oratory which perished by order of the Pope. The Church of St. John Lateran was under the protection of the Kings of France, as the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore was under the protection of the Kings of Spain, St. Peter’s under that of the Emperor of Austria, and St. Paul’s Beyond the Walls under the protection of the English sovereign. In the pontificate of Clement VIII, when the papacy began to turn toward France in its foreign policy, the work of embellishing the Lateran cost Rome--and indeed large portions of the surrounding country--untold treasures in costly marbles and gilt bronzes. The first were sawed into slabs for the transept of the Church; and the Altar of the Sacrament owes its magnificence to the many hundred bronzes which, together with portions of the bronze beams of the Pantheon, went to the smelting furnaces. In Sixtus V’s time, however, the old church was still comparatively simple; and it was in this old Church of the Lateran, probably during his pontificate, that Stradella’s prayer (“Pity, oh, Saviour!”) was sung, while hired assassins waited in the outside darkness to take the composer’s life. As the service was long, the bravos stepped inside the church to enjoy the music before committing the murder. There, in the wavering light of the altar candles and under the subtle influence of the incense, they became so impressed by the pathetic beauty of that marvellous _Aria di Chiesa_ that they felt it impossible to put out of existence the man who could write such music; and in the darkness and silence that followed the close of the divine melody they themselves warned Stradella of the plot against his life and abetted his escape. Of late years this legend has been discredited; but in such a case as this it is well to remember the attitude taken by the writer of “The Renaissance in Italy,” “I would rather accept,” says Symonds, “sixteenth-century tradition with Vasari than reject it with German or English speculators of to-day. I regard the present tendency to mistrust tradition, only because it is tradition, as in the highest sense uncritical.”