The galleries containing the paintings are situated in other rooms, and require separate days as well as separate orders for their examination. The entrance is reached by the Scala Regia in the Colonnade, on the right side approaching St. Peter’s. We devoted two separate afternoons to each. The sculptures are far more numerous than the paintings, and even after two inspections, we could only consider we had seen them in a very general way. To do them justice, one would almost require to bestow upon each different group of halls a distinct visit. The number of statues, busts, urns, and other sculptured objects exhibited, is very great. Most, if not all of them, have been recovered from the ruins of ancient Rome while under the government of the popes. The visitor is brought face to face with the original of the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoon, and many other statues and groups familiar to all by copies or by engravings. But it is necessary to watch carefully, lest omission be made of some of the rooms; for we discovered, on going a second time, rooms we had previously overlooked, and which contained some of the finest statuary. Of many of the halls and of the individual statues, photographs can be purchased in the shops, which, to those who have not seen them, convey some idea of the galleries and their contents, and are exceedingly useful to those who have, in recalling them. Without this help, the multiplicity of objects tends to obscure and confuse the recollection. There is one annoying feature about the statue galleries of the Vatican, that in place of the names of the objects, there is painted upon them the name of the pope by whom they were placed where they stand. One gets quite irritated by the vanity of Pius VI. and Pius VII., leading them in so objectionable a manner to obtrude their names upon the public. The examination of the picture galleries is much more easily accomplished. The good paintings are in reality confined to two or three rooms, and one or two more, in which are fine frescoes by Raphael and others. The great attractions of this gallery are—’The Transfiguration,’ by Raphael; ‘The Madonna di Foligno,’ a fine work of the same great master; and ‘The Communion of St. Jerome,’ by Domenichino. The upper portion of ‘The Transfiguration’ is so exquisitely beautiful as to suggest whether it would not have been better severed from the lower half, representing the writhing boy in the midst of the perplexed disciples, which, though it may have been designed by Raphael, was painted by his pupils. Indeed, the insertion of the scene may be said to be an anachronism, because the cure was effected on ‘the next day,’ while its introduction detracts from the feeling of sublime elevation above the world and the things of the world which the upper portion of the picture breathes.