No visitor to Rome fails to visit San Giovanni in Laterano. This is a spacious edifice with altars all round, and is one of the grand churches in Rome, dating back a long way, and historically celebrated. It is, of course, splendidly adorned. The baptistery, like that at Pisa, is an entirely separate building in the Piazza. The Lateran Museum adjoins the church, and on the ground floor contains a collection of ancient statues, the entrance to which we had some difficulty in finding. The upper floor is chiefly remarkable for its collection of inscriptions inserted in the walls, taken from the Catacombs, and of which there is an immense number; but there was nobody to give any information. The famous Santa Scala, said to be the steps of the staircase of Pontius Pilate’s house, up which, it is given out, our Lord walked, is on the opposite side of the Piazza. The steps are covered with wood to prevent them being further worn. We saw a good many of the faithful painfully and laboriously ascending it upon their knees,—a very tedious operation, and sometimes, it is said, from its difficulty and unwonted novelty, a ludicrous one, the people (who are of all classes, and fine ladies as well as common men) in their contortions nearly tumbling over or knocking each other about. At every few steps there is a fixed cross to kiss, and at each step fresh paternosters are said; and when at last they attain the top (the stair consists, according to my reckoning, of twenty–eight steps), they kneel upon a small bench and look through an opening into a sacred chapel beyond, and perform further devotions. We heretics ascended more rapidly by one of the two side stairs by which the devotees descend. A more splendid church than that of the Lateran is the Santa Maria Maggiore, so named from being the largest of eighty churches in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It is also one of the oldest churches in existence, and has a handsome façade, in front of which a lofty Corinthian column stands, surmounted by a statue of Philip IV. of Spain. The interior is profusely decorated, and is remarkably beautiful.