The life of
to-day, within the shell of a time past, is wonderfully fascinating.
Another point to which a stranger's footsteps are drawn by a kind of
magnetism, so that he will be apt to find himself there as often as he
strolls out of his hotel, is the cathedral. It stands in the highest
part of the city, and almost every street runs into some other street
which meanders hitherward. On our way thither, U---- and I came to a
beautiful front of black and white marble, in somewhat the same style as
the cathedral; in fact, it was the baptistery, and should have made a
part of it, according to the original design, which contemplated a
structure of vastly greater extent than this actual one. We entered the
baptistery, and found the interior small, but very rich in its clustered
columns and intersecting arches, and its frescos, pictures, statues, and
ornaments. Moreover, a father and mother had brought their baby to be
baptized, and the poor little thing, in its gay swaddling-clothes, looked
just like what I have seen in old pictures, and a good deal like an
Indian pappoose.
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