Vicenza owes its chief distinction to the fame of its architect, the celebrated Palladio, who flourished in the sixteenth century. Some of his most famous works adorn his native city; and amongst these may be named the Palazzo della Ragione, or Court of Justice, and the Pallazzo Prefettizio, the house of the chief magistrate; both which edifices come immediately into the foreground of our view. The style of Palladio is marked by severity, and is formed from the ancient temples and the works of Vitruvius. Palladian architecture was introduced into England by Inigo Jones, whose works are worthy imitations of the Italian master; but since his time no one in this country seems to have imbibed the spirit of Palladio, for scarcely a single edifice constructed by the followers of Inigo Jones exhibits anything better than a servile copy of his style, and an evident ignorance of its capabilities. British architects, to the present day, appear to delight in incongruities, or if not so, they certainly want mental power and correct taste, since their most elaborate efforts are too frequently "a chaos of disjointed things." In our own city, and within the last five or six years, an architect of some pretensions supported the loggia of a public edifice, consisting of a heavy pediment and massive Corinthian columns, upon slender Ionic pillars! True, the latter were removed, and a solid rusticated basement substituted in their room; still, "we cannot but remember such things were, that were most frightful to us." "Can such things be, and overcome us like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder?"

Our view of Vicenza represents the Piazza de' Signori. In the centre are the two columns erected by the Venetians, who were accustomed to set up, in all the towns they conquered, the national pillars of the ducal city. The nearest building on the right hand is the Palazzo della Ragione, or more properly Palladio's façades, the interior Palazzo being an ancient gothic building, of the age of Theodoric, which Palladio restored and enlarged. These façades are considered the best works of the Italian architect. They consist of two noble loggie, tier above tier, the uppermost Ionic, and the lower Doric. The Campanile, adjoining the Palazzo della Ragione, is a graceful structure occupying an area of little more than twenty square feet, and rising to three hundred feet in height. On the left of our view, and opposite to the Palazzo before mentioned, is the Palazzo Prefettizio. This building is in the Corinthian style, and is a skilful adaptation of the Roman triumphal arch to a palatial residence.

Upon the festival of Corpus Christi, a singular pageant, named the Rua, is exhibited at Vicenza. It consists of an enormous car, sixty feet in height, formed of temples and pyramids, surrounded by a combination of wheels, upon which, as they revolve, men, women, and children maintain their equilibrium, whilst the car itself is hauled along by about an hundred men. Tradition refers the origin of this procession to the achievements of the knights, Bassano and Verlato, who relieved the city from the atrocities of the tyrant Ezzelino.

The Sette commune, or Seven Communes, are seen from Vicenza. These Alpine villages are regarded with great interest by the historian as the residence of a people who for two thousand years have kept themselves apart from the rest of the world. The Cimbri and Teutones, two tribes from the northern Chersonesus, invaded Italy in the year of Rome 640, and were defeated, and almost extirpated by Marius, in the neighbourhood of Verona. The few who escaped the vengeance of the conquerors, took refuge in the neighbouring mountains, and formed a little colony, which, either from its poverty, its insignificance, or its retired position, has remained undisturbed for nearly two thousand years. These people retain the tradition

of their origin, and though surrounded by Italians, still preserve their Teutonic language. Frederick IV. of Denmark visited this singular colony, discoursed with the inhabitants in Danish, and found their idiom perfectly intelligible.

BRESCIA.

