As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought a rosary for two crazie (about three cents), and pressed into the throng. In a half hour it came to my turn to pass the guard. The priest took my silver paul, and while he touched the beads to the picture, I had a moment to look at it nearly. I could see nothing but a confused mass of black paint, with an indistinct outline of the head of the Madonna in the centre. The large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side were all I could see in the imperfect light. The richness of the chapel itself, however, was better worth the trouble to see. It is quite encrusted with silver. Silver _bassi relievi_, two silver candelabra, six feet in height, two very large silver statues of angels, a _ciborio_ (enclosing a most exquisite head of our Saviour, by _Andrea del Sarto_), a massive silver cornice sustaining a heavily folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps in any quantity all around. I wonder, after the plundering of the church of San Antonio, at Padua, that these useless riches escaped Napoleon. How some of the priests, who are really learned and clever men, can lend themselves to such barefaced imposture as this miracle, it is difficult to conceive. The picture has been kept as a doer of these miracles, perhaps for a century. It is never uncovered in vain. Supernatural results are certain to follow, and it is done as often as they dare to make a fresh draught on the credulity and money of the people. The story is as follows: "A certain Bartolomeo, while painting a fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic, fell asleep while pondering over his work; and, on waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to equal." I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel, or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman. It is ill drawn, and whatever the colors might have been upon the pallet of the sleepy painter, they were not made immortal by angelic use. It is a mass of confused black. I was glad to get away from the crowd and their mummery, and pay a new tribute of reverence at the tomb of _Giovanni di Bologna_. He is buried behind the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own expense, and with his own inimitable works. Six bas-reliefs in bronze, than which life itself is not more natural, represent different passages of our Saviour's history. They were done for the Grand Duke, who, at the death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo Belvidere, John of Bologna is, in my judgment, the greatest of sculptors. His _mounting Mercury_, in the Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven for its divine beauty.