It is usual to say, the conclaves are held in the Vatican; but I understand here, that the last election of the pope was held in the Quirinal, or rather in the building adjoining the Quirinal. The palace of the Quirinal is called the Pontifical Palace, and I believe most of the time of the pope is passed in it. His apartments are very plain, so much so as to excite surprise: but here are the noble _bas reliefs_ of Thorwaldsen. The frescoes of Raphael in the Vatican, and those of the Sistine Chapel, in the same palace, by Michael Angelo, are deemed the respective _chefs d’œuvre_ of these artists. The _loggie_ of Raphael contain some extraordinary things. The paintings are on the ceilings of compartments, in what we should call piazzas, or open galleries. The subjects commence with the Creation. On one, God, in the form of a venerable old man, is throwing himself into the midst of chaos, in order to separate and reduce to order the materials of the universe. The sublimest conception of this subject, the only one that will bear critical examination, is that of a being whose will and knowledge, without an effort, can create a universe. The simple language of the Bible can never be surpassed. The representation of this majesty of a will might possibly be partially portrayed by the pencil; but few could enter even into the sublimest conceptions of the countenance of a being filled with so much power, admitting the success to be equal to the thought, in the application of the means. Failing this, we are driven to some such imagery as this of Raphael’s. His idea is noble, and, considered in connexion with the usual means of his art, perhaps one of the best that could have been suggested. The idea of the Deity’s throwing himself into chaos, to separate light from darkness, and to reduce the materials of the universe to order, is magnificent, and it might be made to tell in poetry. It never can equal the majesty of the exercise of the pure will; but, descending from this severe grandeur, it is one of the finest of the thoughts that follow. What a different thing it appears reduced to visible agencies! An old sprawling man, casting his body, with open palms and extended arms, into a chaotic confusion of gloomy colours, is not without the wild and indefinable feeling of poetry, I admit; but how much is it inferior to mere thought, or even thought as it may be expressed in language! Had Raphael painted that sublime verse of the Bible—“And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,” in this compartment of the gallery, he would have commenced his subject as well, perhaps, as by human means it can ever be presented to human senses.