Note (return) — FINE ARTS.

The cathedral will be recollected as the finest specimen extant of pointed Gothic architecture, and termed by the Milanese, the eighth wonder of the world. It is entirely of white marble, and its highest point four hundred feet from the base. A better idea of its minute as well as vast beauty will be afforded by the reader turning to our engraving of the exterior in vol. xiv. of The Mirror. It is successfully painted in the Panorama, although it has not the dazzling whiteness that a stranger might expect; and, on it are those beautiful tinges which are thought to be shed by the atmosphere upon buildings of any considerable age. This effect is visible ever in the fine climate of Italy: it is ingeniously referred to by Sir Humphry Davy in his last work6 to the chemical agency of water. He speaks, however, rather of the decay produced by water, of which tinge is but the first stage. The latter is very pleasing, and, about two years since, the fine portico of the Colosseum, in the Regent's Park, was artificially coloured to produce this effect of time, as it has been poetically considered.