closed in a sarcophagus of chrystal, placed on supports of wrought silver, and enriched with vermillion and with precious stones. The anti-chamber to this radiant chapel of the dead is lined with marble from the finest Italian quarries: the portal is ornamented with beautiful columns of the same, having the capitals and bases richly gilt.

The 4th of November being St. Charles's day is, in Milan, as we were informed, the most venerated feast in the Calendar, without any exception. The Cathedral is previously decorated for its due observance. Within all the arches of the interior, numerous as they are, immense pictures are suspended amidst festoons of scarlet and gold. These paintings form, like the sculptures on his tomb, a biographical series from his nativity to his death, not omitting his "assumption," and the subsequent wonders performed in his name and at his shrine! How strange, how unsatisfactory must be the feelings of the present family, at the worship and homage paid to their ancestor; a frail and sinful mortal like themselves. They are encompassed on every side by the traces and memorials of his mere mortality: they reside here in the house where the helpless infant was born: they visit his institutions; they resort to his palaces; they read his letters, and are intimately acquainted with every the minutest circumstance of his private life and all his feelings-all his passions, hidden from the multitude, are revealed to them. Yet this man is become a God, or little less. Surely the

"It is easy to draw a parallel between Christian worship, falsely so called in the hands of the Papists and the popular religion of Rome and Greece; nor is it difficult to prove, that the miracles, the mummeries, and over-burthened rites of the former, are but a revival of the fables, and sacred observances of the latter. What, for instance, is the exaltation of

apotheosis, however it may be regarded by the Roman Catholic world at large, must be most revolting to their minds. The misty veil of antiquity hides nothing from them; for his age is not very remote from our own.Even the Cathedral in which his wonder-working relics repose was erected nearly two hundred years antecedent to the age of the Saint, who spent a fortune in embellishing it. Yet nothing so holy, nothing so revered exists within the sacred pile as the perishing dust of the human being, who may be said to have hewn the stone, and hammered the brass for the beautifying of it. The verger shews a multitude of his improvements, the work of yesterday, literally with their gloss on; things in their freshness and perfection. He tells you that "St. Charles removed the choir from under the dome to the east end"-"St. Charles erected those magnificent pulpits of bronze,"-" commenced that beautiful Mosaic pavement," and "gave us those windows of painted glass.” Then you descend with him (as we have already done); and he shews you the body which performed these numerous works, perishable like itself, but yet in their newness, whilst the hand that framed them has crumbled into dust:

Martyrs and Popes, to the rank of Angelic beings, but the old pagan deification of men, and wherein does the canonization of saints differ from a heathen apotheosis? If there be any difference, it is in favour of the heathens; for though they might worship the spirits of deceased heroes, they did not cherish their bones, or show a score of skulls of the same person. The veneration of relics is a pious fraud, reserved for those who affect to be the professors of a more spiritual religion.—If the Greeks filled Olympus with demi-gods, the Papist has occupied heaven with saints; and when the Pope proceeds to canonise a predecessor, he is only imitating the presumptuous idolatry of the Pontifex Maximus of Imperial Rome, who consecrated altars to Cæsar or Augustus.”—Gilly's Excursion in Piedmont, pp. 254, 257.

a body which indeed lived and acted, during the days of its pilgrimage below, with powers as circumscribed and feeble as those of other men; but which now, en etat de momie, has according to Roman Catholic belief performed a thousand mighty miracles, and which annually attracts tens of thousands of devotees to pay their adoration to its desiccated and shrivelled remains !

The indispensible necessity of an implicit trust, in these and a hundred other such devices, continues to be palmed on the Milanesians of the present day, as it was on their ancestors centuries ago, for a part of “ the Catholic Faith." By these and such like inventions of pretended "infallibility" are the sons and daughters of Italy diverted from the pursuit of that Knowledge which is from above. Still are they the dupes of the same "wondrous art" which (all-prevailing in England before the brighter, happier era of the Reformation) corrupted and debased "the religion of our forefathers:" an art brought to perfection

"In times o'er-grown with rust and ignorance,
"When want of learning kept the laymen low,

"And none but priests were authorised to know:

“When what small knowledge was, in them did dwell;
"And he a God who could but read and spell."

On leaving the Cathedral, we engaged one of the hackney chariots (many of which are as handsome and neat as an English gentleman's carriage), and proceeded through the spacious street of the Corso di Porta Orientale, which on our entering the city, during the heat of the day, we noticed as apparently deserted. It was now thronged with people of the first quality, hurrying in

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carriages and on horseback, to the grand promenade of the ramparts and the esplanade. But neither the display of "beauty and fashion," the splendour of the equipages, nor the dashing appearance of the equestrians, could make us forget, that early rising and late taking rest, when too often repeated together, prove the bane of health: and after joining in a few of the usual drives from the Porta Orientale to the Porta Nova and back again, we retired from this favourite and certainly very agreeable scene of assembly for the bon genre of Milan; agreeing, however, that even without the aid of Austrian hussars to keep order, these things are still better managed in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

July 23d.—This day's perambulation was begun with a visit to the Palazzo Reale, where the Vice-roy of the Emperor resides when in Milan. On the open space before it we found a battalion of Austrian Grenadiers, fine troops, drawn up in parade order, and in all the stiff exactitude of German tactics. Their plain white uniform has a soldier-like effect, en masse; but it puts the shape of the individual to a test too severe for the generality of the men, who are what is termed awkwardly tall.-The Vice-regal palace is an extensive building, but has nothing very princely in its exterior. One branch projects at right angles, so as to interfere with the view of a very fine portion of the Cathedral on the south side. Of the interior much may with truth be said in no faint terms of praise. If the Palace at Turin be vast and gorgeous, this is really elegant and in many parts splendid. It was furnished in the modern French taste, during the administration of Prince Eugene (Beauharnois). In the first saloon are the cartoon designs of Raphael, admirably

executed in Gobelin tapestry. In the second, the mythological story of Medea and Jason, in the same fabric.— The architecture, furniture, and decorative articles are modern: the ceiling was painted by Andrea Appiani, a Milanese artist of great talent, who died a short time since. The "saloon of the Queen," and "the saloon of the Nobles," are fine apartments and superbly furnished. The banquetting room, the billiard room, the Empress's bed chamber and boudoir, are all elegant; and their floors of inlaid wood of different kinds particularly worth notice. The boudoir is hung with specimens of the silk manufactory of Milan, little if at all inferior to that of Lyon. It was matter of surprise to observe the Empress's bedstead no other than the commonest sort of painted furniture. The two next suites of apartments are embellished by the classical and accurate pencil of Appiani, who has charged the ceilings, in a very superior stile both of design and colouring, with various popular subjects from Roman story, viz. such as relate to Scævola, Coriolanus, the Sabines, Scipio, &c. &c.— In the audience chamber, executed on the ceiling by the same artist, is the Apotheosis of Napoleon!-What else can it be? The likeness is good. Habited in the imperial purple, he stands in a car drawn by horses of ethereal mould, whose course is heaven-ward. So fond was this vain man of "jumping to conclusions," that he seems to have forgotten his Roman precedents when he permitted his son-in-law and Italian Lieutenant, to dedicate to his living honour this premature piece of flattery. Divus Julius, and Divus Augustus, in the more modest age of Heathen Emperors, formed the inscription of the tomb, or the legend of a medal of consecration struck after death.