The palaces around this square belong to the great families of Piombino, Chigi, &c., and have thirteen or fifteen windows in a row, besides being built around courts. The square near, with an unequal little eminence and an obelisk, is called Citorio. The eminence is caused by the ruins of an amphitheatre. The obelisk, which Pliny attributes to Sesostris(!) was brought from Egypt by Augustus. It was placed in the Campus Martius, and found there as lately as in 1748. We will now wend our way through narrow and crowded streets, for a short distance, until we come out in another square of a very different character. We find it filled with market people, dirty, and far from attractive; although there is an obelisk in its centre. On the side opposite to that by which we enter it, however, is an edifice, that, as a second look shows, possesses a strange mixture of beauty and deformity. Its form is round: though the adjoining buildings prevent this circumstance from being immediately seen. It has a noble portico, with a fine row of columns, but a tympanum which is altogether too heavy. Two little belfries peep out, like asses’ ears, at each side of the portico, in a way to make a spectator laugh, while he wonders at the man who devised them did not stick them on his own head. An inscription on the cornice causes us to start; for we see in large letters, M. AGRIPPA, L. F. COS. TERTIVM. FECIT. This, then, is the Pantheon! You will be disappointed with the _coup d’œil_ of this celebrated structure, as well as I was myself. You will probably find the building too low, the appliances of the square unseemly, the manner in which the building is surrounded by houses oppressive, the _ears_ too long, and, above all, the Roman heaviness of the pediment but a poor substitute for the grace and lightness of the Grecian architecture of the same form. It is thought that the body of the building and the portico are not of the same period. The inscription speaks for itself; and the last, at least, it is fair to infer, was erected about the year 727 of Rome, or a short time previously to the birth of Christ. On entering the building, it is impossible not to be struck by its simple and beautiful grandeur. A vast vaulted rotunda, of solid stone, without a basement, and lighted by a graceful opening that permits a view of the firmament, are things so novel, so beautiful, not to say sublime, that one forgets the defects of the exterior. This idea is one of the most magnificent of its kind that exists in architecture. The opening, a circular hole in the top, admits sufficient light, and the eye, after scanning the noble vault, seeks this outlet, and penetrates the blue void of infinite space. Here is, at once, a suitable physical accompaniment to the mind, and the aid of one of the most far-reaching of our senses is enlisted on the side of omnipotence, infinite majesty and perfect beauty. Illimitable space is the best prototype of eternity.