There is sometimes a simplicity and good proportion in the general design of a façade of an Italian Gothic, which is very pleasing; [Illustration: Illustration of façade] and in some instances the disposition of the smaller parts is well managed. I would not recommend that they should be copied altogether, but they afford useful hints for design. Most of these are unfinished, and by this at least we avoid having the building spoilt by bad details. The usual ornament consists of ranges of little arches under the cornices. There is a Gothic cathedral at Reggio, but it has been nearly all modernized, and hardly deserves notice. The Madonna di Consolazione is a very handsome modern church. The form is a Greek cross, with arms, whose depth is equal to the breadth, and a semicircle is added to form the choir. At Parma there is a cathedral built in the eleventh century, and dedicated in 1105; not Gothic, since there are no pointed arches in the original work. The vaulting of the nave is elliptical: a circumstance I do not remember having met with elsewhere in a building of this era. The whole is darkly painted; the vaulting of the nave by Girolamo Mazzola, and the walls by a Lactantius Gambara. The dome at the intersection is ornamented with one of the most celebrated productions of Coreggio, and I am willing to believe that it is very fine; but it is lighted by a set of little windows just below the painting, which render a good view of it impossible; it has also been damaged by the wet. The choir is elevated, and there is a chapel beneath it full of columns, more considerable than that at Modena, and presenting some very picturesque effects. The front here forms one large gable, plentifully adorned with horizontal and inclined ranges of small arches, and minute ornamental arches under the raking cornice, such as I have before described to you at Milan and Verona. It has no leading feature, and I much prefer the division into three parts. The shafts of the doorway rest as usual on animals. This front has no circular window. Just by the cathedral is the Baptistery, a high octagonal building, erected about 1196, by an architect of the name of Antelmi, or Antélami. On the outside the entrance is formed by a large arch, with three shafts on each side, as in Gothic buildings, and four colonnades, one above another, of small shafts over it, with a wide and nearly plain band between each. The upper, a fifth range, has still smaller shafts, placed closer together, and pointed arches; it is probably an addition to the original design; but as the building was certainly not completed before 1260, it may never have been finished in any other manner. The angles are rounded, or rather, they are truncated, and replaced by two plane surfaces, and finished at the summit by turrets, but the upper part of these is not coeval with the rest of the building. The inside is sixteen-sided.