The Newtown bee., 1895-08-16

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 umes and more; it is a manufactory o1
 mosaics-those that you buy in St Peters, St Pauls and other churches are
 all made here; the Vatican is all that,
 but it is great prison, too. It is the prison house of the Pope, and, at this time, of Pope Leo XIII. The queer thing about it is that no one confines the Pope within this pompous structure; he confines himself. He can go wherever he pleases about Rome or in any other part of Italy, just as any well-behaved citizen can do; but the Roman See would rather stay indoors and style himself the prisoner of the Italian government, and so he has been beyond the confines of the Vatican but once in F years.
 WE CALL THE VATICAN
 a palace, but it is in reality collection ofpalaces built by different architects in various eras. As you look at it from the vestibule of St Peters it presents very much the appearance ofa large factory. l As we go into the corridor we meet the Pope's Swiss Guards, whose uniform, we incidently learn, was designed by Michael Angelo, and who are fed, equip ed and paid by the Pope out of his own private purse. They are rather savage ! looking men, but they suffer us to pass, for we are Americans, ,and the big fee de- posted by Mir Clark in somebody's hands has given us the right of way.
 
 door, we at once find ourselves in the wonderful Sistine chapel, built by Six tus 1V in 1473. It is celebrated for it's paintings in fresco by Michael Angelo; the roof alone occupied 20 months in the painting. The crown and glory of the chapel, and, perhaps, of the whole Va.i- can, is Angelo's fresco on the wall be- hind the high altar representing the Last Judgment. A man, though he be a boor or a common rustic, who has nev- CT contemplated anything nobler than the sod under his feet, that can stand before this painting unmoved by lofty emotions better be thrown back into Ma ture's mould and recast in finer form. This | fresco was designed by Angelo in his 6Oth year, and completed in eight years. At the top is our Savior with the Virgin | seated on his right. On one side of our ! Lord are saints and patriarchs, and on the other martyrs. Below are a group | of angels sounding the last trump and | bearing the books of judgement. Cal the right is represented the fall of the condemned, Charon ferrying some of them across the river Styx and striking the tumultuous with his oar. Connected | even with this sublime painting there is | good joke. Messer Biagio, the Pope's master of the ceremonies, said that the nude figures were indecent, whereupon the Pope ordered them covered with drapery. Angelo, hearing of it, had his revenge, for Biagio was one day surpris- ed to discover himself represented in the picture in the lowest hell. Complaining to the Pope to have his figure removed, the Pope replied that as be was in hell, he better stop there, as the Pope had no power to release from hell, but from pur- gatory. Did you ever realize, my dear reader, that even great men have a mixture of the common stuff we call hu- man nature about them?
 But I must not stop, for
 THE VATICAN IS FILLED WITH MASTER
 PIECES,
 both in sculpture and in painting. There are Raphaels magnificent paint ing of The Transfguration, and Do- menichino's Last Communion of Jer- ome. Among the rare sculptures are the Laocoon group found in the Baths of Titus in l506, and the Apollo Belve- dere. There is a headless and limbless old trunk in the museum called the Tar so of Hercules. To the nasty glance it seems an ugly. diseolored mass of mar ble; but it has been considered the most perfect resemblance to human flesh, and was greatly admired by Raphael and Michael Angelo, the latter declaring that he was it's pupil.
 We'll, lighted by our burning tapers, we explored the subterranean galleries of the Catacombs, where for centuries the dead of Rome were buried, and where the Christians of the early days fled for refuge, that they might amid the gloomy stiffness pour out their prayers to God. I could not help think