end of a building, or much the greater part of it, was made semicircular, and covered with half a dome. In the baths, similar large niches frequently stand quite insulated, but where they occur in the position above described, they seem at one time to have been considered as a decided proof that the edifice to which they belonged, was a temple, and hardly anything was acknowledged to be a temple, where enough remained to shew that no such niche had existed. It is unfortunate that we have only scattered fragments of the temples of Rome, but it seems probable that this arrangement did form in them a very usual termination. Nothing of the sort is found in any Greek temple; but though the Romans borrowed largely from the religious practices and observances of the Greeks, they must have drawn something from other sources. Their square cells (not oblong, as in the Greek buildings), their niches, their vaults, their round temples, and the windows they made in them, were perhaps derived from the Etruscans, together with many of the superstitious rites, and the haruspices, which history teaches us to have been derived from that people. As I have already mentioned the Basilica, I shall find very little to describe out of the Porta di San Paolo. There is a place called Tre Fontane, where there are three churches, and in one of them, three springs of warm water, or rather I believe, one spring with three openings. The tradition of the place is, that St. Paul was here beheaded; that where his head fell, a warm spring burst out; that it bounded; and where it fell a second time, another spring arose, but not so warm as the first; it bounded again; and produced a third spring, which was nearly cold. There is however so little difference, that I persuaded an English gentleman who was with me that the one said to be the warmest was the coldest. How I hate these ridiculous additions to a story not in itself improbable! The great church is long and low, with some pointed vaulting. That containing the spring is handsome internally, but the best is an octagonal church by Vignola, which rises in a very fine pyramidal form.