From the Oak to the Olive Part 3

WORKS OF ART.

Enough of shows. Galleries and studios are better. Rome is rich in both, and with a sort of studious contentment, one embraces one's Murray, picks out the palace that unfolds its art treasures to-day, and travels up the stairs, and along the marble corridors, to wonderful suites of apartments, in which the pasteboard programmes lie about waiting for you, while the still drama of the pictures acts itself upon the thronged wall, yourself their small public, and they giving their color-eloquence, whether any one gives heed or not.

They are precious, the Colonna, Doria, Sciarra, Borghese, and we have seen them. We have picked out our old favorites, and have carried the neophytes before them, saying, "I saw this, dear, before you were born."

But this past, whose reflex fold inwraps us, does not exist for the neophytes, who look at it as out of a moment's puzzle, and then conclude to begin their own business on their own responsibility, without any reference to these outstanding credits of ours.

Of the pictures it is little useful to speak. Your description enables no one to see them, and the narration of the feelings they excite in you is as likely to be tedious as interesting to those who cultivate feelings of their own. Copies and engravings have done here what you cannot do, and the best subjects are familiar to art students and lovers in all countries. A little sigh of pleasure may be allowed you at this, your third sight of the Francias, the Raphaels, t.i.tian's Bella, Claude's landscapes, and the scientific Leonardo's heavily-labored heads and groups. But do not therefore put the trumpet to your lips, and blow that sigh across the ocean, to claim the attention of ears that invite the lesson for the day. The lesson for this day is not written on canvas, and though it may be read everywhere in the world, you will scarcely find its clearest type in Rome.

And here, perhaps, I may as well carry further the philosophizing which I began a week ago with regard to the objects and resources of Roman life, and their compatibility with the thoughts and pursuits most dear and valuable to Americans.

Art is, of course, the only solid object which an American can bring forward to justify a prolonged residence in Rome. Art, health, and official duty, are among the valid reasons which bring our countrymen abroad. Two of these admit of no argument. The sick have a right, other things permitting, to go where they can be bettered; a duty perhaps, to go where the sum of their waning years and wasting activities admits of multiplication. Those who live abroad as ministers and consuls have a twofold opportunity of benefiting their country. If honest and able, they may benefit her by their presence in foreign lands; if unworthy and incompetent, by their absence from home. But our artists are those whose expatriation gives us most to think about. They take leave of us either in the first bloom or in the full maturity of their powers. The ease of living in Southern Europe, the abundance of models and of works of art, the picturesque charms of nature and of scenery, detain them forever from us, and, save for an abstract sentiment, which itself weakens with every year, the sacred tie of country is severed. Its sensibilities play no part in these lives devoted to painting and modelling.

Now, an eminent gift for art is an exceptional circ.u.mstance. He who has it weds his profession, leaves father and mother, and goes where his slowly-unfolding destiny seems to call him. Against such a course we have no word to say. It presents itself as a necessary conclusion to earnest and n.o.ble men, who love not their native country less, but their votive country more. Of the first and its customs they would still say,--

"I cannot but remember such things were That were most precious to me."

Yet of this career, so often coveted by those to whom its attainment does not open, I cannot speak in terms of supreme recognition. The office of art is always as precious as its true ministers are rare. But the relative importance of sculptural and pictorial art is not to-day what it was in days of less thought, of smaller culture. Every one who likes the Bible to-day, likes it best without ill.u.s.trations. Were Christ here to speak anew, he would speak without parables. In ruder times, heavenly fancies could only be ill.u.s.trated on the one hand, received on the other, through the mediation of a personal embodiment. Only through human sympathy was the a.s.sent to divine truth obtained. The necessity which added a feminine personality to the wors.h.i.+p of Christ, and completed the divided G.o.dhead by making it female as well as male, was a philosophical one, but not recognized as such. The device of the Virgin was its practical result, counterbalancing the partiality of the one-sided personal _culte_ of the Savior. Modern religious thought gets far beyond this, makes in spiritual things no distinction of male and female, and does not apply s.e.x to the Divine, save in the most vague and poetic sense. The inner convictions of heart and conscience may now be spoken in plain prose, or sung in ringing verse. The _vates_, prophet or reformer, may proclaim his system and publish his belief; and his audience will best apprehend it in its simplest and most direct form.

