her part of the establishment.

I have already said that the work is signed by an inscription inside
the chapel, to the effect that the sculptures are by Pietro Aureggio
Termine di Biella. It will be seen that the young ladies are
exceedingly like one another, and that the artist aimed at nothing
more than a faithful rendering of the life of his own times. Let us
be thankful that he aimed at nothing less. Perhaps his wife kept a
girls' school; or he may have had a large family of fat, good-
natured daughters, whose little ways he had studied attentively; at
all events the work is full of spontaneous incident, and cannot fail
to become more and more interesting as the age it renders falls
farther back into the past. It is to be regretted that many
artists, better-known men, have not been satisfied with the humbler
ambitions of this most amiable and interesting sculptor. If he has
left us no laboured life-studies, he has at least done something for
us which we can find nowhere else, which we should be very sorry not
to have, and the fidelity of which to Italian life at the beginning
of the eighteenth century will not be disputed.

The eighth chapel is that of the Sposalizio, is certainly not by
Aureggio, and I should say was mainly by the same sculptor who did
the Presentation in the Temple. On going inside I found the figures
had come from more than one source; some of them are constructed so
absolutely on Valsesian principles, as regards technique, that it
may be assumed they came from Varallo. Each of these last figures
is in three pieces, that are baked separately and cemented together
afterwards, hence they are more easily transported; no more clay is
used than is absolutely necessary; and the off-side of the figure is
neglected; they will be found chiefly, if not entirely, at the top
of the steps. The other figures are more solidly built, and do not
remind me in their business features of anything in the Valsesia.
There was a sculptor, Francesco Sala, of Locarno (doubtless the
village a short distance below Varallo, and not the Locarno on the
Lago Maggiore), who made designs for some of the Oropa chapels, and
some of whose letters are still preserved, but whether the Valsesian
figures in this present work are by him or not I cannot say.

The statues are twenty-five in number; I could find no date or
signature; the work reminds me of Montrigone; several of the figures
are not at all bad, and several have h