from the Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the

veritable hand of St. Luke. This is the second of St. Luke's Virgins we

have seen. Once a year all these holy relics are carried in procession

through the streets of Milan.

I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral. The

building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and

the principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high.

It has 7,148 marble statues, and will have upwards of three thousand more

when it is finished. In addition it has one thousand five hundred

bas-reliefs. It has one hundred and thirty-six spires--twenty-one more

are to be added. Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a half

feet high. Every thing about the church is marble, and all from the

same quarry; it was bequeathed to the Archbishopric for this purpose

centuries ago. So nothing but the mere workmanship costs; still that is

expensive--the bill foots up six hundred and eighty-four millions of

francs thus far (considerably over a hundred millions of dollars,) and

it is estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet to

finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from being so. We

saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one which had

been standing these four hundred years, they said. There are four

staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred

thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn

them. Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful

structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six

years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the

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The Innocents Abroad