that day.. off on my Pegasus on quite another tack, one that would carry me as far as ever did the gods and goddesses of the Laurentine forest.

But I have done. I feel I am again

IV.

Visit to the Catacombs of San Calisto and the Church of San

Sebastiano.

TO-DAY along the Appian Way

that regina

viarum so inexhaustible in recollections, where every stone, every broken wall has its history, and forms a portion of the great mosaic of bygone centuries! Out by the tombs of the Scipios (where the famous marble sarcophagus so long lay hid, deep buried in the gloom of long subterranean galleries)—out through the triumphal arch of Drusus, backed by the loftier pile of the Porta San Sebastiano, whose twin turreted towers deepen the shadows around! On, along the high, walled-in road, roughly paved, too, as though we were still struggling in the city—on, perhaps for two miles! Then I pass a low door overshadowed by trees, waving over a ruined mass, once a tomb, now wreathed and garlanded with luxuriant ivy. Beside that grove and that tomb, through that low door sheltered by those dark trees, is the entrance to the catacombs of San Calisto, whither I am bound, .

but not to enter there. I go on a little way, and come to a church, which is that of San Sebastiano, standing in a piazza. There is nothing particularly venerable or ancient in its aspect, and yet it strikes me with a thrill, as a strange mysterious spot. Perhaps it is association, for I know that from this church I am about to descend into the catacombs, that living book, palpable and immortal, where is written in the blood of the martyrs, or with the unready pencil of some unknown artist, every detail of the painful, suffering, yet sublime lives of our Christian ancestorsa book without end, both for the Christian and the antiquarian! The monk who generally acted as guide not being forthcoming, I have time to look about me. The church stands on the fall of a hill, and is shaded by a whole grove of funereal cypresses, the only living trees appropriate to the dark memories around. In front there are an open space and a pillar; behind, a natural wall of tufa-rock of a fine rich tinge, as though warmed by centuries of bright sunshine, overwoven with ivy, weeds, and wallflowers matted and massed together, and fringed with festoons of hawthorn, just bursting into snowy wreaths, like Spring weaving garlands round the wrinkled forehead of old Time. Beyond, on the summit of another hill, stands the massive tomb of Cecilia Metella, that

"stern round tower of other days," the grandest monument of the Street of Tombs. I felt the most intense curiosity to explore these refuges, which served the early Christians, while living, as a hidingplace and asylum for themselves, their mysteries, their tears, their prayers; when dead, as a restingplace to all, especially to the sainted martyrs. The very designations given to them are suggestive of their destination, and full of holy poetry. Besides the more general name of catacombs, they are called "hidden places,' "subterranean refuges," "councils of martyrs," "sanctuaries," "resting-places," "memorials," "peace,' peace," "havens," and "thrones." Could any but the devoted Christians have thus designated prisons and tombs filled with decaying mortality, where earth received the mangled remains yet palpitating with a life too often rudely destroyed, and the worm accomplished the melancholy mysteries of that sentence which delivers dust to dust, earth to earth? As Pompeii shows paganism as it existed in its religion, manners, arts, and customs, public and private; so the catacombs, the cradle of the Church, display Christianity as it existed eighteen centuries ago.

99.66

I entered the church, a spacious building, handsomely decorated, but without a single claim to antiquity, although it is the last of the seven Basilicas,

and was founded by Constantine. Some ill-disposed cardinal, however, stepped in about the middle of the last century, and destroyed every vestige of the past. Here is the tomb of San Sebastiano, under an altar bearing his name, where he is represented, in a marble statue of some merit, lying dead, pierced with silver arrows. The statue is by Giorgetti, pupil of Bernini, whose French taste may be better pardoned when it is remembered that Sebastiano was a Gaul born at Narbonne, and a soldier in the Roman armies. He suffered under Diocletian, who, discovering that he was a Christian, condemned him to be shot. When, covered with arrows and fainting from intense suffering, he was left for dead by his executioners, a pious widow who had obtained permission to bury him discovered that life was not extinct. Under her care he recovered from his wounds, but refused to fly from Rome, and shortly afterwards placed himself before the emperor, and publicly reproached him for the cruelties he exercised towards the Christians. Diocletian was at first overwhelmed with astonishment at the sight of a person he believed to be dead, but, recovering from his surprise, gave orders in great anger that Sebastiano should be seized immediately, beaten to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer. sentence was executed, but his remains were preserved

This