glish ideas. The floor and roof were of rich and beautiful
mosaics; the walls were adorned with the more memorable battles of the
Sardinian nation; and the furniture was minutely and elaborately inlaid
with mother-of-pearl. Three rooms more particularly attracted my
attention. The first contained the throne of the kings of Savoy,--a
gilded chair, under a crimson canopy, and surrounded by a gilt railing.
I thought, as I gazed upon it, how often the power of that throne had
lain heavily upon the poor Waldenses. The other room contained the bed
on which King Charles Albert died. It is yet in my readers'
recollection, that Charles Albert died at Oporto; but the whole
furniture of the room in which he breathed his last was transported,
together with his ashes, to Turin. It was an affecting sight. There it
stood, huddled into a corner,--a poor bed of boards, with a plain
coverlet, such as a Spanish peasant might sleep beneath; a chest of deal
drawers; and a few of the necessary utensils of a sick chamber. The
third room contained the Queen's bed of state. Its windows opened
sweetly upon the fine gardens of the palace, where the first ray, as it
slants downwards from the crest of the Alps into the valley of the Po,
falls on the massy foliage of the mulberry and the orange. On the table
were some six or eight books, among which was a copy of the Psalms of
David. "It is very fine," said my friend Mr Bonar, glancing up at the
gilded canopy and silken hangings of the bed, and poking his hand at the
same time into its soft woolly furnishings, "but nothing but blankets
can make it comfortable."

From the palace we passed to the Museum. There you see pictures,
statues, coins stamped with the effigies of kings that lived thousands
of years ago, and papyrus parchments inscribed with the hieroglyphics of
old Egypt, and other curiosities, which it has required ages to collect,
as it would volumes to describe. Not the least interesting sight there
is the gods of Egypt,--cats, ibises, fish, monkeys, heads of calves and
bulls, all lying in their original swathings. I looked narrowly at these
divinities, but could detect no difference betwixt the god-cat of Egypt
and the cats of our day. Were it possible to re-animate one of them, and
make it free of our streets, I fear the god would be mistaken for an
ordinary quadruped of its own kind, pelted and worried by mischievous
boys and dogs, as other cats are. I do not know that a modern priest of