The wide s.p.a.ces of the new continent allow room for the most precious practical experimentation; and speculative and theoretical liberty keep pace with liberty of action. The only absolute restraint, the best one, is a moral one. "Thou shalt not" applies only to what is intrinsically inhuman and profane. And now, there is no need to puzzle simple souls with a marble gospel. Faith needs not to digest whole side-walls of saints and madonnas, who once stood for something, no one now knows what. The Italian school was to art what the Greek school was to literature--an original creation and beginning. But life has surpa.s.sed Plato and Aristotle. We are forced to piece their short experiences, and to say to both, "You are matchless, but insufficient." And so, though Raphael's art remains immortal and unsurpa.s.sed, we are forced to say of his thought, "It is too small." No one can settle, govern, or moralize a country by it. It will not even suffice to reform Italy. The golden transfigurations hang quiet on the walls, and let pope and cardinal do their worst. We want a world peopled with faithful and intelligent men and women. The Prometheus of the present day is needed rather to animate statues than to make them.

PIAZZA NAVONA--THE TOMBOLA.

When, O, when does the bee make his honey? Not while he is sipping from flower to flower, levying his dainty tribute as lightly as love--enriching the world with what the flower does not miss, and cannot.

This question suggests itself in the course of these busy days in Rome, where pleasures are offered oftener than sensibilities can ripen, and the edge of appet.i.te is blunted with sweets, instead of rusting with disuse. In these scarce three weeks how much have we seen, how little recorded and described! So sweet has been the fable, that the intended moral has pa.s.sed like an act in a dream--a thing of illusion and intention, not of fact. Impotent am I, indeed, to describe the riches of this Roman world,--its treasures, its pleasures, its flatteries, its lessons. Of so much that one receives, one can give again but the smallest shred,--a leaf of each flower, a sc.r.a.p of each garment, a proverb for a sermon, a stave for a song. So be it; so, perhaps, is it best.

Last Sunday I attended a Tombola at Piazza Navona--not a state lottery, but a private enterprise brought to issue in the most public manner. I know the Piazza of old. Sixteen years since I made many a pilgrimage thither, in search of Roman trash. I was not then past the poor amus.e.m.e.nt of spending money for the sake of spending it. The foolish things I brought home moved the laughter of my little Roman public. I appeared in public with some forlorn brooch or dilapidated earring; the giddy laughed outright, and the polite gazed quietly. My rooms were the refuge of all broken-down vases and halting candelabra. I lived on the third floor of a modest lodging, and all the wrecks of art that neither first, second, nor fourth would buy, found their way into my parlor, and staid there at my expense. I recall some of these adornments to-day. Two heroes, in painted wood, stood in my dark little entry. A gouty Cupid in bas-relief enc.u.mbered my mantel-piece. Two forlorn figures in black and white gla.s.s recalled the auction whose unlucky prize they had been. And Horace Wallace, coming to talk of art and poetry, on my red sofa, sometimes saluted me with a paroxysm of merriment, provoked by the sight of my last purchase. Those days are not now. Of their acc.u.mulations I retain but a fragment or two. Of their delights remain a tender memory, a childish wonder at my own childishness. To-day, in heathen Rome, I can find better amus.e.m.e.nts than those shards and rags were ever able to represent.

