octagonal in its plan, built of brick with the exception of the side in which the door is placed, this being of marble, and is very simple in all its detail. There are three altars in it, and an immense erection of masonry in the centre, which, though not open, is evidently a font, amply large for immersion. Each side has three recessed arches on marble columns, above which the whole is of red brick with stone string-courses between the stages. These have corbel-tables under them, which are the only enrichments in the building. All the brickwork is left to view inside, and the light is admitted by a pierced arcade very high up in the walls. The whole is domed over with an octagonal vault of brick, in the centre of which is a small lantern, and the effect is exceedingly fine and solemn, and enhanced very much by the grave sombre colour of the bricks. [Illustration: WINDOW-JAMB--PALACE OF JURISCONSULTS, CREMONA.] Close to the baptistery is a building, called in Murray’s Handbook the Palace of the Jurisconsults, turned when I first saw it into a school for a not very polite set of children and teachers, who all apparently felt the most lively interest [Illustration: CHIMNEY AND BATTLEMENT--CREMONA.] in my architectural pursuits. It was originally open below, but the arches on which it stood are now filled up. This upper stage is very simple and beautiful, and the whole is finished at the top with a cornice and parapet, with battlements pointed at the top like those in the Torrazzo, and not forked as we have been lately so accustomed to see them. At one end of this parapet a chimney rises above the battlement, which is, so far as I have seen, a unique example of the ancient Italian contrivance for this very necessary appendage.[63] It is exceedingly good in its detail, and coeval with the rest of the work. There is a simplicity and truthfulness of construction about this little building which make it especially pleasing after the unreal treatment of the great transept-fronts of the Duomo.[64] By its side stands the Palazzo Publico, out of one side of which rises one of those singular and very tall brick towers, without any openings whatever in its walls, which give such peculiar character to some Italian cities, and of which we afterwards saw good store at Pavia. The whole of the building shews either traces of arcades or perfect arcades upon which the upper walls are supported; they are, however, so much modernized as to be comparatively uninteresting, though enough remains to shew that their detail was once very good. The building incloses a quadrangle, which is rather small, but arcaded on three sides, and opens from the piazza by open arches under the principal façade, and probably dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, the date 1245 being given in an inscription in the courtyard.