the upper Corinthian*; before it, on a lofty pedestal, rises a Corinthian pillar, supporting a brazen image of the Blessed Virgin. On the other side, a bold semicircular front, adorned with pilasters, and crowned with two domes, fills the eye and raises the expectation. Before it, on a pedestal of more than twenty feet in height, stands an Egyptian obelisk of a single piece of granite of sixty, terminating in a cross of bronze. These accompaniments on each side give the Basilica an air of unusual grandeur, and it must be allowed, that the interior is by no means unworthy of this external magnificence.

The principal entrance is, as usual in all the ancient churches, through a portico; this portico is supported by eight pillars of granite, and adorned with corresponding marble pilasters. The traveller on his entrance is instantly struck with the two magnificent colonnades that line the nave and separate it from the aisles. They are supported each by more than twenty pillars, of which eighteen on each side are of white marble. The order is Ionic, with its regular entablature, the elevation of the pillars is thirty-eight feet, the length of the colonnade about two hundred and fifty. The sanctuary forms a semicircle behind the altar. The altar is a large slab of marble, covering an ancient sarcophagus of porphyry, in which the body of the founder formerly reposed. It is overshadowed by a canopy of bronze, supported by four lofty Corinthian pillars of porphyry. This canopy, though perhaps of too great a magnitude for its situation, as it nearly touches the roof, is the most beautiful and best proportioned ornament of the kind which I ever beheld. The side walls, supported by the pillars, are divided by

* This front, notwithstanding the noble pillars of granite that support it, is justly censured for want of simplicity.

pilasters, between which are alternately windows and mosaics; the pavement is variegated, and the ceiling divided into square pannels, doubly gilt, and rich in the extreme. There is no transept, but instead of it two noble chapels open on either side. The one on the right, as you advance from the great entrance towards the altar, was built by Sixtus Quintus, and contains his tomb: it would be considered as rich and beautiful, were it not infinitely surpassed in both these respects by the opposite chapel, belonging to the Borghese family, erected by Paul V. Both these chapels are adorned with domes and decorated with nearly the same architectural ornaments. But in the latter the spectator is astonished at the profusion with which not bronze and marble only, but lapis lazuli, jasper, and the more precious stones are employed on all sides, so that the walls seem to blaze around, and almost dazzle the eyes with their lustre. He may perhaps feel himself inclined to wish, that those splendid materials had been employed with more economy, and conceive that a judicious arrangement might have produced a better effect with less prodigality. These two chapels, whatever their magnificence or peculiar beauty may be, have prejudiced the internal appearance of the church, and occasioned the only material deformity which even the eye of a critic can discover: I mean the break occasioned by the arcades formed on both sides, to serve as entrances to these oratories. The colonnade, so beautiful even in its present state, would have been matchless were it not interrupted by these misplaced arches, which after all do not produce the effect intended by giving a grand entrance into these chapels, as the view is obstructed by the arch of the aisles, and by the intervention of the brazen portals. But be the defects what they may, I know not whether any architectural exhibition surpasses or even equals the Basilica Liberiana. The simplicity of the plan, the correctness of the execution, the richness of the materials, and the decorations of the parts, the length of the colon