From the steps of S. Ercolano one of the only broad and comparatively even streets of the town--the Corso Cavour--leads to the main road through the Porta Romana, down the steep hill to the Tiber and across the plain to join the road to Rome. Most of the history of Perugia has come and gone along this road; it was here that the popes made their triumphal entries, here probably that the barbarians forced a passage, and here, even in our own days, that Perugia suffered a final and a painful siege from Rome. It was on the of 20th of June 1859 that the Swiss guard fought its way along it, burning down the houses and beating back as they advanced the ill-organised body of inhabitants. Strange thrilling details of that day have been told to us by people who were present. One inhabitant, a mere boy then, was up with his parents at the top of their house in the Corso Cavour, but smelling smoke in the shop below they crept downstairs to see what might be happening, and found the Pope's guard foraging amongst their medicine bottles. The mother and boy fled back up the stairs, but the father was caught and carried out into the street to be shot. Then the small boy leaned from the window, covering his face with a scarf, and pleaded so passionately for his father's life that the Swiss soldiers spared him and passed to more profitable pursuits further up in the town. (We hear that they were filled with so great a lust for blood that they even wrung the neck of a tame falcon in the Piazza Sopramuro!) Another gentleman who had come in with the Pope's guard gave us some details of the siege, and amongst them he told us of a certain priest at S. Pietro, who, thinking to kill the leader of the troops, shot at the drum-major, whose magnificent appearance would no doubt make him remarkable to a quiet monk. The unfortunate priest was shot for his pains up in the square on the following morning.[67] The Corso Cavour has a very modern look about it. Most of its big buildings are used as barracks, but some few of the old are left. The Palazzo Bracceschi has a fine old outside staircase and a good collection of pictures, amongst them an exquisite Madonna and child attributed to Filippo Lippi, but more like a Neri di Bicci, also some fine original drawings. S. DOMENICO.