What a delightful shelter would it be for the invalids who throng to Rome, where the sirocco steals away their strength, and the tramontana stabs them through and through, like cold steel with a poisoned point! But within these walls, the thermometer never varies.

Winter and summer are married at the high altar, and dwell together in perfect harmony." "Yes," said Hilda; "and I have always felt this soft, unchanging climate of St.Peter's to be another manifestation of its sanctity." "That is not precisely my idea," replied Kenyon.

"But what a delicious life it would be, if a colony of people with delicate lungs or merely with delicate fancies--could take up their abode in this ever-mild and tranquil air.

These architectural tombs of the popes might serve for dwellings, and each brazen sepulchral doorway would become a domestic threshold.

Then the lover, if he dared, might say to his mistress, 'Will you share my tomb with me ?' and, winning her soft consent, he would lead her to the altar, and thence to yonder sepulchre of Pope Gregory, which should be their nuptial home.