Year: 1872

one after another is sought out and found, wonderful! wonderful The Rome of the present day is built high above the Rome of thousand and fifteen hundred years ago, Excavations are going on continu

 ally, and at this moment large gangs of men arc ut work, where the Roman Forum once stood, and twenty six feet below the paved street, are finding broken columns, statuary and marble stairways, leading probably to other unknown buildings. A few days since we went into church that has been standing 25O years as place of constant worship, and fifteen years ago it was found that another church was directly under it, and our whole party descended old marble stairways in good preservation into it's nave and transept, and found tluted columns and .pilasters and the walls stand ing in their appropriate places, apparently as firm as they were two thousand years ago. The churches of Rome are an i'm portant and interesting feature in its his tory. Some of them are very old, and all contain more or less relics, statuary, pie lures &c., and all are exceedingly rich in their decorations. Of course, St Peters is the crowning glory of Rome, and most magnificent structure it is. Its interior would hold fifteen or eighteen such church es as the one standing opposite your office, steeples and all, and not disturb statue, picture. or any other ornament within it's walls. In addition to the space above re- ferred to, which consists of the nave and trnnsept only. There is as much additional space in the sacristy, which contains the vestry, council rooms, chapels &c., as would accommodate two or three more. The Baldechino, a kind of central altar immediately under the grand dome is 95 feet high, and there are two galleries in the dome (which is l39 feet in diameter on the inside, one of which is over 100 feet above the Baldechino and the other more than 100 feet above the latter. From both these we looked down onto the pigmies on the floor of the church below us nearly $50 feet. This we did on our way to the top of the dome. The ascent commences on a level with the main floor, is an in- clined plain of about 10 feet in width, and of such easy ascent that mules or horses can ascend to the top of the main roof and are hidden within the walls. This roof is reached after an ascent of nearly 200 feet, and is capable of holding more than 1000 people. There are small dwellings upon | it, and various other structures which cause the roof to look like small village. Here commences the ascent to the top of the dome, which is nearly ;another 200 feet, and which is accomplished on stairways between the outer and inner Ewalls of the dome, which walls, stairs included, are twenty five feet thick. The enclosed plat form on the top of the dome will hold a hundred people, as there were half that number upon it with us, and room for as many more. There were probably 100 people on the dome, in the stair ways and on the roof at the time we were there, and no crowd except iE ascending and decend- ing the stairways, little confusion. The interior disappointed me. Instead of find ing an old dusty, time eaten and gloomy church. found it light, clean, fresh and as bright and beautiful as though it had been built within the last decade. Take it all in all, soldity, accessories, ornamen- tation and magnitude, it is undoubtedly the finest structure on the globe. H.