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But how is it possible to recognize an inspired and infallible oracle on the Tiber, when it is remembered that again and again successive popes have contradicted each other; that popes have denounced councils, and councils have denounced popes; that the Bible of Sixtus V. had so many admitted errors nearly two thousand that its own authors had to recall it?

In this case they took the step of inviting the Duke of Orleans to lay claim to the dukedom of Milan, and the Duke of Lorraine to the throne of Naples. The move was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes.

A little later the celebrated Vatican printing press was annexed to the library; and the office of correctors or readers for the accurate printing of ancient books which were wanting in the library was instituted. Pope Sixtus V. erected the present splendid edifice, and used every effort to increase the great collection.

At an early age she was married to the rude nephew of Sixtus IV, Girolamo Riario, Count of Forli. Shortly afterwards her terrible father met a tyrant's death in Milan. Then her husband fell beneath the daggers of the conspirators, who flung his naked body from a window of the stronghold of Forli.

Sixtus, for whose convent, at Piacenza, it was painted: the picture of this saint, too, is in the lower part of the picture, with that of St. Barbara. No sketch or drawing of this work was ever found, and it is believed that the great artist, working as if inspired, sketched it and finished it on the canvas where it is.

After making part of the baths of Olympius, they were placed by Sixtus V. at Negroni, whence they were removed to the Vatican by Pius VI. Continuing our examination, after leaving the HALL OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN, we next come to the

Whence we learn that it is the production of CLEOMENES, an Athenian artist, mentioned by Pliny, and who flourished towards the end of the Roman republic, about 500 years before Christ. This statue was taken from the Gallery of Versailles, where it had been placed in the reign of Lewis XIV. It formerly belonged to the garden of Sixtus V. at Villa-Montalto, in Rome.

Such men were Sixtus IV., Julius II., and Alexander VI., able, probably, for it is very seldom that the popes have not been distinguished for something, but men, nevertheless, who were a disgrace to the superb position they had succeeded in reaching.

In the fifth century A.D. there is mention of a gift to a church by Sixtus III, Pope from 432 to 440, of a certain possession in Praenestine territory called Marmorata, which seems best located near the town of Genazzano.

Pope Sixtus IV loaded them with honors, and great astonishment was caused by a magnificent hunt which Girolamo Riario, the all-powerful nepot, gave for them, at Magliana on the Tiber. These princes departed from Rome on the fourteenth of April.