wafting home from Parian quarries, or the ruins of oriental cities, perhaps the very marbles which now elevated us to the skies. But with this once glorious republic, "the days of chivalry are gone." Its port is choked with mud, and the wind sighs through the reeds, which rustle above its buried navies.

The Cathedral is such a colossal, irregular, and unmanageable pile, that one hardly knows at which end to commence a description. But to begin, where the architects probably did, with the foundations: it is elevated on substructions several feet above the surrounding area, and the ascent to it is by five steps composed of enormous marble slabs. The edifice is all of stone, porous, and remarkable for beauty. It is a huge mass of mixed materials, thrown promiscuously together, in a style of architecture, which the Italians call Moorish or Saracenic Gothic, in contradistinction to that from Germany. Its sides are three stories, retreating inward, embellished with a profusion of pillars and arches, and the whole surmounted by pinnacles and statues. The ends are five stories, or rather consist of five ranges of pillars and arches, finished in the same style. Many of the columns are of oriental granite and porphyry, and some of them claim to be of Egyptian and Roman origin, thus exhibited as national trophies, at a period when the Republic was fast rising to the zenith of its glory, in the middle of the eleventh century. The church is in the shape of a cross, with a large dome at the point of intersection, which, however, does not show to much advantage. Its massive doors are of bronze, beautifully wrought and representing in basrelief sacred scenes from the scriptures.

The inside is as rich and as complex in its ornaments, as the exterior. Double aisles, formed by four rows of granite columns, of the Corinthian order, extend in long perspective on the sides of the nave. The high altar, enriched with porphyry pillars, lapis lazuli, and precious stones of all descriptions, occupies the head of the cross. On a gilded canopy above it, three monstrous black figures, misnamed angels, with their goggle eyes stare the spectator out of countenance; and below, a pretty little bronze cherub, with its spread pinions and symmetrical form, is degraded into the servile office of candle-holder to the priest. At the extremities of the transepts, are two other shrines scarcely inferior to this in splendour, and in no wise superior in taste.

The ceiling is divided into pannels, and highly gilt, reflecting its golden hues upon the mosaic pavement. One column of porphyry and one of Spanish marble support the pulpit-a perfect sample of the wanton mixture of ornaments in the whole edifice. The walls are hung with paintings, which cannot be seen to any advantage, owing to the dimness of the aisles. We examined every one of them, while waiting for a group of chanting canons to leave their stails at the high altar; but the collection afforded me little pleasure, and a description would afford still less to my readers. Unlike most of the galleries at Genoa, the subjects of two thirds of them are poetical allegories, and have no connexion with religion.

The Baptistry to the Cathedral is another separate building, flanking it on one side, as the Campanile does on the other. It is a magnificent rotunda, enriched with pillars and arches, rising range above range, in the same style of architecture, as the primary edifice of which this is one of the satellites. The roof is covered with innumerable pinnacles and statues, amidst which the dome swells to a still loftier height, surmounted by the image of St. John the Baptist, the presiding saint. It was erected a century after the Cathedral, by the voluntary subscriptions of the Pisans. The interior is a grand, rich, and splendid temple. A circle of eight massive columns of Sardinian granite, hewn from single blocks, rise from the mosaic pavement, to the height of perhaps thirty or forty feet. Above these, sixteen marble pillars, disposed in double ranges, support the dome springing from their capitals. The front is elevated several feet above the pavement, and approached by a flight of steps. It is of an octagonal shape, divided into five compartments, the central one being large and designed for adults, and the four smaller ones round the circumference for children. The pulpit or reading desk rests on a circlet of ten granitic columns, and its pannels are adorned with bas-relief, portraying the leading events in the life of the Saviour. Among the less interesting curiosities of the building, is an unusually perfect echo, together with a whispering gallery. I held my watch, while the cicerone strained his lungs, and found the reverberations of his voice to be distinctly heard for ten seconds.

The Campo Santo, or Cemetery, is the last, though in no respect the least of this celebrated group of edifices. It is

a long parallelogram, situated a few yards in the rear of the Cathedral, the Leaning Tower, and the Baptistry, which range nearly in a right line. The history of it seems to be briefly as follows. In one of the crusades to the Holy Land, the Pisan galleys brought home large quantities of the consecrated soil, which was here strewed to the depth of ten feet, and which is said to possess the peculiar properties of decomposing bodies in the short space of forty-eight hours! Round this deposit of holy earth, thence denominated Campo Santo, or sacred field, ranges of white marble cloisters were erected in the twelfth century. They consist of beautiful arcades, perhaps ten feet in breadth and fifteen or twenty feet in height, with a blind wall on the outer side, and lateral windows, or more properly arches, looking inwardly to a spacious court open at top.

