[Illustration: BRICK WINDOW--NEAR CASALMAGGIORE.] At Casalmaggiore, a town of some importance on the Po, we stopped for dinner; but it was too wet to attempt to look at the river, and the only note I made was of a large new church now in course of erection, Renaissance in style, and with a large dome, and a choir and transepts, all terminated with circular ends. The redeeming feature about it was that it was entirely constructed in brick with considerable care, though probably ere long this will be covered with a coat of plaster, of which modern Italians are not one whit less enamoured than are modern Englishmen. At a village, the name of which I did not learn, between Casalmaggiore and Cremona, the church had a remarkably good simple brick campanile. The belfry windows were pointed, of two lights, with a small pierced circle in the head, the shafts being of stone of course. Beneath the string-courses there was arcading, and the tower was finished with three forked battlements of the Veronese type on each face, and behind these rose a circular brick spire. This tower was to the south-east of the church. At Longadore we saw another church with a good early campanile, of which I made a sketch. This was Romanesque, with angle pilasters, and a central pilaster carried up as high as the belfry-stage. The belfry windows were of three lights and shafted. The battlement was most peculiar--a quarter circle at each angle and a half circle in the centre of each side, with a narrow space between them; the whole executed in brick and covered in with a flat modern roof. The angle pilasters finished under arcaded string-courses. Generally speaking, in these churches the only ancient features seem to be the campanili, and these are always of brick and nearly similar in their general design, with pilasters at the angles, a succession of string-courses--generally arcaded underneath--and windows in the belfry-stage only. It was quite six by the time we reached Cremona, and, depositing our passports at the gate, we trotted on along the smooth granite (which in these towns is always laid in strips between the rough ordinary paving for the wheels to travel on), and after traversing a long tortuous street, and getting a glimpse only of the cathedral as we passed near its east end, we were soon deposited at the Albergo del Capello. a comfortable hostelry, which we enjoyed the more by contrast with the miserable quarters with which we had to put up at Mantua. Cremona is a city full of interest. The piazza in front of the cathedral is equal in effect to almost any small piazza I know of. On one side is the great marble west front of the Duomo, backed by its immense brick campanile, whose wide fame is proved by the old rhyme, of which the Cremonese are still so proud-- “Unus Petrus est in Roma, Una turris in Cremona.”