eye. I could cite many other instances of this superstition; perhaps it will be enough to refer to one more, and one that disgusted me completely. It is the worship with which they surround the _Santo Bambino_. There is on the Capitoline Hill a church that was formerly a heathen temple, and which has kept an old name, "_Ara C[oe]li_," or "altar of Heaven." In that church, the Franciscan monks keep a very ugly doll. This doll is said to have been sculptured out of one of the olive-trees on the Mount of Olives, and then Saint Luke is supposed to have painted it over. Saint Luke must have been the painter of the poorest daubs that ever were in the world, and the angels who took it to him must have been very far from being connoisseurs of painting. This doll is covered with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and other precious stones, of greatest price. It is kept in a box on the altar, and, when you ask to see it, the monks pray before the door, they light tapers, they produce the box, and then the box is opened, and you see the hideous little wooden image. Now, this _Santo Bambino_ is supposed to have healing properties. He heals people, when they are rich enough to pay a good salary to him; he is not a physician who heals for nothing. He has a magnificent carriage of his own, and servants with his own livery; and, when any rich man wants to be cured by him, the _Santo Bambino_ goes in his own carriage to the man's house, carried on the knees of Franciscan monks, and cures the patient,--if he can. Such is the belief of the country. But I could not see any very great difference between that doll and the idols that the old Romans had, and used in the same way. The idea is this: they suppose that the _Santo Bambino_ represents Christ as a little child.