Over the entrance is a statue of the Virgin, and a group of devotees, in the act of bending the knee in adoration, among whom the artist has taken the liberty of giving himself a conspicuous station. The cloisters are paved entirely with tombstones, consisting of white marble slabs, inscribed with almost roods of epitaphs. Six hundred families of the Pisan nobility sleep beneath, besides much untitled dust; for the cemetery was originally the only one in the city. The stuccoed walls are divided into compartments, and covered with fresco paintings nearly coeval with the edifice itself, and strongly illustrative of the history of the art. Among these is a delineation of Dante's Hell, in which devils and mortals are seen sprawling about in all possible attitudes. Proud piles of monumental marble, sarcophagi, and busts, together with Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Italian antiquities crowd the galleries, rendering them not less a school for artists, than a depository of the dead. In this respect the Campo Santo is much superior to Westminster Abbey, though its moral associations were to us far less interesting.

The Archbishop's Palace and other stately buildings, front upon the square of the Cathedral, presenting not a single mean object to detract from its grandeur. In the vicinity stands the Church of St. Stephen, the interior of which dazzles the eye with the richness and brilliancy of its embellishments. Near this place, our guide pointed out the prison of Ugolino, whose confinement and starvation by the aspiring Prelate are sung in one of the episodes of Dante.

The most interesting building, next to those above de

scribed, is the church of St. Maria della Spina, so called from a tradition, that a thorn from the crown of the Saviour is among its relics. It is almost another Santa Casa, so tiny and light that it might apparently have been borne hither from Palestine or some other oriental clime, by less potent beings than angels. Its dimensions do not exceed forty feet in length by twenty in breadth, one story high, and crowned with a profusion of little Gothic pinnacles. The pillars without number are of all possible orders of architecture. Its front is adorned with small statues of the Saviour and his twelve Disciples, and scores of Saints perch among the turrets above. The Madonna, who was supposed to possess peculiar virtues, has been removed and placed in a more conspicuous situation, over the arched entrance of the most frequented street in the city, that her sphere of influence might be enlarged. This unique and fantastic structure is of black and white marble, striped like the Cathedral at Genoa. It is said to have been built in the 13th century. Its position, upon the left bank of the Arno, standing on the very brink, and insulated from all other buildings, gives prominence to its oddities. When it was first seen across the river, it was not suspected of being a church. It really looks, as if it might have been brought in a Pisan galley, and here set ashore as the most convenient landing place.

I visited the large Botanic Garden, forming an appendage to the University. Its compartments are extensive, and tolerably well filled with exotics, as well as with native plants. Artificial mounts have been constructed, and clothed with evergreens, which add to the variety of the enclosure. One striking peculiarity arrested my attention :-the alleys are all paved like so many streets, for the convenience of treading them in wet weather. Such an improvement is much more conducive to health than to correct taste. It destroys in a great measure the rusticity and beauty of the garden.

As to the University itself, once so celebrated, and which still boasts of its scholars, I could not learn that it contains any thing worth seeing or hearing. It has declined with the other interests of the city, till it has become the shadow of what it once was, and the professors out-number the students. The former are at present engaged in a high literary quarrel, respecting the construction of a line in Dante, whose obscurities, like those of Shakspeare, probably in both cases. arising from blunders, open a glorious field for commenta

tors. Several paper shots, in the form of pamphlets, have already been exchanged; and I am informed that one of the combatants has challenged his antagonist to meet him with less harmless weapons.

We attended the theatre one evening-the first that had been visited in Italy. The building is large and handsomely finished, in the style of an Opera House, with four tiers of boxes, each designed to accommodate three persons. Gilded galleries, frescoes, and chandeliers rendered the coup d oeil rather brilliant. The scenery, dresses, and decorations were respectable. Although the piece for the evening was comic and full of action, the slow, indolent movements of the performers, and the measured pomp of the language presented a striking contrast to the brisk, bustling, sprightly gesture and rapid articulation of the French. An excellent orchestra constituted the most agreeable part of the entertainment. The audience was not numerous, and by no means orderly. Even in the lowest theatres in France, every spectator is silent, and intent on the spectacle, whatever it may be. But here, a majority of the house did not seem to regard the play, and were engaged in loud conversation.

One day was occupied in an excursion to Leghorn, fourteen miles from Pisa, in a southerly direction. We left early on the morning of the twelfth, in company with our friends from New-York, and accomplished the ride in about two hours. The road runs nearly the whole way over a low, unbroken plain, of moderate fertility, sprinkled with a few mean villages and houses, sometimes skirted with a grove of pines, but generally devoid of interest, and leaving us to draw upon our classical resources for amusement. canal connects Pisa with Leghorn, and most of the heavy goods from Florence and the Vale of the Arno pass through this channel. It was made at little expense and is of great practical utility.

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Leghorn makes no show at a distance, and it may be added, that it does not appear to much advantage from any point of view. It stands low, on ground in a great measure artificially made; and the first objects which strike the traveller on his approach to it, are the stagnant moats and canals surrounding the walls, and setting up into the heart of the town. Yet I could not learn that these sluggish waters, choked with every species of filth, and mantling with cor