How often in S. Peter’s I have wished I could do the same with the undoubted work of Michael Angelo, and trace again in every line the pathetic beauty of suffering and death, as, with eyes full of tears, I had done in early life! The Pietà at S. Peter’s has the same absence of real beauty in the face of Our Lady with the one at P——; the same long upper lip and want of finish. It also gives a like impression with all other _pietàs_, in which the Mother is represented as holding her Divine Son on her knees—a thing which in reality would be impossible. No woman could support on her knees the dead body of a full‐grown man. Michael Angelo, whose idealism was always under the control of his marvellous anatomical drawing, was too conscious of that not to endeavor palpably to counteract what probably, as he was working at the group, he felt to be an invincible objection. He has certainly made it look possible in his Pietà, but he has done it at the expense of beauty and congruity. The Blessed Virgin’s lap is enormous; her whole figure looks powerful and gigantic, while that of the Saviour is undersized in proportion. I have often paused in the space opposite this first chapel, across the nave, to watch some fifty little urchins learning their catechism. Merry little creatures they seemed to be, all more or less in the _négligé_ attire of Italian beggar life, picturesque in color and dilapidated in texture. Sparkling black eyes and gleaming white teeth were their chief and never‐failing beauty. They sat on low forms, or rather they leant upon them, lay upon them, scrambled over them, waiting for their instructor, who always seemed long in coming. When at last he did arrive, a faint semblance of order was established. The little creatures shouted forth the answers in a sort of loud sing‐song, nudging each other all the time, swinging their little, naked, well‐bronzed legs, and keeping up some perennial jokes all the time with each other, but little in unison with the words they were repeating. I cannot say that their demeanor seemed at all to affect the stolid gravity of their priestly instructor, or even to try his patience. He simply ignored it. He appeared to have no eyes nor ears for any sound but the well‐known monotony of the responses. It is to be hoped something may come back to them of it all when they are old enough to think. For myself, I could only reflect on what a strange reminiscence it would seem to me to have learnt my catechism beneath the dome of S. Peter’s. To these little, careless mortals, it was only a part of their everyday life.