LETTER V.

WE set off on this, the fifth day of our weary pilgrimage, as usual, long before the dawn; and after traversing for many hours a dreary, unenclosed, and houseless plain, we reached the city of Viterbo; where, having made a sumptuous breakfast on coffee (real coffee, not made of burnt beans,) and milk, rarities we had not seen for many a day, —we went out to see the town, which is very ancient, very dirty, and beggarly in the extreme. This indeed did not surprise us much, when we found there were twenty-eight convents of nuns and begging friars in a place which does not contain more than nine thousand inhabitants! The streets are narrow, and entirely paved with flat flagstones, in the same manner as at Florence, but so deep in mire, that it was impossible to see the lava of which our guide informed us they were composed.

This same guide was one of the dirtiest-looking creatures I ever beheld, but he gravely offered his services to us as Cicerone; and he was certainly useful in shewing us the way through the town.

We paid a visit, at her own convent, to Santa Rosa, a very surprising woman. "Cowards die many times before their death," but this saint has died once since hers,-a more extraordinary feat than any I ever heard of being performed, either by saint or sinner,-excepting by Liston in Tom Thumb, who always dies twice.

She originally died, it seems, in the thirteenth century; but after laying dead a few hundred years, she came to life one night when her chapel took fire, got up and rang the bell to give notice of it, and then laid quietly down and died again, without any body knowing any thing of the matter. The chapel, however, was burnt down, though she had got out of her grave and rung the bell to prevent it; all her fine clothes, too, were burnt off her back, and her very ring was melted on her finger; but she remained unconsumed, though her face and hands are turned as black as a negro's, and infinitely more hideous than any thing I ever saw in my life. However, they say she was very fair four hundred years ago, before she was singed, and that she never was embalmed even after her first death, but was preserved solely in the odour of sanctity. She lies in a gilt sepulchre, on a bed strewed with silver flowers, but a grate keeps prying eyes like mine at a proper distance, and darkness and wax tapers increase the mysterious gloom. This remarkable saint began, with praise-worthy industry, to work miracles as soon as she was born, by raising a child from the dead, while she was yet a baby herself; and miracles she still continues to

perform every day,-as the nun who exhibited her informed me. On enquiring what kind of miracles they were, I was informed that she cures all sort of diseases, heals sores, and even re-establishes some lame legs; but she does not by any means always choose to do it, thinking it proper that the infirmities of many should continue. I have no doubt that this nun who related her history to me, and with whom I had a long conversation, really and truly believes in it all. She knelt before the saint in silent devotion first, and then gave me a bit of cord, the use of which perplexed me much; and while I was turning it round and round in my fingers, and wondering what she expected me to do with it, a troop of dirty beggars burst into the church, together with some better-dressed, but scarcely less dirty people; and the whole company having adored the saint, received from the nun,, every one, bits of cord like mine. I enquired the use of them, and was told they had been round the body of the saint, where they had acquired such virtues, that, tied round any other body, they would save it from "molte disgrazie."* The beggars no sooner got their bits of cord, than they became so clamorous,-though I am sure I had nothing half so marvellous to give them,-that they fairly drove me away. These nuns are all of noble families. They are of the Franciscan, one of the least rigid of the female monastic orders.

* A great many misfortunes.

They are not obliged to midnight vigils, nor any extraordinary acts of penance and mortification, and may see their family and female friends at the grate.

From thence we went to the church of the Franciscan Friars, in which is the painting of La Pietà, or the Virgin and the dead Christ,—by Sebastian del Piombo, one of the most esteemed productions of his pencil. It bears, I should suppose, internal evidence of being the design of a far superior master; I mean Michael Angelo. It is marked with all the force and vigour, the correct design, and bold conception of his powerful genius, and soars far above the feeble compositions of Sebastian, who, like many of the Venetian school, was an admirable colourist, but woefully ignorant of design. "His hand, indeed, was more ready than his head," as somebody observes of another artist; he wanted skill to invent and combine, but he could give life to the compositions of others; and it is well known that he was employed, as well as some others of his contemporaries, by Michael Angelo, who despised the mechanical part of painting, to embody his designs.

It is, however, but fair to state, that my belief of this painting being done from his sketch, is founded on my own judgment alone. The friars only know that it is painted by Sebastian del Piombo. Still, I cannot think that without assistance he could have designed it.

The figure of the Christ, which has apparently been drawn from nature, is nearly black; it is ex

tended on a white sheet, with the shoulders raised, and the head drooping back,-admirably drawn. The difficulties of the position are completely surmounted. The Madonna, behind, clasping her hands in an agony of grief, strongly expresses the deep, passionate, overwhelming affliction of a mother weeping for her child in despair that knows no comfort. This is its charm: there is nothing ideal, nothing beautiful, nothing elevated. She is advanced in life; she is in poverty; she seems to belong to the lower orders of women ;-but there is nature in it,—true and unvitiated, though common, and perhaps vulgar, nature,—that speaks at once to every heart. The picture is in a shamefully dirty state, and is placed in the worst possible light, or rather darkness. It requires strong light, and it is in total obscurity.

Nine friars now alone occupy the nearly deserted cloister of this convent.

There is nothing remarkable in the ugly old Cathedral of Viterbo, except the remembrance that it was there, at the very foot of the altar, that Guy de Montfort, son of the Earl of Leicester the unfortunate favourite of Queen Elizabeth, murdered a son of the King of the Romans. The murderer was at last taken prisoner by the Arragonese, and perished miserably in a dungeon.

A memorable battle was fought at Viterbo in the thirteenth century, in which an army of modern Romans were defeated with immense loss by the generalship of an English bishop. The forces of the Pope, in this singular engagement, were uni❤