neglect and warfare. The outer walls look very brown and bruised and naked too, without their marbles, but as such they form a monument of history which few would wish to alter. The first old church was pulled down in 1200 in order to make room for a superb new cathedral which was to take the place of the old one down outside the city walls at Porta S. Pietro, and the citizens met in solemn conclave to talk their project out, they even appointed their architect, Fra Bevignate, to make their plans for them. But the Perugians were full of wars, and other business and buildings at that period, and they soon found that their funds were far too low to allow of a new cathedral. They therefore let the matter drop, and some years passed before they made another effort. In 1345 the Bishop laid the foundation stone of S. Lorenzo. It was a solemn occasion, and all the clergy were present at the ceremony; but the stone, when laid, remained in solitary state for the rest of the century, and the people of Perugia were forced to pray and sing, to marry and baptise elsewhere, for another hundred years went by before the building was completed. Other catastrophes awaited it when finished, for the inexorable French Abbot Mommaggiore was at that time building his fortress at Porta Sole, and in doing this he found it necessary to knock down a great part of the new cathedral. Finally, in the middle of the fifteenth century, Bishop Baglioni, whose beautiful tomb stands to the right as one enters the cathedral, put the place in comparative order again, and it only remained for his descendants to use it as their fortress in the years to come! There is a feeling of great warmth about the interior of S. Lorenzo, which is built in the form of a Latin cross with three naves. The ceiling is badly painted, much of the glass is poor, the twelve tall columns covered with a sort of stucco which imitates a stone no one has ever seen and only the artist dreamed of; but with all these faults the church has charm, and none of that desolate chill which the outside walls suggest. The clergy are rich at Perugia; the people have never lost their strong religious sense, which the advance of civilisation has turned from a wild fanaticism to a tone of more sober devotion, and the services are always impressive in S. Lorenzo--the whole body of the choir filled with choristers, the priests forming themselves into splendid coloured groups around the bishop's chair, and up against the woodwork and red damasks on the stalls.