sents to the object of their idolatry. The Santa Casa soon became encased in a covering of marble; and for its further protection, a spacious church, that which we have described, was erected over it. visitants and the object of their posed relic; and in token of their faith, offered rich and costly pre-visits; almost all the shops in it are devoted to the sale of rosaries, crosses, &c., though the trade in them has fallen off considerably of late years. "My travelling companions," says Mr. Woods, ". wondered how I could doubt about the Holy House, as so many miracles had been wrought by it, particularly a well-authenticated story of a man who had stolen a candlestick, but having sat down with it on the road, could not get it up again. I suggested that these miracles only took place against petty robbers, and that, when the whole was plundered on a late occasion, the Virgin or her image was quiet. One of the party seemed very much surprised at the difficulty I made about miracles: Why,' says he, all history is full of miracles.' He began to cite a number from Livy: and I found that he believed them just as firmly as those of his own church. These Italians are brought up among alleged miracles; their mind or their fancy is filled with them from their childhood, and they would sooner reject all the moral and doctrinal truths of the Christian religion, than give up their belief in the miraculous interposition of our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, or of St. Anthony of Padua. Nor is this much to be wondered at; the Gospel is taken for granted, but the particular merits of a favourite saint require full exposition and frequent repetition; the priest dwells on these, and the multitude forgets that there is anything of more importance." The Holy House, which stands immediately under the dome in the church, is a building of oblong form, about thirty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and eighteen feet high; "many," says Malte Brun, "imagine it to be without foundation, and that it rests on the ground," a consequence, apparently, of their belief in its wonderful migrations. It appears to be built of Apennine limestone; but it is so polished with kisses, and blackened with the smoke of the many lamps, which are constantly burning, that it is difficult to tell what it is. Instead of a roof it is covered with a vault, which is admitted to be modern, the old timber-work having decayed. Externally it is incrusted with a coat of white Carrara marble, decorated with Corinthian columns and rich ornaments, the architecture of Bramante. The principal subject of the bas-reliefs is the history of the Virgin; Addison notices among the ornaments some statues of the Sibyls and the Prophets, which he praises as very finely wrought. Above the chimney in the eastern wall, is the niche, once fenced in | with solid gold, but now with giltwood, which contains the cedar image of the Virgin, in a dress glittering with precious stones, before which "thousands bow down in abject idolatry." To this shrine the Romanists still repair in considerable numbers: before the Reformation, it is said that upwards of two hundred thousand used to visit it each year. The appearance of the town indicates at once the character of its The wealth which the zeal of her worshippers accumulated in this shrine of the Virgin was immense. There was a room attached to the church, which was used as the treasury, and which contained the most valuable offerings. It is described by Mr. Woods as a very large and handsome one, simple in its form, | and not overloaded with ornaments. The ceiling, as is usual in Italy, has a large cove, leaving only a small flat space in the middle, an arrangement which, in so large and lofty a room, produces a magnificent effect. In the Holy House itself there were twenty-two lamps of gold, of which the largest, an offering from Venice, weighed "eighty marks;" they are said to have been less distinguished for the value of the material than for the delicacy of the workmanship and the variety of the designs. There were two objects of particular admiration, namely, two crowns of gold, which had been presented, in fulfilment of a vow, by Anne of Austria, the wife of the French king, Louis the Thirteenth, when she gave birth to Louis the Fourteenth, after having been for twentytwo years without children. The diamonds which they contained were counted by thousands: altogether the riches of the treasury of the church were valued at fifteen millions of crowns. Addison speaks of them "as surprisingly great, and as much surpassing his expectation as other sights have generally fallen short of it. Silver," he says, 66 can scarce find admission, and gold itself looks but poorly among such an incredible number of precious stones. There will be, in a few ages more, the jewels of the greatest value in Europe, if the devotion of its princes continues in its present fervour. The last offering was made by the Queen Dowager of Poland, and cost her 18,000 crowns. Some have wondered that the Turk never attacks this treasury, since it lies so near the sea-shore, and is so weakly guarded. But, besides that he has attempted it formerly with no success, it is certain the Venetians keep too watchful an eye over his motions at present, and would never suffer him to enter the Adriatic. It would, indeed, be an easy thing for a Christian prince to surprise it who has ships still passing to and fro without suspicion, especially if he had a party in the town, disguised like pilgrims, to secure a gate for him, for there have been