boards, to save the stones from
being worn away by the thousands that ascend it. Two adjoining stairways
are for the descent.

S. Pietro in Vincoli

was founded about 442, as the receptacle for the chains of St. Peter,
which had been presented by Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III., to Pope Leo
I. This church contains the famous statue of Moses with horns, by Michael
Angelo. Mediaeval Christian artists generally represented Moses with
horns, owing to an erroneous translation of Exodus XXXIV., 35. Michael
Angelo represented these horns upon the head of Moses as having been about
three inches in length.

S. Maria in Aracoeli

probably occupies the site of the Temple of Jupiter. Its present altar
encloses an ancient altar which is said to have been erected by Augustus.
"According to a legend of the 12th century, this was the spot where the
Sibyl Tibur appeared to the emperor, whom the senate proposed to elevate
to the rank of a god, and revealed to him a vision of the Virgin and her
Son."

This church is approached by a very high flight of steps rising from the
foot of those leading to the piazza of the modern Capitol, and "the
interior is vast, solemn, and highly picturesque. It was here, as Gibbon
tells us, that on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat musing amidst the
ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers,
the idea of writing the 'Decline and Fall' of the city first started to
his mind."

The Vatican

has been the residence of the Popes since their return from Avignon, in
France, where they had resided from 1309 to 1377. It is now the most
extensive palace in the world, being three stories high and 1,151 feet
long by 767 feet wide, covering over 20 acres! The palace comprises 20
courts, eight grand staircases and two hundred smaller ones, and is said
to contain 11,000 halls, chapels, saloons and private apartments. Since
the Italian occupation, Pope Pius IX. considers himself a prisoner in his
own palace, though strange to say, there are no doors locked except those
which he locks himself on the inside! King Victor Emanuel, though,
excommunicated by the Pope in the most indecent language that ever fell
from human lips, has done no violence to the person of the Pope, and now
contents himself as an outsider of the church.

The masses can now no longer "go to Rome to see the Pope," for he neither
ventures forth from his palace into the city for exercise and pleasur