Going now to Piazza Navona with a sober and reasonable companion, I scarcely recognize it. At the Braschi Palace, which borders it, we pause, and enter to observe the square hall and the fine staircase of polished marble. This palace is now offered in a lottery, at five francs the ticket; and all orders in Rome, no doubt, partic.i.p.ate in the venture it presents. The immense piazza is so filled and thronged with people that its distinctive features are quite lost. Its numerous balconies are crowded with that doubtful community comprehended in the t.i.tle of the "better cla.s.s." From many of its windows hang the red cotton draperies, edged with gilt lace, which supply so much of the color in Roman _festas_. Soldiers are everywhere mingled with the crowd, so skilfully as to present no contrast with them, but so effectually that any popular disorder would be instantly suppressed. The dragoons, mounted and bearing sabres, are seen here and there in the streets leading to the piazza. These const.i.tute the police of Rome; and where with us a civil man with a badge interposes himself and says, "No entrance here, sir,"

in Rome an arbitrary, ignorant beast, mounted upon a lesser brute, waves his sabre at you, shrieks unintelligible threats and orders, and has the pleasure of bringing your common sense to a fault, and of making all understanding of what is or is not to be done impossible. Their greatest glory, however, culminates on public _festas_, when there are foreigners as well as Romans to be intimidated. At the Tombola they are only an _en cas_.

Well, the office of the Tombola is solemnized upon a raised stage, whereon stand divers officials, two seedy trumpeters, and a small boy in fancy costume, whose duty soon becomes apparent. Before him rests a rotatory machine, composed of two disks of gla.s.s, bound together by a band of bra.s.s: this urn of fate revolves upon a pivot, and is provided with an opening, through which the papers bearing the numbers are put in, to be drawn out, one by one, after certain revolutions of the machine. Not quite so fast, however, with your drawing. The numbers are not all in yet. A grave man, in a black coat, holds up each number to the public view, calls it in his loudest tones, and then hands it to another, who folds and slips it into the receptacle. When all of the numbers have been verified and deposited, the opening is closed up, the trumpeters sound a bar or two, the wheel revolves, the fancy boy paws the air with his right hand, puts the hand into the opening, and draws forth a number, which the second black coat presents to the first, who unfolds it, and announces it to the mult.i.tude. At the same moment, a huge card, some two feet square in dimensions, is placed in a frame, and upon this we read the number just drawn out. The number is also shown upon several large wooden frames in other parts of the square. Upon these it remains, so that the whole count of the drawing may be apparent to the eager public. This course of action is repeated until a stir in one part of the piazza announces a candidate for one of the smaller prizes. A white flag, repeated at all the counting frames, arrests the public attention. The candidate brings forward his ticket and is examined. Finally, a _quaterna_ is announced, formed by the agreement of four numbers on a ticket with four in the order of the drawing. The crowd applaud, the trumpets sound again, and the drawing proceeds.

Unhappily, at one moment the persons on duty forget to close the valve through which the numbers are taken out. The omission is not perceived until several rotations have shaken out many of the precious papers. A roar of indignation is heard from the populace; the wheel is arrested, the numbers eagerly sought, counted, and replaced, under the jealous scrutiny of the public eye. Meanwhile, one of two copious bra.s.s bands, provided with five ophicleides each, and cornets, etc., to match, discoursed tarantellas and polkas. And we see the _quinquina_ (formed by five numbers) drawn, and then the first Tombola, and the second. And lo!

there are four tombolas: but we await them not. But in all this crowd, busy with emotion and reeking with tobacco and Roman filth in all its varieties, who shall interest us like the _limonaro_ with his basket of fruit, his bottles of water, his lemon squeezer, and his eager thrifty countenance? A father of family, surely, he loves no plays as thou dost, Anthony. Pale, in s.h.i.+rt sleeves, he keeps the sharpest lookout for a customer, and in voice whose measure is not to be given, hammers out his endless sentence, "_Chi vuol bere? Ecco, il limonaro._" To the most doubtful order he responds, carrying his gla.s.ses into the thickest of the throng, and thundering, "_Chi ha comandato questo limone?_" For half a _bajoco_ he gives a quarter of a lemon, wrung out in a gla.s.s of tepid water, which his customers absorb with relish. Sometimes he varies this procedure by the sale of an _orzata_, produced by pouring a few drops of a milky fluid into a gla.s.s of water. On our way from the piazza we encounter other _limonari_,--dark, sleepy, Italian, not trenchant nor incisive in their offers. But our man, a blond, yet remains a picture to us, with his business zeal and economy of time. A thread of good blood he possibly has. We adopt and pity him as a misplaced Yankee.

