than at anything the monitress may have been reading, for she would surely find them disquieting.  Or she may be saying, “Why, bless me!  I do declare the Virgin has got another hamper, and St. Anne’s cakes are always so terribly rich!” Certainly the hamper is there, close to the Virgin, and the Lady Principal’s action may be well directed at it, but it may have been sent to some other young lady, and be put on the sub-dais for public exhibition.  It looks as if it might have come from Fortnum and Mason’s, and I half expected to find a label, addressing it to “The Virgin Mary, Temple College, Jerusalem,” but if ever there was one the mice have long since eaten it.  The Virgin herself does not seem to care much about it, but if she has a fault it is that she is generally a little apathetic.

Whose the hamper was, however, is a point we shall never now certainly determine, for the best fossil is worse than the worst living form.  Why, alas! was not Mr. Edison alive when this chapel was made?  We might then have had a daily phonographic recital of the conversation, and an announcement might be put outside the chapels, telling us at what hours the figures would speak.

On either side of the main room there are two annexes opening out from it; these are reserved chiefly for the younger children, some of whom, I think, are little boys.  In the left annex, behind the ladies who are making a mitre, there is a child who has got a cake, and another has some fruit—­possibly given them by the Virgin—­and a third child is begging for some of it.  The light failed so completely here that I was not able to photograph any of these figures.  It was a dull September afternoon, and the clouds had settled thick round the chapel, which is never very light, and is nearly 4000 feet above the sea.  I waited till such twilight as made it hopeless that more detail could be got—­and a queer ghostly place enough it was to wait in—­but after giving the plate an exposure of fifty minutes, I saw I could get no more, and desisted.

These long photographic exposures have the advantage that one is compelled to study a work in detail through mere lack of other employment, and that one can take one’s notes in peace without being tempted to hurry over them; but even so I continually find I have omitted to note, and have clean forgotten, much that I want later on.

In the other annex there are also one or two younger children, but it seems to have been set apart for conversation and relaxation more than any other part of the establishment.

I have already said that the work is signed by an inscription inside the chapel, to the effect that the sculptures are by Pietro Aureggio Termine di Biella.  It will be seen that the young ladies are exceedingly like one another, and that the artist aimed at nothing more than a faithful rendering of the life of his own times.  Let us be thankful that he aimed at nothing less.  Perhaps his wife kept a girls’ school;