The central nave is 110 feet long and fifty broad. The façade is very much injured, and of the Pisan style. There are sculptures on the arch of the portal—griffins, dogs hunting a stag, and a lamb—of such wretched execution that it might belong to the eighteenth century. It is said that this Canonica was a Roman temple, which the Mahometans converted into a mosque, and the Christians in their turn into a church, after Hugo Colonna had won Mariana from the Moors. It is easy to see that the building has been at some past time restored, but it does not follow that it was originally Roman. On the contrary, it bears throughout the appearance of a cathedral church erected by the Pisans. Its forms are exquisitely pure, noble and simple, and of the finest symmetry; and this, along with the perfect purity of the Corsican marble with which the church is covered, certainly gives it all the appearance of a piece of ancient architecture. When I entered the interior of the church, the community of worshippers whom I found there on their knees took me by surprise. They were thriving wild-trees, which stood in rows behind one another across the nave, and quietly flourished in this retired spot. A he-goat with a venerable beard stood right before the altar, and seemed to have forgotten his food and to be lost in religious contemplation. The herds were in the habit of pasturing their goats in the vicinity of the Canonica. I inquired about coins, but without success, although here, as well as in other parts of Corsica, a great many imperial ones have been found—with which, indeed, half the world is blessed. From this old Marian colony, which was planted at an earlier period than Aleria—and which must have been a colony of citizens, and not of soldiers like Sulla's—the only Roman road in Corsica ran by Aleria to Præsidium, and thence to Portus Favoni, terminating in Palæ situated on the strait now called Bonifazio. The island in those times was even more pathless than in the present day, and the Romans never penetrated into the interior of the hill-country.