completely out of the modern world, and nobody knows anything about it save a few lovers of ancient art, who will not be beat in their explorations by want of communications and bad hostelries.  But the little hill-city possesses two churches, whose choirs well deserve a visit by the admirers of cinque-cento wood-work, I have mentioned it here, however, mainly because one of these, the choir of the cathedral, offers not so much in what may still be seen there, as in its records, a very curious example of the spirit of anti-ecclesiastical freethinking which was widely spread at that time through the artist-world, whose best patron was the Church.  I mentioned some months ago, in the pages of this Magazine, some curious facts showing the real sentiments of the great Perugino on this subject while he was painting Madonnas and miracles for his ecclesiastical patrons.  And the following singular extract from the archives of the cathedral church of Todi may be added to what was there written as a proof of the somewhat unexpected fact.  The wood-work of the choir was begun by Maestro Antonio Bencivieni of Mercatello, in the duchy of Urbino, and was completed in 1530 by his son Sebastian, who finished his work by inserting in it a singularly haughty inscription in intarsia.  The Latin of the original may be Englished thus:  “Begun by the art and genius of Ant^{o} Bencivieni of Mercatello.  This work was finished by his son Sebastian.  Having kept faith and maintained his honor, he did enough.”  The worthy canons, however, discovered just one and forty years afterward that Maestro Sebastiano had done somewhat too much.  For he had on the fourth stall, counting from the bishop’s seat, on the right-hand side of the choir, inserted amid the ornamentation certain Latin words, inscribed over a carving of three vases intended to represent reliquaries, which may be translated thus:  Over the first vase, “The shadow of the ass ridden by our Lord;” over the second, “The feet of the Blessed Virgin as she ascended into heaven;” over the third, “Relics of the Holy Trinity.”  These strange inscriptions remained where Maestro Sebastiano had so audaciously placed them till the May of 1571.  At that date we find a record in the cathedral archives which, after rehearsing the words in question, and describing the position of them, proceeds:  “Which words, placed there and written scandalously, and in a certain sort derisive of the veneration for holy relics, and in contempt of the Christian religion, the very reverend canons” (So-and-So—­names rehearsed) “ordered to be removed and entirely canceled, so that they should no longer be seen or read.”  Can it be supposed that this very extraordinary inscription in a choir frequented daily by the canons of the church had entirely escaped notice for more than forty years?  Surely this is impossible.  Should we not rather see in the fact that the chapter of 1530 noticed the mocking words with probably a shrug and a smile, whereas the chapter of 1571 took care that they were removed, an interesting and curious commentary on the change which the intervening years had brought about in the spirit of the Church, and another unexpected indication of the difference between the Church of the worldly, pagan-minded Clement VII. and that of the energetic, earnest bigot Pius IV.  That such a difference existed we know full well, but this passage of the Todi archives is a very curious proof of it.