It contains, too, Raphael's Stanze, or
halls, and Bramante's famous Loggie, the beautiful architecture of which
is a frame for some of Raphael's best work.

[Illustration: MICHELANGELO'S "LAST JUDGMENT"]

But any good guide book will furnish all such information, which it
would be fruitless to give in such a work as this. In the pages of
Murray the traveller will find, set down in order and accurately, the
ages, the dimensions, and the exact positions of all the parts of the
building, with the names of the famous artists who decorated each. He
will not find set down there, however, what one may call the atmosphere
of the place, which is something as peculiar and unforgettable, though
in a different way, as that of Saint Peter's. It is quite unlike
anything else, for it is part of the development of churchmen's
administration to an ultimate limit in the high centre of churchmanism.
No doubt there was much of that sort of thing in various parts of Europe
long ago, and in England before Henry the Eighth, and it is to be found
in a small degree in Vienna to this day, where the traditions of the
departed Holy Roman Empire are not quite dead. It is hard to define it,
but it is in everything; in the uniforms of the attendants, in their
old-fashioned faces, in the spotless cleanliness of all the
Vatican--though no one is ever to be seen handling a broom--in the
noiselessly methodical manner of doing everything that is to be done, in
the scholarly rather than scientific arrangement of the objects in the
museum and galleries--above all, in the visitor's own sensations. No one
talks loudly among the statues of the Vatican, and there is a feeling of
being in church, so that one is disagreeably shocked when a guide,
conducting a party of tourists, occasionally raises his voice in order
to be heard. It is all very hard to define, while it is quite impossible
to escape feeling it, and it must ultimately be due to the dominating
influence of the churchmen, who arrange the whole place as though it
were a church. An American lady, on hearing that the Vatican is said to
contain eleven thousand rooms, threw up her hands and laughingly
exclaimed, 'Think of the housemaids!' But there are no housemaids in the
Vatican, and perhaps the total absence of even the humblest feminine
influence has something to do with the austere impression which
everything produces.

On the whole, the Vatican may be divided into seven portions. These are
the pon