The Duomo, the Baptistry, the Leaning Tower, and the Campo Santo, stand altogether in a fine open elevated part of the city.  The Duomo is a magnificent edifice in bad taste.  The interior, with its noble columns of oriental granite, is grand, sombre, and very striking.  As to the style of architecture, it would be difficult to determine what name to give it:  it is not Greek, nor Gothic, nor Saxon, and exhibits a strange mixture of Pagan and Christian ornaments, not very unfrequent in Italian churches.  The Leaning Tower should be contemplated from the portico of the church to heighten its effect:  when the perpendicular column cuts it to the eye like a plumb line, the obliquity appears really terrific.

The Campo Santo is an extraordinary place:  it affects the mind like the cloisters of one of our Gothic cathedrals which it resembles in effect.  Means have lately been taken to preserve the singular frescos on the walls, which for five hundred years have been exposed to the open air.

I remarked the tomb of that elegant fabulist Pignotti; the last personage of celebrity buried in the Campo Santo.

The university of Pisa is no longer what it was when France and Venice had nearly gone to war about one of its law professors, and its colleges ranked next to those of Padua:  it has declined in fame, in riches, and in discipline.  The Botanic Garden was a few years ago the finest in all Europe, and is still maintained with great cost and care:  it contains a lofty magnolia, the stem of which is as bulky as a good sized tree:  the gardener told us rather poetically, that when in blossom it perfumed the whole city of Pisa.

Leghorn, April 26.—­So different from any thing we have yet seen in Italy! busy streets—­gay shops—­various costumes—­Greeks, Turks, Jews, and Christians, mingled on terms of friendly equality—­a crowded port, and all the activity of prosperous commerce.

Leghorn is in every sense a free port:  all kinds of merchandise enter exempt from duty, all religions are equally tolerated, and all nations trade on an equal footing.

The Jews, who are in every other city a shunned and degraded race, are among the most opulent and respectable inhabitants of Leghorn:  their quarter is the richest, and, I may add, the dirtiest in the city:  their synagogue here is reckoned the finest in Europe, and I was induced to visit it yesterday at the hour of worship.  I confess I was much disappointed; and, notwithstanding my inclination to respect always what is respectable in the eyes of others, I never felt so strong a disposition to smile.  An old Rabbi with a beard of venerable length, a pointed bonnet, and a long white veil, got up into a superb marble pulpit and chanted in strange nasal tones, something which was repeated after him in various and discordant voices by the rest of the assembly.  The congregation consisted of an uncouth set of men and boys, many of them from different parts of the Levant, in the