round the doorway are small and confused. Above the circular band we find a plain face of wall, with some small windows irregularly disposed, and then a massive cornice, of really a very fine character, and well adapted to a sepulchral building; and this solidity of character is well preserved throughout the edifice, but the range of little columns, if it ever existed, must have formed a singular contrast. The inside is a plain circular room, with a niche opposite the door, apparently for an altar, but the present altar is modern. The most wonderful part of the building is the roof, of which I have purposely avoided speaking till the last. It is a dome, the internal diameter of which is thirty,[17] the external thirty-five and a half[18] English feet, formed entirely out of one enormous stone; a crack now divides it into two very unequal parts, which is attributed to a stroke of lightning; and its form and irregularity clearly announce it to have taken place after the stone was raised, though it may have happened during the settlement of the mass into its new situation. On the inside, the depth of the part hollowed out is ten feet, the whole thickness of the original stone about fourteen feet, the thickness at the edges two feet nine inches. I will not pledge myself for the minute accuracy of these dimensions, but none of them can err more than two or three inches. The weight of such a stone, even reckoning sixteen cubic feet to the ton, must considerably exceed two hundred tons. On the outside are twelve large, perforated projections, which doubtless served as so many handles in raising it, and which are perhaps favourable to its general appearance. Some names upon these have led to the notion that they supported the statues of eight apostles and the four evangelists, but as their upper surface is not level, this could hardly have been the case. It is perhaps more probable that these names were given to the engines, or perhaps to the windlasses, one to each handle, used in raising this enormous mass. There is a little projection on the summit, which is now surmounted merely with an iron cross; but a sarcophagus, or bath of porphyry, at present standing in front of the palace of Theodoric, is said originally to have occupied the situation. The stone, of which the lower parts of the edifice are composed, is a light-coloured limestone, of a fracture between earthy and slaty, abounding in petrifactions. The roof is described by the earlier authors as of granite, by Beltrami and the later ones, it is said to be of the same quality as the rest of the building; but viewed from below, it has the appearance of a dark gray sandstone, unlike the walls both in grain and colour.