n in profile. The head, which is low and flat
above the forehead, rising swiftly backward from the crown, carries a
thick bushy shock of hair curling at the ends, such as the Italians
call a _zazzera_. The eye is deeply sunk, with long venomous flat
eyelids, like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked faces. The
nose is long and crooked, curved like a vulture's over a petulant
mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together, as though it were
necessary to control some nervous twitching. The cheek is broad, and
its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these features in repose, we
cannot but picture to our fancy what expression they might assume
under a sudden fit of fury, when the sinews of the face were
contracted with quivering spasms, and the lips writhed in sympathy
with knit forehead and wrinkled eyelids.

Allusion has been made to the Cathedral of S. Francis at Rimini, as
the great ornament of the town, and the chief monument of Sigismondo's
fame. It is here that all the Malatesti lie. Here too is the chapel
consecrated to Isotta, 'Divae Isottae Sacrum;' and the tombs of the
Malatesta ladies, 'Malatestorum domus heroidum sepulchrum;' and
Sigismondo's own grave with the cuckold's horns and scornful epitaph.
Nothing but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to S. Francis,
and that its outer shell of classic marble encases an old Gothic
edifice, remains to remind us that it is a Christian place of
worship.[4] It has no sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride of the
tyrant whose legend--'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit
Anno Gratiae MCCCCL'--occupies every arch and stringcourse of the
architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with
his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in
every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to
fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God. Yet the
Cathedral of Rimini remains a monument of first-rate importance for
all students who seek to penetrate the revived Paganism of the
fifteenth century. It serves also to bring a far more interesting
Italian of that period than the tyrant of Rimini himself, before our
notice.

In the execution of his design, Sigismondo received the assistance of
one of the most remarkable men of this or any other age. Leo Battista
Alberti, a scion of the noble Florentine house of that name, born
during the exile of his parents, and educated in the Venetian
terr