LETTER X. St. Peter's Church. HE Cathedral of St. Peter-before THE whose encircling Porticoes, stupendous Frontispiece, and gigantic Dome, the proudest Temples of Antiquity diminish into comparative insignificance, is erected-in the shape of a cross—upon the very site of the Circus of Nero, which had been so often stained with the blood of Christian Martyrs-as if to signalise the triumph of Christianity, over the pride and cruelty of Heathen Rome. The Hemisphere of the Dome is seen. from all parts of the Campagna di Roma, towering towering over the subjacent City, at the western extremity of the Suburb of Transtevere-a name that defines its situation, beyond the Tyber, which separates it alike (though not with the clear stream of the Ancients) from the seven hills of the Consular City, and the plain at their foot, into which Papal Rome has imperceptibly descended. The turbid current is traversed, with equal enthusiasm, by the Pilgrim, and the Traveller; who, from the remotest Regions of the Globe, jostle each other upon the bridge of St. Angelo; and, scarcely noticing the Castle (itself an object of twofold superstition, as the Bulwark of the Church, and the Mausoleum of Adrian) press onward, through a dark and narrow passage, that leads directly into the area of St. Peter's Square. Dazzled with the sudden blaze of incredible magnificence, the astonished Spectator halts, instinctively, to contemplate the glorious Vision, of whose reality he can scarcely assure himself, yet fondly cherishes the seeming illusion. A sweeping Forest of three hundred columns surrounds the Outer Court, with the swell of an amphitheatre; and the circling Colonnades are aptly inscribed with the metaphoric promise, There shall be a Tabernacle for a shadow from the heat, and for a covert from storm and from rain. They lead to ascending Corridors, ridors, which form an Inner Court, four hundred feet square, and open into either end of the Portico of the Church, under the pathetic invitation, Come, and let us go up unto the Mountain of the Lord, to the House of the God of Jacob. An Egyptian Obelisk of a single piece of red granite-originally brought from Heliopolis, by the Emperor Caligula, occupies the centre of the Outer Court. It is eighty-five feet high, and nine feet square at the base; and on either hand of the stupendous cone, an ample Fountain spouts a column of water, which showers into a a marble bason twenty feet diameter. Six hundred feet beyond this glittering screen-over a quarry of steps, rises the the gigantic Frontispiece. It is of free stone, four hundred feet long, and a hundred and fifty high, supported by twelve columns, of the Corinthian Order; whose broad Entablature is surmounted by an Attic Story, and crowned with a Balustrade. Upon the apex of the Pediment-embracing, in his right hand, the Symbol of Salvation-is a Colossal Statue of Jesus of Nazareth-accompanied, upon the piers of the Balustrade, by the twelve Disciples, that followed his footsteps in the Land of Judah. At a distance of four hundred feet within the massy Frontispiece, is seen to tower aloft the immense rotunda of the Dome, |