ctuaries. I propose to confine myself here to the ten or a
dozen chapels containing life-sized terra-cotta figures, painted up
to nature, that form one of the main features of the place. At a
first glance, perhaps, all these chapels will seem uninteresting; I
venture to think, however, that some, if not most of them, though
falling a good deal short of the best work at Varallo and Crea, are
still in their own way of considerable importance. The first chapel
with which we need concern ourselves is numbered 4, and shows the
Conception of the Virgin Mary. It represents St. Anne as kneeling
before a terrific dragon or, as the Italians call it, "insect,"
about the size of a Crystal Palace pleiosaur. This "insect" is
supposed to have just had its head badly crushed by St. Anne, who
seems to be begging its pardon. The text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum"
is written outside the chapel. The figures have no artistic
interest. As regards dragons being called insects, the reader may
perhaps remember that the island of S. Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta,
was infested with insetti, which S. Giulio destroyed, and which
appear, in a fresco underneath the church on the island, to have
been monstrous and ferocious dragons; but I cannot remember whether
their bodies are divided into three sections, and whether or no they
have exactly six legs--without which, I am told, they cannot be true
insects.

The fifth chapel represents the Birth of the Virgin. Having
obtained permission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut large
and deep on the back of one figure before baking, and I imagine that
this date covers the whole. There is a Queen Anne feeling
throughout the composition, and if we were told that the sculptor
and Francis Bird, sculptor of the statue in front of St. Paul's
Cathedral, had studied under the same master, we could very well
believe it. The apartment in which the Virgin was born is spacious,
and in striking contrast to the one in which she herself gave birth
to the Redeemer. St. Anne occupies the centre of the composition,
in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of the George
Cruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person. Both
are gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormous
obligation she has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to be
imploring her not to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, they
are giving her neither flowers nor anything to eat and drink. I
know no ot