There are many other fine pictures in the rooms by the old masters. One in particular, which struck me for its softness and beauty of colouring, was a ‘Madonna and Child,’ by Sasso Ferrato, although it must be confessed both the mother and child are rather plumply fat. I asked the price of a photograph of it for sale in the rooms, taken from an engraving, and was asked 4 francs. It is so often the way in such places to demand long prices. We had not an opportunity of seeing the library of the Vatican. The Sistine Chapel is what nobody omits to see. The entrance to it is from the Scala Regia, just before coming to the picture galleries. We saw it once, and I must own it fell short of expectation. The chamber is dark, the frescoes are fading, and to see some of them it is necessary to lie on one’s back and look up. The view, therefore, is indistinct and uncomfortable; but though they are from the hand of a great master, the eye experiences a want of repose, the effect of over–decoration. * * * * * It is usually recommended to people visiting Rome for the first time, to take a preliminary drive of some hours, to form a general idea of the city. This, after our first visit to St. Peter’s, we did, and found it attended with considerable advantage. Except where it is bounded by the Tiber, Rome is surrounded by walls of defence, in which are several gates. Outside of some of these gates, the town has slightly extended; but, for the most part, the walls stretch a good way beyond the inhabited portion of the town, which is very compactly built, there being no large public gardens or parks within the city, and scarcely an open square, while the streets are narrow and the houses high. The seven hills upon which Rome has always been regarded as standing, are rather hillocks than hills, and do not, seen from the Campagna, bulk much upon the eye. They vary in height from 156 feet to 218 feet above the level of the sea; so that, deducting at least 40 feet for the general level of the city, the highest is but low. From the Porto del Popolo, outside of which the Protestant churches are, with one exception, placed, and inside of which is one of the largest piazzas, or open places, in Rome, three straight–leading streets branch out, diverging at acute angles—viz., the Via Babuino, conducting into the Piazza di Spagna; a centre street, the famous Via del Corso; and a third, the Via di Ripetta, which passes by or near to the banks of the Tiber. All these streets proceed (a wonderful circumstance in Rome) in straight lines to a considerable distance, the Corso fully a mile in length, the vista of all being terminated at the one end in the Piazza del Popolo by the Flaminian Egyptian obelisk, the third in altitude in Rome. The Corso, the longest and central one, terminates at a point not far from the forum of Trajan and the Capitoline Hill, in the vicinity of which the principal ruins of Rome lie. Out of the Corso,