I have said nothing of the paintings to be seen here, though some are highly esteemed, particularly two in the Treasury. The subject of one of these is, the Virgin’s Nativity, by Annibale Carracci; and of the other, a Holy Family, by Raphael. There are some others of considerable merit, which ornament the altars of the great church. These altars, or little chapels, of which this fabric contains a great number, are lined with marble, and embellished by sculpture; but nothing within this church interested me so much as the iron grates before those chapels, after I was informed that they were made of the fetters and chains of the Christian slaves, who were freed from bondage by the glorious victory of Lepanto. From that moment these iron grates commanded my attention more than all the golden lamps and candlesticks, and angels and jewels, of the Holy Chapel. The ideas that rush into one’s mind on hearing a circumstance of this kind, are affecting beyond expression. To think of four thousand of our fellow-creatures, torn from the service of their country and the arms of friendship, chained to oars, subjected continually to the revilings of enemies, and every kind of ignominious treatment, at once, when their souls were sinking under the weight of such accumulated calamity, and brought to the very verge of despair; at once, in one blessed moment, freed from slavery, restored to the embraces of their friends, and enjoying, with them, all the rapture of victory. Good God, what a scene! what a number of scenes! for the imagination, after glancing at the whole, distinguishes and separates objects, and forms a thousand groupes of the most pathetic kind; the fond recognition of old companions, brothers flying into each other’s arms, and the ecstacy of fathers on the recovery of their lost sons. Many such pictures did my fancy form, while I stood contemplating those grates so truly ornamental of a Christian church, and so perfectly congenial with a religion which requires men to _relieve the oppressed, and set the captive free_. Happy if the followers of that religion had always observed this divine admonition. I speak not of those men who assume the name of Christians for the purposes of interest or ambition, but of a more absurd class of mankind; those who, believing in Christianity, endeavour to reconcile it to a conduct, and doctrines, entirely repugnant to its nature. This absurdity has appeared in the human character from the earliest ages of Christianity. Men have displayed unaffected zeal, and endeavoured to support and propagate the most benevolent and rational of all religions, by actions worthy of demons, and arguments which shock common sense.