SUNDAYS IN ROME.

Our first Sunday in Rome was Easter, in St. Peter's, of which we have elsewhere given a sufficient description. Our second was divided between the Tombola just described, in the afternoon, and the quiet of the American Chapel in the morning. We found this an upper chamber, quietly and appropriately furnished, with a pleasant and well-dressed attendance of friends and fellow country-people. The prayers of the Episcopal service were simply read, with no extra formality or aping of more traditional forms. It was pleasant to find ourselves called upon once more to pray for the President of the United States, although in our own country he is considered as past praying for. Still, we remembered the old adage, "while there is life there is hope," and were able, with a good conscience, to beseech that he might be plenteously endowed with heavenly grace, although the reception of such a gift might seriously compromise him with his own party. The sermon, like others we have heard of late, shows a certain progress and liberalization even in the holding of the absolute tenets which const.i.tute what has been hitherto held as orthodoxy. In our youth, the Episcopal church, like the orthodox dissenters, preached atonement, atonement, atonement, wrath of G.o.d, birth in sin,--position of sentimental reprobation towards the one fact, of unavailing repentance concerning the other. The doctrine of atonement in those days was as literal in the Protestant church as in the Catholic, while the possibility of profiting by it was hedged about and enc.u.mbered by frightful perils and intangible difficulties. But to-day, while these doctrines are not repudiated by the denominations which then held them, they are comparatively set out of sight. The charity and diligence of Paul are preached, and even the sublime theistic simplicity of Jesus is not altogether contraband; though he, alas! is as little understood in doctrine as followed in example. For he has. .h.i.therto been like a beautiful figure set to point out a certain way, and people at large have been so entranced with wors.h.i.+pping the figure, that they have neglected to follow the direction it indicates.

Well, our American sermon was dry, but sensible and conscientious. It did not congratulate those who had accepted the mysterious atonement, nor threaten those who had neglected to do so. But it exhorted all men towards a reasonable, religious, and diligent life, and thus afforded the commonplace man a basis for effort, and a possible gradual amelioration of his moral condition. One little old-fas.h.i.+oned phrase, however, the preacher let slip. He cast a slight slur upon the moral, as distinguished from the religious man. Now, modern ethics do not recognize this distinction. For it, true morals are religion. He who exemplifies the standard does it more honor than he who praises, and pursues it not. And he who prays and plunders is less a saint than he who does neither. We pa.s.sed this, however, and went away in peace.

Our third Sunday morning was pa.s.sed in _S. Andrea delta Valle_, a large and sumptuous church, where we had been promised a fine _messa-cantata_, i.e., a ma.s.s performed princ.i.p.ally in music. Mustafa, of the pope's choir, was there, with some ten other vocalists, who put into their _Kyrie_, _Miserere_, and so on, as much operatic emphasis and cadence as the bars could hold. The organ was harsh, loud, and overpowering, the music utterly uninteresting. Mustafa's renowned voice, which has suffered by time and use, has something nasal and _criard_ in it, with all its power. He still takes and holds A and B with firmness and persistence, but his middle notes are unequal and husky. Although the sopranos of to-day are merely falsetto tenors, and their uns.e.xed voices a fiction, they yet acquire in process of time a tone of old-woman quality, which contrasts strangely with their usually robust appearance.

On this occasion we did not conjecture whose might be the music to which we listened. It had a mongrel paternity, and hailed from no n.o.ble race of compositions. Having, however, our comfortable chairs, and being out of the murderous direct reverberation of the organ, we sat and saw as outsiders the flux and reflux of life which pa.s.sed through the church.