sometimes to the number of 100,000 in a day's time, as it is generally reported." Scarcely a century had elapsed from the date of Addison's visit, when this vast collection of riches had almost entirely disappeared. The treasury and the Holy House were pillaged during the revolutions which Italy underwent after the French Revolution; and the few works in gold and silver which have been since offered form but a triffing treasure in comparison with that which they have replaced. "On entering the church at five in the morning," says Mr. Forsyth, "I was surprised to find crowds so early in the Santa Casa, and masses at every altar. This Holy Hous and its saint struck me as examples of that contrast which the Church of Rome affects in consecrating ugliness. The one is a mean, brick looking hovel, incased in a shell of sculptured marble; the other is s black, smoked, wooden figure, glit tering in jewels and brocade. Seldom is the gift of miracles ascribed to an object of beauty. When this Virgin returned from France (for she has been a traveller as well as her house), a new deposite was opened to replace the treasures which had vanished. The Pope presented two golden crowns, and a priest sits fronting the door to re ceive and register donations; but most of the pilgrims whom I found there appeared as poor as they were pious; they knelt round the furrow which devotion had worn on the pavement." In a little French, work, published at Loretto in 1778, under the title of an "Abridgment of the His tory of our Lady of Loretto, for the Use of the French Nation," we are presented with a succinct account of the migration of the Holy House, purporting to be the copy of an inscription existing on the wall of the church, in old French, among a number of similar documents, written in Greek, Polish, Arabic, Spanish, German, Illyrian, Latin, Italian, English, Scotch, and Welsh. In this there are adduced, in support of the truth of the legend, some amusing testimonials, of which it may be said, that they require as large a measure of credulity in him who would believe them, as does the tale itself which they are intended to confirm. When the chapel first made its appearance on the spot which it now occupies, nobody knew whence it came; but in the year 1296, the mystery was explained by the Virgin appearing to one of her faithful devotees in a dream. The man communicated it to his neighbours, and they in order to ascertain the truth of his story, sent a commission of inquiry, composed of six men "of probity and note," to the Holy Land, to visit Jerusalem and Nazareth. "This was done, and the said six men, having taken with them the dimensions of the chapel, they found the situation and the measures to agree, and they found close by an inscription cut in a wall, which informed them that this chapel had stood formerly on that spot, and had disappeared; the said men then returning home, declared and certified all that they had discovered, and thus it was known that the chapel was the house of the Holy Virgin; and thus up to the present time, all true Christians have had a great veneration for our Lady of Loretto; for the Holy Virgin works great miracles there every day, which the whole world can testify." But the evidence upon which the inscription seems to lay the greatest stress, is that of two brothers, natives of the town of Recanati, who appeared before the authorities of the chapel, and testified to the fact of its having been deposited in the wood near Recanati, which formed its second resting-place. The one declared "that the great-greatgrandfather of his grandfather had seen the angels carry the said chapel across the sea and place it in the wood, and that he had with many other persons of good faith, visited the chapel in the said wood;" while the other asserted "that his grandfather, when one hundred and twenty years old, had told him that he had often visited the said chapel in the said wood," and that "the grandfather of his grandfather had a house in which he resided near the said chapel, and that, in his time, the said chapel was transported by the angels to the mount of the two brothers." ROMAN AQUEDUCTS. THE construction of those stupendous works for the conveyance of water from distant sources, to towns deficient in that necessary, so abundant over every part of the Roman empire, is commonly, though erroneously, attributed to the ignorance of that people in the simplest laws of hydrostatics. According to Julius Frontinus, Rome, in his time (about A.D. 70), was supplied with water from nine sources, brought from distances varying from ten to sixty miles, partly along subterranean passages, and partly on stone arcades across the valleys, according to the nature of the ground. One of these aqueducts, the Anio Vetus, was carried on arches for a distance of forty-two miles. Every great city in the Roman empire was equally provided with a constant supply of water by means of similar works, and the remains of the arcades required for these purposes are among the most interesting monuments of antiquity. The finest existing specimen of an ancient aqueduct is that portion of one called the Pont du Gard, three leagues north of Nismes, in the province of Languedoc. From some initials still legible on it, it is supposed to have been built by Agrippa, the friend and general of Augustus, to convey the waters of the spring of the present Eure to Nemausus, or Nismes. The lower tier of arches, of eighty feet in span, are six in number. The second tier consists of eleven, and the upper of thirty-five. The level of the top of these is