three-cornered hats; ladies, covered with the graceful black Milanese veil; peasant-women, adorned with silver bodkins, and large shining tiara-like combs. Harry's pencil was hard at work the whole morning. May and I went to hire a piano, and all the people of the house were gone to mass; not a creature even to open the door to us. So en attendant, their return, we drove out of the city, and went to look at Napoleon's triumphal arch. May asked the laquais, thinking that in this classical country even he would be able to answer such a question, whether the columns were Corinthian.

"Corinthian, signora !" he answered; " certainly not, the stone came from Simplon !"

We finished our morning with a visit to the Brera, and I could write a folio on all the treasures it contained; but I will not torment you, who are never likely to visit that storehouse of beauty. So I will but say one word of Vandyck's portraits, of Raffaelle's St. Catherine, absolutely enshrined in gold, and of Crivelli's St. Peter, whose keys are of massive gold and silver, rising in bas-relief, full an inch above the canvass, and who sports real gems on his glove and on his vest. Conceive St. Peter wearing gloves !—the good saint has an especial sharp eye, which seems to follow you, go where you will. I suppose he has lived long enough to find that man is a purloining animal, and has a great affection for the glittering treasures of the mine. If I were a thief, and came to the Brera, I would not steal St. Peter's jewels. No, no, the Brera contains a far richer treasure, and I really would not answer for my honesty were I left alone with Guercino's Hagar-lovely Hagar! It is

not only the face of perfect beauty that fixes the attention, it is the meek look of feminine tenderness, deprecating, yet no wise resenting the unkindness of her lord, while the eyes, red and tearful, the temples swollen with weeping, the hand fondly encircling her beloved one's head, show the bitterness of the mortal conflict she endures. Grief, the disfigurer, does not disfigure her, for with her dishevelled hair and sorrowspeaking countenance, she exceeds, not only in interest, but also in fair feminine loveliness, the happier and prouder beauties in the room. I could have spent days before it,―aye, liked it even better (tell it not) than the ruined remnant of Da Vinci's Cenatola.

It was some comfort to know that all this admiration was not misplaced; for I hear that in the olden time, when this picture was at Bologna, it was a common thing for men of all ranks to make a pilgrimage thither, for the sole purpose of viewing it.

Harry Dormer, who loves every thing extremely absurd, brought us home this morning copies, taken I imagine under the rose, of two extraordinary productions. The one was a drawing of that celebrated monster of Leonardo's, carved while he was yet a boy, for one of his father's peasants. The young lover of mischief intended it to have the effect of Medusa's head on all beholders. Accordingly, he collected every kind of viper, adder, lizard, and toad that he could meet with, and copying the peculiar deformity of each, wrought the piece of knotted wood into a monster, that seemed to flash fire from its eyes, and infect the very air it breathed.

The other curiosity was a mere pencil sketch of one of the meetings of the society of the Pajuolo. A

society perhaps unique of its kind in the civilized world.

You, dear Minna, who profess the most perfect indifference for every thing beyond mere bread and water, will hardly believe that a party of twelve men, -men of talent and learning, met every week, for the mere purpose of eating a sumptuous supper, and devising each one how he could, in profusion or in oddity, out-do the others. The society took the name of "Pajuolo," because their convivial meetings took place in a vast copper, round the interior of which the seats were placed. The sketch under discussion was of a supper given under the superintendence of Andrea del Sarto; and the dish, par excellence, imitated a temple, of which the columns were sausages, the reading-desk cold meat, the pavement coloured jellies; while in the chorister stood, for singers, some fine fat thrushes, with open beaks, dressed in cassocks of bacon: the pulpit was occupied by a stuffed goose; and a plump pigeon, with six ortolans duly arrayed, represented the sovereign and his court. Now I do hope you will never call the poor, dear, innocent London Aldermen biped pigs again. Their freaks are nothing, compared to this one of the Italian painters and scholars.

The festival of the good St. Carlo Borromeo took place last week. I could fill pages with a description of his gorgeous sepulchre, and the cathedral raised over it; but I spare you.—Any traveller's guide-book will do for a reference; I will only tell you that, when we first, in the faint twilight of a dark November morning, entered the Duomo, and gazed upwards on the exquisite tracery of its fretted roof, wrought of

white marble, delicately and finely as the finest point lace, and looked through archway after archway down the middle aisle, each compartment lighted but by a single painted window, until the eye was lost in gloom, then round upon the pale forms of mailed warrior and kneeling virgin, wanting nought but the glow of life, while all the time, strains of solemn music, breathed forth by invisible musicians, rose gradually, till every aisle and chapel in the vast building echoed back the deep hymn, and, anon, died away in soft, lingering cadences, till the sound was fainter than the beating of one's own heart,-the mind itself was bowed down by a sense of insignificance, and the very spirit was oppressed almost to tears.

Violet was the first to speak.-"This is, indeed,” she said, "a temple worthy the living God!"

"Look there!" said Harry; "are they worthy to be worshippers in such a sanctuary?"

A procession was winding along towards the high altar, a procession of all the saints from the different churches in Milan, who, borne aloft with banner and cross, had come to pay their respects to S. Carlo, a sort of grandee among them. Some of the little boys, who swung incense as they moved on, had large painted wings stuck on their shoulders! I need scarcely tell you, that all our highly-wrought feelings evaporated at this sight, and that we turned in haste to leave the Duomo. Neither Violet nor I could forgive Mr. Dormer the whole day, for pointing out this absurdity to us.

The following day happened to be Sunday, and we went to join a family party at morning prayers, in the hotel Britannique. We assembled in a plainly

furnished room; there was neither picture nor statue, nor marble monument of other days, to excite the feelings; and the only music to be heard was the simple song of praise and thanksgiving, breathed forth from true hearts. But we looked around on countenances beaming with devotion,-on fellowworshippers of the God whose chosen temple is in the hearts of his children,-on members of the same visible church, who, scattered abroad in a foreign land, far from the altars at which their kindred were kneeling, had met on this day, the universal Sabbath, as brethren, to join hand and lip and heart, in praise and prayer, and to exchange words and looks of kindness and good will among each other.-We listened to the simple and touching language of our beautiful liturgy, and gave utterance to the same prayers which our forefathers uttered before us, and which our children will breathe forth when we are at rest; and we felt the immeasurable superiority of the religion of the Spirit over the religion of outward forms and splendours.

I have heard,can it be true-that some people complain of the tediousness of repeating the same form of prayers, Sunday after Sunday, and wish even to abolish the use of our Liturgy. Is it nothing for the wanderer in far-off lands to know, when the holy day arises, that his kindred and friends, wherever they may be, some tossing on the rough ocean,— others, quietly assembling in the haunts of his childhood, shall on that morning breathe forth the same praises and thanksgivings as himself?-Will it nothing tend, think you, dearest Minna, to keep the heart of the exile free from the vanity, the frivolity,