It was obviously, this morning, a place of fas.h.i.+onable resort; and many were the good dresses and comfortable family groups that first appeared, and then were absorbed among its crowded chairs and their occupants. The well-dressed people were mostly, I thought, of _medio ceto_,--middling cla.s.s,--which in Rome is a term of strict reprobation, and answers to what we used to call Bowery in New York. Their devotion had mostly a business-like aspect. They hired their chair, brought it, sat down, made their crosses and courtesies, accompanied the priest with their books, went down on their knees at the elevation of the host, had benediction, and went. Ma.s.s was taking place at various side altars, and people were coming and going, as their devotions were past or future. Dirty and shabby figures mingled with the others; a group of little children from the street, holding each other by the hand; a crippled old woman, hobbling on two crutches, who, wonderfully, did not beg, of us at least; an elderly dwarf, of composed aspect, some thirty-eight inches high, who took a chair, but could not get into it, so squatted down beside it, and stared at us. A loud bell was rung, and one in yellow satin bore an object under yellow satin across the church. This was the sacrament, going to one of the altars for the beginning of the ma.s.s. Having mused sufficiently on the music and on the crowd, we desired to hear a Puritan sermon, and, there being none to be had, we went away.

Away to the Farnesina Palace, lovely with Raphael's frescos of Galatea and the story of Psyche, with Michael Angelo's grim charcoal head looming in the distance. The Psyche series has suffered much by restorations; and though the gracious outline and designs remain, the coloring, one thinks, is far other than that of the master. The Galatea has faded less, and has been less restored. The lovely Sodoma fresco up stairs--the family of Darius--was undergoing repairs, and could not be seen. The palace belongs to the ex-king of Naples. It was formerly visible at all times, but may now be seen only on Sunday. He himself now lives in Rome, and perhaps chooses to tread its banquet halls deserted, which possibly accounts for the present restriction. In the afternoon we were bidden to see the embalmed remains of an ancient pontiff,--Pius V.,--who should be happy to make himself useful to Catholic inst.i.tutions at a period so remote from the intentions of Nature. The old body is shown in a gla.s.s case, upon an altar of Santa Maria Maggiore. He lies on his side, his darkened face adorned by a new white beard composed of lamb's wool. His hands are concealed by muslin gloves; his garments are white, and he wears a brilliant mitre. And the devout crowd the church to touch and kiss the gla.s.s case in which he resides. There is, moreover, a procession of the crucifix, and vespers are sung in pleasing style by a tolerable choir; and many _pauls_ and _bajocs_ are dropped hither and thither in pious receptacles by the pious in heart. So, I repeat it, the mummied pope, sainted also, is of use.

CATACOMBS.

Of all that befell us in the catacombs we may not tell. We betook ourselves to the neighborhood of St. Calixtus one afternoon. A noted ecclesiastic of the Romish church soon joined our party, with various of our countrymen and countrywomen. He wore a white woollen gown and a black hat. Before descending, he ranged us in a circle, and harangued us much as follows:--

