"St. Luke painting the Virgin has been a frequent and favourite subject. The most famous of all is a picture in the Academy of St. Luke, ascribed to Raphael. Here St. Luke, kneeling on a footstool before an easel, is busied painting the Virgin with the Child in her arms, who appears to him out of heaven, sustained by clouds; behind St. Luke stands Raphael himself, looking on."--_Mrs. Jameson._ A skull preserved here was long supposed to be that of Raphael, but his true skull has since been found in his grave in the Pantheon. "On a longtemps vénéré ici un crâne que l'on croyait être celui de Raphael; crâne étroit sur lequel les phrénologistes auront prononcé de vains oracles, devant lequel on aura bien profondément rêvé et qui n'était que celui d'un obscur chanoine bien innocent de toutes ces imaginations."--_A. Du Pays._ Just beyond St. Luca, we enter the Forum Romanum. * * * * * The interest of Rome comes to its climax in the Forum. In spite of all that is destroyed, and all that is buried, so much still remains to be seen, and every stone has its story. Even without entering into all the vexed archæological questions which have filled the volumes of Canina, Bunsen, Niebuhr, and many others, the occupation which a traveller interested in history will find here is all but inexhaustible; and, after the disputes of centuries, the different sites seem now to be verified with tolerable certainty. The study of the Roman Forum is complicated by the _succession_ of public edifices by which it has been occupied, each period of Roman history having a different set of buildings, and each in a great measure supplanting that which went before. Another difficulty has naturally arisen from the exceedingly circumscribed space in which all these buildings have to be arranged, and which shows that many of the ancient temples must have been mere chapels, and the so-called "lakes" little more than fountains.