The walls of this church form almost a pictorial Bible, with a few legendary and local subjects thrown in. The Abbot Desiderius, holding, after the usual symbolical fashion, the church in his hand, is to be seen at the east end along with the archangels and evangelists. At the west end is what connoisseurs tell us is one of the very earliest pictures of the Last Judgment. On the two sides a crowd of scenes and figures from the Old and New Testament cover the whole space. The style of the painting is said to show Greek workmanship; we look toward the west end and mark, hardly above the ground, a single small shaft with a capital of strictly Byzantine character. The ruling Norman seems on this spot to have pressed into his service the artistic powers of all the inhabitants of the peninsula. Italian, Greek, Saracen, all give their help to adorn the house of the archangel. The Norman himself contributes nothing but the position of two small columns in the tower windows. We cannot even attribute to him the position of the house of the archangel, set Norman-fashion in a high place; for the first church was built before the Norman came. It is not so further east, where a distinctively Norman element is to be seen in the great churches of Apulia. But the gathering together of the best skill of the time from all quarters is a thoroughly Norman function, whether in Italy or in England. The basilica should be compassed, so far at least as to climb the hill a little way to look at its east end. Its surrounding buildings supply an arch or two to catch the eye on the way up or down. But the essential features of Sant' Angelo are the grand display of painting and the union of elements of so many kinds. It is the first of a great series of churches at which our course will bid us to stop here and there. But before we reach them we shall pass by one point where our musings will again be mainly secular and largely pagan. A short journey will lead us from Campania into Samnium, and the valiant men of the Samnite land will claim a tribute on a spot which is Samnite beyond all others. VI. A Glimpse of Samnium. From Caserta and what is to be seen from Caserta, our next journey lies by the line of railway which runs right across Italy, connecting the two great lines of the east and west of the peninsula. It leads us from the Campanian plain, with at least its sheltering wall of mountains, with Tifata to guard the great city that once was from the ruder land beyond, to the great plain of Apulia from which every feature of a mountain-land has passed away. But, in so crossing from one side of Italy to the other, we pass through a striking and an historic region. We are in the land of the mightiest Italian rivals of Rome, the land of those with whom Rome had to fight, before Pyrrhos and Hannibal came, and ages after Pyrrhos and Hannibal were gone.