The most notable building in Genoa, anterior to the days when the architecture of the Renaissance was in favor, is the cathedral, which is dedicated to S. Lorenzo. The western façade, which is approached by a broad flight of steps, is the best exposed to view, the rest of the building being shut in rather closely after the usual Genoese fashion. It is built of alternating courses of black and white marble, the only materials employed for mural decoration, so far as I remember, in the city. The western façade in its lower part is a fine example of "pointed" work, consisting of a triple portal which, for elegance of design and richness of ornamentation, could not readily be excelled. It dates from about the year 1307, when the cathedral was almost rebuilt. The latter, as a whole, is a very composite structure, for parts of an earlier Romanesque cathedral still remain, as in the fine "marble" columns of the nave; and important alterations were made at a much later date. These, to which belongs the mean clerestory, painted in stripes of black and white, to resemble the banded courses of stone below, are generally most unsatisfactory; and here, as in so many other buildings, one is compelled, however reluctantly, "to bless the old and ban the new." The most richly decorated portion of the interior is the side chapel, constructed at the end of the fifteenth century, and dedicated to St. John the Baptist; here his relics are enshrined for the reverence of the faithful and, as the guide-books inform us, are placed in a magnificent silver-gilt shrine, which is carried in solemn procession on the day of his nativity. We are also informed that women, as a stigma for the part which the sex played in the Baptist's murder, are only permitted to enter the chapel once in a year. This is not by any means the only case where the Church of Rome gives practical expression to its decided view as to which is the superior sex. The cathedral possesses another great, though now unhappily mutilated, treasure in the _sacro catino_. This, in the first place, was long supposed to have been carved from a single emerald; in the next, it was a relic of great antiquity and much sanctity; though as to its precise claims to honor in this respect authorities differed. According to one, it had been a gift from the Queen of Sheba to Solomon; according to another, it had contained the paschal lamb at the Last Supper; while a third asserted that in this dish Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood which flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Saviour. Of its great antiquity there can at least be no doubt, for it was taken by the Genoese when they plundered Cæsarea so long since as the year 1101, and was then esteemed the most precious thing in the spoil. The material is a green glass--a conclusion once deemed so heretical that any experiment on the _catino_ was forbidden on pain of death. As regards its former use, no