about fifty yards above that of the river Gardon. Louis the Fourteenth built a bridge alongside of this tier and corresponding with it; and all travellers agree that the imperfections of the modern structure form a striking contrast to the beauty and solidity of the ancient work. The structure is ruined at each extremity, and thus disjoined from the rest of the aqueduct, the remains of which, however, are in tolerable preservation. The injury is supposed to have been committed by the Northern barbarians when they took possession of the country. But one still more formidable to the structure was perpetrated by the Duc de Rohan at the beginning of the last century, who, to facilitate the passage of his artillery during the religious persecutions in Languedoc, cut away the piers of the second range of arches for one third of their thickness, and three yards in height. Nothing but the solidity of the structure could have saved it from subsequent destruction; as it was, it suffered considerable settle ments. Aqueducts, in the proper sense of the word, have been constructed in rn times, and we now carry canals over valleys by means of arcades similar to those of ancient Roman work. When such a structure is employed for a road-way or rail-road, it is called a viaduct,—an useless term,-for to all intents and purposes it is a bridge. THE COLISEUM AT ROME AMIDST the crumbling ruins of ancient buildings at Rome, vast and extensive beyond them all, is this enormous mass-the Amphitheatre of Vespasian—which has now stood for nearly eighteen hundred years. The word is supposed to be formed from Colosseum, either on account of the great size of the structure, or from a colossal statue of the infamous Emperor Nero, which is said to have stood near it. On this celebrated spot, in Nero's reign, was an artificial lake, enclosed within the walls of his gilded palace. The lake having been dried up, Flavius Vespasianus, Emperor of Rome, the tenth of the Caesars, began the Coliseum, the building of which had been before contemplated by Au gustus, and which, from its founder, was called the Flavian Amphitheatre; the date of its commencement may, therefore, be fixed at or about A.D. 70. Vespasian's son and successor, Titus, continued, and, as it is thought by some, finished the work, on which he employed those Jews who, after the siege of Jerusalem, having been brought as captives to Rome, were thus doomed to a deeper degradstion. There is, however, a tradition in Rome, that fifteen thousand men were employed upon it for ten years; which, if true, would place its completion in the reign of Domitian; and, considering the dreadful scenes which were enacted in it at its opening, it is more probable that this took place under the authority of that monster in human form. He became emperor A.D. 81. 1 However splendid as a ruin, and curious from its connexion with history, we cannot but view this fabric as a monument of savage cruelty. At the solemn games exhibited on its dedication, five thousand wild beasts were, according to Eutropius, destroyed on the space within. In addition to the horrible sports of this kind, which tend so shockingly to deprave the heart, there were combats of gladiators; men were compelled to fight with brutes; and, from time to time, the blood of many of the early Christians was shed, to gratify the ferocity of heathen spectators. Notwithstanding the edicts of the emperors Constantine and Honorius, who endeavoured to put a stop to the battles of the gladiators and beasts, they were not abolished till the sixth century. dulgence, was that by thus making the people familiar with the sight of pain and death, they became braver soldiers; but it only served to make them more inhuman, which is far from the character of a really brave man. Indeed it is well known, that the emperors most infamous for their attachment to these barbarous spectacles, were, at the same time, the most utter cowards; so, the cruel, in later times, have generally been found to be cowardly likewise. THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES. THE beauty of the ancient city of Rhodes is loudly celebrated; the architect who built it is the same who raised the walls of the Piræus at Athens. The geographer Strabo, who was a great traveller, and who Of all vices incident to human had visited most of the large cities nature, cruelty is one of the worst, of the Roman world, gives the preand most unaccountable. It is ference to Rhodes above them all; wholly inconsistent with reason and "the beauty of its ports," he says, reflection to find pleasure in inflict-" its streets, its walls, and the splen ing torture; yet this was the abo- dour of its monuments, place it so much above others, that none of them can compare with it." Aristides the sophist, who lived more than two centuries afterwards, speaks of its magnificence in glowing terms; he calls it the only city of which it could be said that it was fortified like a castle and decorated like a palace. In the days of its prosperity it is said to have been adorned with 3000 statues, and upwards of a hundred colossal figures; of the latter there was one which was regarded as among the Seven Wonders of the World, and which bore the distinguishing appellation of "the Colossus of Rhodes." It was erected upon the departure of Demetrius, when he raised the siege which he had so long carried on against the city; and the cost of it was defrayed out of the funds deThe pretence held out by the state rived from the property which he in permitting such a monstrous in-left behind him on that occasion. |