"You will ask me the meaning of the word 'catacomb,' and I shall tell you that it is derived from two Greek words--_cata_, hidden, and _c.u.mba_, tomb. You have doubtless heard that the whole city of Rome is undermined with catacombs; but this is not true. The American Encyclopaedia says this. I have read the article. But intramural burials were not allowed in Rome; therefore the catacombs commence outside the walls. They are, moreover, limited to an irregular extent of some three miles. Why is this? It is because they were possible only in the tufa formation. Why only in the tufa? Because it cuts easily and crumbles easily, hardening afterwards. And as the burials of the Christians were necessarily concealed, it was important for them to deal with a material easily worked and easily disposed of. The solid contents of the catacombs of Rome could be included within a square mile; their series, if arranged at full length, would not measure less than five hundred miles. In some places there are no less than seven strata of tombs, one below the other." All of this, with more repet.i.tions than I can possibly signify, was delivered under the cogent stimulus of a roasting afternoon sun of the full Roman power. Being quite calcined as to the head and shoulders, we somewhat thankfully undertook the descent. The extreme contrast, however, between the outer heat and the inner chill and damp, proved an unwelcome alternative to most of us. Had we been allowed a somewhat brisk motion, we should have dreaded less its effects. But Father ---- fought his ground inch by inch, and continued to carry on a stringent controversy with imaginary antagonists. We will not endeavor to transcribe the catechism, at once tedious and amusing, with which he held captive a dozen of Yankees prepared to sell their lives dearly, but uncertain how to deal with his mode of warfare. He kept us long in the crypt of the pontiffs, where are found two fragments of marble tablets bearing names in mingled Latin and Greek character. One inscription records, "_Anteros episcopus_." The other is of another name--"_episcopus et martyr_." The father now led us into a narrow crypt, where his stout form wedged us all as closely as possible together. He showed us on the walls two time-worn frescos, one of which--Jonah and the whale--represented the resurrection, while the other depicted that farewell banquet at Emmaus in which Peter received the thrice-repeated charge, "Feed my sheep." To this symbolical expression the father added one later and more puzzling. The fish which appeared in one of the dishes represented, he told us, the anagram of Christ in the Greek language--_icthus_, the fish, _Jesus Christos theos_--I forget the rest. The fish was the only hint of the presence of Christ on this occasion, and its significance could be apprehended only with this explanation. These pictures, he insisted, sufficiently showed us that the early Christians had religious images--a point of great authority and significance in the Catholic church, for us how easily disposed of! The pictures and the symbolism of the primitive church are both alike features of its time. In periods when culture is rare and limited, the picture and the parable have their indispensable office.

The one preserves and presents to the eye much that would otherwise be overlooked and forgotten; the other presents to the mind that which could not otherwise be apprehended. The painted Christs, Madonnas, and so on, were in their time a gospel to the common people. Even in Raphael's period, even in the Italy of to-day, how few of the populace at large are able to save their souls by reading the New Testament! The paintings undoubtedly answered a useful purpose, as all men must acknowledge; but the Catholic system, carried out in its completeness, would give a melancholy perpetuity to the cla.s.s of people who cannot read otherwise than in pictures. Even where it teaches to read, it withholds the power of interpretation. Protestantism means direct and general instruction. It gives to the symbolism of the Bible its plainest and most practical interpretation, without building upon it a labyrinth of types whose threading asks the study of a lifetime.

The fear and danger of early times had, no doubt, much to do with the growth of symbolism, both in pictures and in language. The intercourse of the early Christians was limited and insecure. It was guarded by watchwords. Its bodily presence took refuge in pits and caves. Its thought buried itself in similitudes and allusions. But now, when Christianity has become the paramount demand of the world, this obscurity is no longer needed nor legitimate.

The parables of Christ may be supposed to have had a double object. The most usually recognized is that of popular instruction, in the form best suited to the comprehension of his hearers. Many of his sayings, however, point to another meaning; viz., the discrimination between those who were fitted to receive his doctrine, and those who were not.

How many, among the mult.i.tudes who heard him, can we suppose to have been anxious about the moral lessons intended by his ill.u.s.trious fables?

Few indeed; and those few alone would be able to understand his teaching, and, in turn, to teach according to his method. So he represents the kingdom of heaven which he preached as a net thrown into the sea. His sermons were such castings of the net; he made his disciples fishers of men. The Christian church, like the Jewish, rapidly degenerated into a tissue of legends and observances--at first representative of morality, soon c.u.mbrous, finally inimical to it.

