Sherwood and Col. Macaulay, and the elder Geo. T. Denison, thought it not unworthy of them to become aldermen of the City of Toronto: "mais nous avons changé tous cela❞—and now we have-but comparisons, as Mrs. Ramsbotham says, are odoriferous," and so "I names no names."

Perhaps something is due to the fact that the aldermen here meet in a City Hall rich in memories of noble namnes borne and noble deeds done by Romans, not all of past ages, but

many of them of the present generation.

One room is dedicated to memorials of Joseph Garibaldi, the uncanonized saint whom New Italy worships today with an intensity of fervor unknown but under those southern skies. To me, as a sincere admirer of the "red-shirted saviour of his country." it was delightful to see the Italian provincial on his first visit to the capital, reverently uncover as he entered the chamber where the bust of the "Great Liberator" stands among the banners and garlands which were carried beside and heaped upon the coffin of the "grandest Roman of them all," who, after winning the South for the "Honest King," was content, to return to his farm at Caprera, like a modern Cincinnatus, and to let others enjoy the glory of his triumph.

This, and one other room in Rome, are to me the most sacred spots in that Holy City. I mean by "the other" that large chamber in the Palace of the Quirinal in which are filially preserved by King Humbert, the banners and wreaths sent by all the communes of United Italy to the funeral of him without whom United Italy had never been; "il Re Gulantuomo,"-Victor Emmanuel II., who after the fatal reverse of Novara, took up the crown cast down by his broken-hearted father, Charles Albert, and, vowing to wear it as a constitutional monarch, or "to die trying," added to its gems the States of Lombardy, Naples and the Sicilies, the Abruzzi, and finally Venice and central Italy, including Rome itself.

I have just been reading Mrs. Godkin's life of Victor Emmanuel, and perhaps, am still a little under her influence, but to a Canadian who has seen a nation slowly grow from 1867 to 1894, and not yet become united and homogenous, the life of Victor Emmanuel is intensely interesting.

Do you remember what Col. John Hay wrote at Paris, thirty years ago:

"Lame lion of Caprera,

Red shirts of the lost campaigns, Not idly shed was the generous blood You poured from generous veins. For at last came glorious Venice, In storm and tempest, home, And now God maddens the greedy kings, And gives her people Rome."

But to return, perhaps to descend -to the City Council of Rome.

In the matter of police protection, Rome would startle the average Toronto alderman, for there are in the city nearly 2,000 policemen (including the Pope's), divided as follows:

1st. The "guardians of public security," a Government protective and police force, appointed and paid by the Crown, and whose duty it is to investigate criminal cases wherever they may be sent throughout the kingdom. Of these there are about 850 in Rome.

2nd. The "Carabinieri" (gendarmes), a military body, very well dis

ANECDOTES.

OPINION OF LORD PEMBROKE, who died in 1794, concerning bishops. In a letter to Garrick, 1771, he says: "I cannot attend in the House of Lords to give my vote for the Liverpool Theatre, but I have desired Lady P. to beat up for as many troops for him as she can, and as it is to oppose the church, I trust she will get a good many to majority the Bench, who, far from a voice, should, by rights, have no seat but in a pew, anywhere."

A JUDICIAL PUN. Lord Chancellor Hatton had been sitting for several days hearing a case which turned altogether upon the extent of certain property, and the correctness of the boundaries thereof. The counsel on one part said: "My Lord, I assure you we lie on this side.” "And