FTER the fall of the Roman empire, Brescia, which boasted its splendour and distinction under the Cæsars, suffered great severities at the hands of Alaric and Attila. It was afterwards conquered by the Lombards, from whom it passed to the Franks; and when the power of the latter people declined, it submitted to Otho I. of Saxony, from whom it received many privileges. It partook of the miseries of the Guelph and Ghibelline contest; and its entire middle age history is composed of records of suffering. In 1222, an earthquake overthrew the principal buildings, and destroyed a large number of the inhabitants; and this calamity was succeeded by all the horrors of pestilence and famine. The bishops, nobles, and people were constantly at variance; and to this perpetual cause of disquiet was added the successive occupation of its citadel by turbulent and ambitious neighbours. It was taken in succession by Ezzelino, the tyrant of Padua, by the Pallavicini of Cremona, the Torriani of Milan, and the Scaglieri of Verona; and it at length fell under the power of the Visconti of Milan, from whose intolerable tyranny it sought escape by submission to the Venetian republic. When the league of Cambrai was entered into for the overthrow of Venice, Brescia was captured by the French (1512), under their celebrated leader, Gaston de Foix. The citizens hoisted the standard of St. Mark, and drove out their oppressors; but the citadel remained in the hands of the enemy. Gaston de Foix advanced upon the city with an army of 12,000 men, the flower of the French chivalry, and summoned it to surrender, under a menace that if he were resisted not a single life should be spared. The citizens replied by a mortal defiance. The forlorn hope of the French was led by the famous chevalier Bayard, who on mounting the breast-work received a dangerous wound, and was carried from the scene of strife by two archers. The fall of Bayard, who was supposed to be mortally wounded, increased the fury of the assailants, and seven thousand defenders of the city were slain in the heat of the conflict. But the fearful outrages and atrocities that followed during the sack of the city have scarcely a parallel. Men, women, and children, to the number of forty-six thousand, were ferociously slaughtered; and "the flower of the French chivalry" paused in their work of blood, only to indulge in shameful barbarities and violence towards the weaker sex, or to satiate their avarice by the most capricious plunder. The booty was immense: ducats were counted by the handful, and cloth of gold was measured by the lance. The miseries of war were succeeded by famine and pestilence; and Brescia has not, to this day, fully recovered the loss of population she sustained in the opening of the sixteenth century.

Two incidents are recorded in connection with this memorable assault that deserve especial mention; the one, as an example of the brutal ferocity of the conquerors; and the other as a solitary redeeming feature in their conduct. As the crowds pressed forward to the churches to find a refuge from the soldiery, the latter inflicted five sabre-wounds on the skull and face of a child in the arms of its mother. This child survived, but in consequence of its wounds never acquired the faculty of speech, and hence obtained the name of Tartaglia,-the same Tartaglia who became one of the greatest mathematicians of the age, and to whom modern algebraical science is principally indebted. The other incident refers to the Chevalier Bayard. The archers who bore him from the assault, took him to the house of a noble family named Cigola, whose cowardly master had fled to a monastery, leaving his wife and daughters exposed to the brutality of the French soldiery. Bayard observed, amidst his own sufferings, the terror and distress of these ladies, and ordered a guard to be placed at the door of the house to secure its inmates from outrage and pillage. During two months both mother and daughters nursed him with woman's tenderness, and when at length he was sufficiently restored to dispense with their attentions, the mother offered him a casket containing two thousand five hundred ducats as a ransom for herself and children. Bayard raised her from her suppliant posture, and begged, as the only return for the protection his presence had afforded them, that she would permit him to bid adieu to her daughters. On their entrance, he presented each with a thousand ducats from the casket as a marriage portion, and directed that the remaining five hundred should be given to some poor nuns who had been pillaged. When he took his leave, one of the young ladies presented him with a pair of rich bracelets woven of her own hair, and the other proffered for his acceptance an embroidered purse. These the gallant knight accepted; he placed the bracelets on his arm and the purse on his sleeve, and declared that whilst he lived he would wear them for the honour of their donors. Although this incident is vaunted by the French historians in honour of their chivalry, it can in fact only be taken as a testimony to the character of the individual knight whom they have themselves separated from his compeers by the title of "Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche,” -The Knight without fear and without disgrace.

Brescia returned in 1516 to the government of Venice. Its subsequent history records two awful visitations of the plague, the one in 1575, and the other in 1630; and in 1769, the explosion of a powder magazine destroyed all the buildings in its vicinity, and killed a great number of the citizens. It was in the latter year that the Brescians aided the French against Venice. Since 1814, the city has been subject to Austria. At the present day Brescia is a flourishing city containing 40,000 inhabitants. It is pleasantly situated, and prospects of great beauty are obtained from the neighbouring heights. Among the numerous Roman antiquities, the most remarkable is a recently exhumed temple, supposed to have been dedicated to Hercules by Vespasian, and whose portico bears strong resemblance to that of the Pantheon. A museum of antiquities has been founded in the temple, under the direction of Signor Girolamo Ioli, to whom the antiquarian world is indebted for the recovery of the temple itself. Brescia is remarkable for its two cathedrals; the Duomo Vecchio, said to have been built by the dukes of Lombardy: and the Duomo Nuovo, begun in 1604 from the designs of Giovanni Battista Lantana, but of which the cupola remained unfinished until 1825. The Brescian school of painting has produced works of great merit, but the glory of its members is absorbed in that of the Venetian school. The churches and palazzi are decorated with the paintings of