All this time, however, we are standing wedged by Father ---- in a narrow compa.s.s, and, while the thought of one undertakes this long, swift retrospect, the temper of the others becomes irritated--not without reason. So we insist upon breaking out of the small quadrangle, and are led into the crypt in which were found the remains of St. Cecilia. Here tradition again holds a long parley with the representatives of modern thought. St. Cecilia, a n.o.ble Roman lady, was beheaded, but survived the stroke of the executioner three days, which she occupied in describing and explaining the doctrine of the trinity. (This, therefore, is the doctrine of those who have lost their head.) For this purpose she employed two fingers of the right hand and one of the left. All of this pa.s.ses without controversy. Her body was found lying on its face, in an att.i.tude perpetuated by the well-known statue in the church in Trastevere. But in this crypt are the relics of an altar, erected over the remains of another saint. The early Christian altars, our guide says, were always erected above the burial-place of some saint. Hence, no Catholic church is allowed to dispense with the presence of consecrated bones. Other graves, moreover, cl.u.s.ter around that which is supposed to have consecrated this altar: sums of money were paid for the privilege of interment in this proximity. This clearly shows the early Christians to have supposed that the saint himself had the power to benefit them, and the right of intercession. This we concede as quite possible; but does this go to show, O father, that the saint _had_ any such power? Let us go back after this fas.h.i.+on in other things. Fingers were made before knives and forks, skins were worn before tissues, and nakedness is of earlier authority than either. A predatory existence has older precedent than agriculture or commerce. Let us go backward like a crab, if you will, but let us be consistent.

In another crypt we are shown two marble sarcophagi, well carved, in each of which lies a mouldering human figure once embalmed, and now black, without features, and with only a dim outline of form. Elsewhere we are shown a large marble slab handsomely engraved, with the record of a Christian martyr on one side, and with an inscription concerning the Emperor Hadrian on the other, presenting the economic expedient of a second-hand tombstone. We pa.s.sed also through various dark galleries, and down one staircase. Some chambers of the catacomb had a _luminarium_, or light from the top; many of them were entirely dark.

Father ----'s style of explanation threatening to prolong itself till midnight, impatience became general, and one of our party ventured a remonstrance, which was made and met something after the following fas.h.i.+on:--

_Mr. F._ Hem--hem! Sir, I am old and infirm, and--

_Father ----._ O, sir, ask any questions you like. The more you ask, the better I can explain myself. (Repeated over some three times.)

_Mr. F._ But, sir, I do not wish to ask any questions. I only wish--

_Father ----._ Don't make any excuses, sir. I shall be very glad to have you ask any questions. I am very ready to answer and explain everything.

(Several repet.i.tions.)

After a number of efforts, the senior member of the party at length obtained the floor, and succeeded in expressing himself to the effect that he feared to take death of cold in the catacomb, and would gladly be piloted out by the commonplace youth who followed Father ---- as attendant, without views of any kind, except as to a possible _buona mano_. This suggestion of the elder met with so hearty a response from the remainder of the party as to bring the present exploration to an end, and Father ---- and his public simultaneously dispersed to carriages and horses. In view of the whole expedition, I would advise people in general to read up on the subject of the catacombs, but not to visit them in company with one intent on developing theories of any kind. The underground chill is unwholesome in warm weather, and a conversion made in these dark galleries and windings would be much akin to baptism at the sword's point. Meet, therefore, the theorist above ground, and on equal terms; and for the subterraneous proceeding, elect the society of swift and prosaic silence.

VIA APPIA AND THE COLUMBARIA.

Since my last visit to Rome, more progress has been made under ground than above it. Rome is the true antipodes of America. Our business is to build--her business is to excavate. The tombs on Via Appia are among the interesting objects which the spade and mattock, during the last seventeen years, have brought to view. I remember well the beginning of this work, and the marble tombs and sarcophagi which it brought to light. I also remember, in those unconscientious days, a marble head, in exceedingly flat relief, which was desired by me, and stolen for me by the faithful servant of a friend. At the commencement of the diggings, we descended from our carriage, and easily walked to the end of the way then opened. Via Appia now affords a long drive, set with tombs on either side. Many of these are in brick, and of large dimensions. Most of the marbles have, however, been removed to the Museum of the Vatican.