The palace of the kings of Gwalior covers an immense area on the east of the plateau; but it was not the work of a single prince; the most ancient portions of it date back to the Sixteenth Century. Each dynasty enlarged the mass of buildings, and the Moguls themselves made considerable additions to it. The interior of the Palace of Pal is extremely simple in style. The various stories, which you enter through rows of square pillars, overlook the large paved courts; and the rooms are low with flat ceilings. Among these ruins a portion of the ancient palace of the Vaïshnava kings may still be seen. The thick walls, pierced with triangular openings, are somewhat in the same style as the corridors of the Mexican temples. It is to be regretted that so much of this part of the Palace has already been destroyed. The northern extremity of the plateau, which gradually becomes narrower and narrower, was entirely covered by the palaces of the Emperors Akbar and Jehanghir; but you do not find here the magnificent buildings of Agra or of Delhi. It is evident that these were mere provincial residences. There are nevertheless, a graceful dewani-khas and a small zenanah, containing some fine galleries. [Illustration: THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO, ITALY.] THE HOLY HOUSE OF LORETTO ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY On the slope of the eastern Apennines, overlooking the Adriatic gulf, stands what may be called (according to the belief of the Roman Catholic Church) the European Nazareth. Fortified as if by the bastions of a huge castle, against the approach of Saracenic pirates, a vast church, even now gorgeous with the offerings of the faithful, contains the “Santa Casa,” the “Holy House,” in which the Virgin lived, and (as is attested by the same inscription as that at Nazareth) received the Angel Gabriel. Every one knows the story of the House of Loretto. The devotion of one-half the world, and the ridicule of the other half, has made us all acquainted with the strange story, written in all the languages[8] of Europe round the walls of that remarkable sanctuary: how the house of Nazareth was, in the close of the Thirteenth Century, conveyed by angels, first to the heights above Fiume, at the head of the Adriatic gulf, then to the plain and lastly to the hill, of Loretto. But this “wondrous flitting” of the Holy House is not the feature in its history which is most present to the pilgrims who frequent it. It is regarded by them simply as an actual fragment of the Holy Land, sacred as the very spot on which the mystery of the Incarnation was announced and begun. In proportion to the sincerity and extent of this belief is the veneration which attaches to what is undoubtedly the most frequented sanctuary of Christendom. The devotion of pilgrims even on week-days exceeds anything that is seen at any of the holy places in Palestine, if we except the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Easter.