were really the hope of the herione, what vanity and folly possessed her! Our servitore di piazza, who seldom bent his knee in any church, stopped and most devoutly knelt to this image of the Virgin. Oh, the priests here have changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image, and changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature (literally, palpably) more than the Creator. "Woe to him that saith to the wood, Awake! to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it." Numbers of the bronze idols, and a vast proportion of the brass and the golden covering of the wall and entablature, were seized by the Goths. We are told that Alaric's first attack was directed against the port of Ostia, one of the boldest and most magnificent Roman works; and, as soon as he was in possession, he summoned Rome to surrender at discretion, but contented himself with suspending Honorius, and bestowing the purple on Attalus, the prefect of the city. He was, however, soon degraded, and then followed the third siege and the sacking of Rome, August 14th, A. D. 410. "At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sounds of the Gothic trumpet! Eleven hundred and sixty-five years after its foundation, the Imperial city was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia, and, after six days' siege, the victorious Goths evacuated Rome, and their intrepid leader advanced into Campania, and having ravaged Apulia and Calabria, advanced to the straits of Messina." But death is still the conqueror! Alaric was seized at Rhegium with a fit of illness, and died in a few days. Other portions

of the brass of the Pantheon were taken to ornament the chair of St. Peter, and to form the cannon of St. Angelo yet still,

"Pantheon, pride of Rome, to him who treads

Rome, for the sake of ages, glory sheds

Her light through thy sole aperture!"

CHAPTER XV.

The Tombs on the Appian Way - The Catacombs - Protestant Burying-Ground-Piazza di Minerva-Monastery of St. FrancisGuido Reni's Archangel-The Convent of St. Isidore-An Irish College.

THE TOMBS.

December.

Soon after our arrival in Rome, we visited the Appian way-interesting to every Christian as the road trodden by St. Paul, and dear to all as the resting-place of so many illustrious dead. This Appian way stretches across the desert Campagna. There are tombs to the right and to the left. For miles, there are neither trees nor habitations. The plain is not only one of tombs, but the very tombs are in ruins. Before we passed the gate, we entered that of the family of Scipio. Having each a lighted taper in our hands, we descended, passing various windings of peperino rock. On every side were excavations for funeral urns, and the inscriptions yet remained on many stones. A sarcophagus, removed from hence, now stands in the light of day in the Vatican. It is of grey peperino; and we only saw the narrow limits it had occupied on the soi where the family acquired so much glory. As for Scipio, his ashes are on the solitary shores of Liternum. Passing the Sebastiano gate, and advancing from tomb to tomb, one naturally seeks the cypress and the yew, as we find them in England-we seek all that with us forms the mournful, quiet shade of death; but no! all is bleak, and

bare to the blast of the wind. Here and there, a fragment of a ruined temple, in the distance, admonishes that the gods of the Romans are gone with their worshippers. We gathered one or two hybernal flowers from beneath the tomb of Cecilia Metella-a round tower, of prodigious thickness, and partly covered with the mantling foliage which Time throws, as he passes, on the works of man.

The sarcophagus taken from this tomb we saw in the Palazzo Farnese. It is oval, with a small flexure inwards in the curve; and its marbled sides are spirally fluted. The frieze represents a hunt, dogs, horses, &c., &c.—the most active deeds of life to ornament the tabernacle of death. It is beautifully executed. This spoliation of tombs cannot be too strongly reprobated.

Returning towards Rome, still on the Appian way, we descended, through the church of St. Sebastiano, to the catacombs, the dwellings and tombs of the Christians; we found interminable windings and corridors, through earth of red clay and peperino. On every side were excavations, sometimes equal to small chapels-others the size of a man-a woman-a child. We were continually cautioned not to extinguish our tapers: often the passage was not sufficiently high to stand without stooping. Horrible prisons and sepulchres for living men! and yet here one hundred and seventy thousand Christians sought refuge from the sword and the savage hearts of their pagan persecutors. Here they willingly bore the loss of light, and flowers, and fruits; and sought with joy, in these dark catacombs, to worship the Sun of Righteousness, in whose presence (ever spiritually with his people) is light and life.

The windings are so numerous and devious, that it is thought unsafe to enter with too large a party. The cos

The cata

tode, a priest, who preceded us with his taper, told us that several young persons had been lost there, not very long since. From these dark realms, hundreds of gravestones have been removed, belonging to martyrs and early Christians: the letters are exceedingly rude, and the engravings of symbols still more so. The dove, the cross, the olivebranch, and the word "Pax," are very frequently seen. These we saw in the gallery of the Vatican. combs are said to spread on every side under Rome, from the Campus Martius to Ostia. The entrances are all closed, (excepting those considered sacred from being under churches,) as they were thought dangerous asylums for banditti. That which looks like red clay is probably the pozzolana earth which we continually saw them mixing up in Rome, with pounded marble, to form their stucco: it appears not so porous as the túfo. It is thought that the first excavations might have been made to procure this material; but to me, every thing proclaims (witness the narrow entrance, &c.!) that these catacombs were always the tabernacles of the dead. In many places, the earth has sunk, and filled up the passage. We observed three or four tiers in some parts of the galleries, capable of containing all sized sarcophagi. The apertures had generally a stone or marble slab in front, to close them up; and many pieces of these stones were on the ground. You must imagine us in these dark recesses, with a pale-visaged Catholic priest; our tapers dimly burning, in danger every moment of being extinguished, whilst we heard wondrous tales of Filipo Neri, and other martyred saints. One's real terror and sympathy are always checked in Rome by some ludicrous legend of superstition, related with infinite gravity; though I often thought that the narrator felt the infidelity