CELEBRATED GUN.
The gun, of which the annexed is a sketch, is one of the many curiosities of the Londesborough Museum. It once formed part of the collection of Prince Potemkin, and was originally the property of Charles IX. of France; it is traditionally reported to have been the gun he used in firing on his Huguenot subjects, from one of the windows of the Louvre, during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The barrel is richly chased in high relief, with a stag-hunt amid foliage. The stock is inlaid with ivory, sculptured into a series of hunting scenes, knights on horseback.
The dreadful massacre of Saint Bartholomew commenced at Paris on the night of the festival of that saint, August 24th, 1572. Above 500 persons of rank, and 10,000 of inferior condition, perished in Paris alone, besides those slaughtered in the provinces. The king, who had been persuaded that the destruction of the Huguenots to the last man was necessary to the safety of his throne, beheld the slaughter from a window, and being carried away by the example of those whose murderous doings he witnessed, ordered some long arquebusses to be brought, and on their being loaded, and handed to him one after another, he for some time continued to fire on the unfortunate fugitives as they passed, crying at the same time with a loud voice, "Kill, kill." He afterwards went and inspected the bodies of the slain, and expressed his satisfaction at the effective manner in which his orders had been executed.
TOMB OF RAFFAELLE.
The great painter Raffaelle died at Rome, April 7th 1520, at the early age of thirty-seven. He was buried in the Pantheon, in a chapel which was afterwards called Raffaelle's Chapel. For more than a century and a half his tomb had only a plain epitaph, but Carlo Maratti desired to place a more striking memorial of Raffaelle's resting-place than the simple inscription, and accordingly, in the year 1764, a marble bust of the painter, executed by Paolo Nardini, was placed in one of the oval niches on each side of the chapel. The epitaph to Maria Bibiena (Raffaelle's betrothed) was removed to make way for Maratti's new inscription; and it was currently believed that the skull of Raffaelle was removed; at least such was the history given of a skull shown as the painter's, religiously preserved by the Academy of St. Luke, and descanted on by phrenologists as indicative of all the qualities which "the divine painter" possessed. But scepticism played its part; doubts of the truth of this story led to doubts of Vasari's statement respecting the exact locality of Raffaelle's tomb. Matters were brought to a final issue by the discovery of a document proving this skull to be that of Don Desiderio de Adjutorio, founder of the society called the Virtuosi, in 1542. Thereupon, this society demanded the head of its founder from the Academy of St. Luke; but they would neither abandon that, nor the illusion that they possessed the veritable skull of the great artist. Arguments ran high, and it was at length determined to settle the question by an examination of the spot, which took place on the 13th of September 1833, in the presence of the Academies of St. Luke and of Archæology, the Commission of the Fine Arts (including Overback and others), the members of the Virtuosi, the governor of Rome (Monsignor Grimaldi), and the Cardinal Zurla, the representative of the pope.
