Travel Diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton:
Europe, Egypt, and Palestine, ca. 1857

Click to view higher resolution image from childhood with the pictures and accounts of that remarkable structure, could it be that my eyes were now really beholding it! In the morning we hastened to the spot where it stands in connection with three other objects of unusual interest – the Baptistery, the Campo Santa, and the Cathedral. The Baptistery erected in the twelfth century is a beautiful building of white marble, circular and dome-like, relieved in the exterior by fine Corinthian columns. The exterior is mostly marble, also, and exquisitely finished. In the centre is a large font, fourteen feet in its longest diameter, adapted and probably used for the emersion of candidates for baptism.
The large room rising into the high dome, afforded delightful echoes; and when a few of us sang a part of the hymn

“My heavenly home is bright and fair,
Nor pain nor death shall enter there”

The fullness and prolongation of the sounds were organ-like and charming. The Campo Santa is a cemetery, an immense oblong structure, with cloisters extending around it, and the open space within filled with earth, to the amount of fifty-three ship loads, brought from Calvary. There are numerous monuments in the cloisters, and some striking frescoes. One of the better, representing the Last Judgment, has a touch of satire, as well as truth, no doubt; for the artist has mixed kings and queens and monks with the wicked. The Cathedral is spacious and splendid. “The doors are of bronze, the roof is of carved and gilded wood, the floor of marble white and gallow; statues of exquisite workmanship adorn the walls, while a dim light spreads through the painted windows, and clothes with a mellowing softness, the stupendous column”. But I was interested most of all in the Campanile or Leaning Tower. It is a beautiful marble structure, fifty-three feet in diameter at the base, one hundred and eighty feet high, inclining towards the South more than thirteen feet from the perpendicular. My

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