With this building my architectural notes in Milan must end, but I should advise all students of architecture to include in their visits one of about half an hour’s drive to the Certosa of Chiaravalle just outside Milan. The church here has been much modernized, but over the centre of the crossing still rises a brick lantern and steeple of singular interest. My engraving will explain what the character of this work is, better than any words. The construction is singular. Behind the base of the second stage of the great octagon a spire is constructed which carries the upper steeple, and the whole of the walls pierced with the second, third, and fourth series of windows are really only screen-walls or parapets in front of the spire. The height of the whole lantern from the ridge to the base of the spire is about ninety feet, and the effect of the complicated brickwork is not bad. It is somewhat difficult to say exactly when it was built. The Certosa itself was founded in 1135, and consecrated in 1228, but my impression is decidedly that though the whole steeple is built with round arches, it is not really a work of earlier date than about A.D. 1370 to 1400. The steeple of San Gottardo in Milan, which also has round arches everywhere, and is in some other [Illustration: 60. CERTOSA OF CHIARAVALLE. p. 330.] respects somewhat similar in detail to this, dates from 1339, and it would be a great mistake to argue for an earlier date in either case from the mere use of the round arch. If I recollect right, the low third stage in height at Chiaravalle is modern. Milan was on the whole rather disappointing to me in my architectural capacity, though pleasant enough in every other; and after I had lounged and driven about, first in one direction and then in another, and had really enjoyed my last great Italian city very much, finding that little more was to be done but to eat ices, look at smart carriages on the Corso, and long for more chance of a clear view of the Alps than the hazy sultry weather afforded, I made up my mind to leave earlier than I had originally intended. No architectural student should turn his feet homeward from Milan without having first of all visited Vercelli. It is easily reached by railway, passing on the road Novara, where there was only a few years back a fine Lombard cathedral, which has unfortunately been lately supplanted by a modern Italian fabric, even more than usually vapid and uninteresting, and where there is still an old baptistery so plastered and painted as to have lost almost all its old interest. The traveller has therefore to content himself with the views--which become better as he proceeds--of the snow-capped Alps (including their noblest peak, Monte Rosa) to the north of the railway, which, in clear weather, are most glorious in their effect.