ithin the last ten years.

At Pisa--The old Baptistery is at this present time in process of
being "restored," that is, dashed to pieces, and common stone
painted black and varnished, substituted for its black marble. In
the Campo Santo, the invaluable frescoes, which might be protected
by merely glazing the arcades, are left exposed to wind and weather.
While I was there last year I saw a monument put up against the
lower part of the wall, to some private person; the bricklayers
knocked out a large space of the lower brickwork, with what
beneficial effect to the loose and blistered stucco on which the
frescoes are painted above, I leave the reader to imagine; inserted
the tablet, and then plastered over the marks of the insertion,
destroying a portion of the border of one of the paintings. The
greater part of Giotto's "Satan before God," has been destroyed by
the recent insertion of one of the beams of the roof.

The tomb of Antonio Puccinello, which was the last actually put up
against the frescoes, and which destroyed the terminal subject of
the Giotto series, bears date 1808.

It has been proposed (or at least it is so reported) that the church
of La Spina should be destroyed in order to widen the quay.

At Florence--One of its most important and characteristic streets,
that in which stands the church of Or San Michele, has been within
the last five years entirely destroyed and rebuilt in the French
style; consisting now almost exclusively of shops of bijouterie and
parfumerie. Owing to this direction of public funds, the fronts of
the Duomo, Santa Croce, St. Lorenzo, and half the others in Florence
remain in their original bricks.

The old refectory of Santa Croce, containing an invaluable Cenacolo,
if not by Giotto, at least one of the finest works of his school, is
used as a carpet manufactory. In order to see the fresco, I had to
get on the top of a loom. The _cenacolo_ (of Raffaelle?) recently
discovered, I saw when the refectory it adorns was used as a
coach-house. The fresco, which gave Raffaelle the idea of the Christ
of the Transfiguration, is in an old wood shed at San Miniato,
concealed behind a heap of faggots. In June, last year, I saw
Gentile da Fabriano's picture of the Adoration of the Magi,
belonging to the Academy of Florence, put face upmost in a showe