The Colosseum is now a stupendous ruin, but every part of it may be distinctly reproduced to the mind's eye from the fragment (one-third of the structure) that remains. Some parts have had to be built up to prevent utter ruin; extensive excavations have been made beneath the modern floor of the amphitheatre; many passages and chambersprobably the dens in which the wild beasts were kept-have been discovered.

Many people experience a feeling of disappointment on seeing the Colosseum for the first time, especially if they have seen the ruins of Athens, Baalbec, or Pæstum-the vast walls of brick contrasting strangely with ruins in marble; but the disappointment is only temporary, and at every fresh visit the vastness and wonderfulness of the edifice are better realised. On bright moonlight nights the effect is indescribably grand, and so it is when, as is often the case, it is illuminated with torches and Bengal lights.

Even now, in its partial ruin, it seems imperishable, and promises to justify the famous prophecy of the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims of the eighth century :

"While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand;

When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls-the world!"

South-eastward from the ancient Porta Capena stretches the celebrated Appian Way, the most remarkable of those vast arteries of commerce along which flowed to the most distant provinces the vital currents from the great heart of the Empire. This "Queen of Roads," as it was proudly called, was lined on either side by the stately tombs in which reposed the ashes of the mighty dead. "The history of Christian Rome," says Father Marchi, "gives to this same road titles of glory incomparably more solid, just, and indisputable. We are forced to acknowledge it as the queen of Christian roads by reason of the greater number and extent of its cemeteries, and still more by the greater number and celebrity of its martyrs." Under Pius IX. this historie highway was excavated and opened for travel as far as Albano ; and one may now traverse that avenue of tombs on the very causeway on which Horace and Virgil, Augustus and Mæcenas, Cicero and Seneca must often have entered Rome. But it is invested with a profounder interest as the way by which the great Apostle of the Gentiles approached the city, "an ambassador in bonds," to preach the Gospel "in Rome also," and to finish his testimony by a glorious martyrdom. By this very road, also, according to an ancient tradition, his body was stealthily conveyed by night and deposited in an adjacent catacomb; and here wended many a mournful procession, bearing to those lonely crypts the remains of Rome's early bishops, martyrs, and confessors.

Passing through the northern Sebastian Gate, and crossing the classic stream, the Almo, we have before us the tomb of Geta, the murdered brother of Caracalla, and a little beyond the Church of Domine Quo Vadis, with which is connected one of the most beautiful legends of the Martyrology. It asserts that as the Apostle Peter was leaving Rome in the early dawn, in order to escape martyrdom, he met our Lord bearing His cross, and, throwing himself at His feet, exclaimed, "Domine, quo vadis?" ("Lord, whither goest Thou?") In accents of tender rebuke, the Master answered, "Venio Romam iterum crucifigi" ("I am going to Rome to be crucified again"). Stung with contrition and remorse, the disciple, according to the tradition, returned to the city and there was crucified-by his own request with his head

downwards, as unworthy to share the same mode of death as the Lord whom he had denied. We must not continue along the Appian Way, where every step is on ground sacred with memories, or it would be interesting to describe the extensive ruins of the Circus of Romulus, and to guess at the story of the occupants of the tombs which line the road. It will be enough for our present purpose to say that when the long ascent is traversed to its summit, the magnificent tomb of Cecilia Metella is reached, and, standing near here,

the eye takes in the whole of the road right to the Alban Hills, the ruins continuing in unbroken succession on each side.

Says Hawthorne: "Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, or are more alien from human sympathies, than the tombs of the Appian Way, with their gigantic height, breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements, and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here you may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb which forms a precipice of fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a house on that funeral mound, where generations of children have been born, and successive lives have been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Roman, whose ashes were so preposterously burdened. Other sepulchres

wear a crown of grass, shrubbery, and forest trees, which throw out a broad sweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years of age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially more modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and is now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure of decay, the tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely to endure until the last trump shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forth its unknown dead."

Let us come back now to the neighbourhood of the little Church of Domine Quo Vadis, where a road turns off leading to the Baths of Caracalla—a mass of ruins only second in extent to those of the Colosseum. They were commenced by Caracalla, continued by Heliogabalus, and completed by Alexander Severus. In A.D. 216 they were opened to the public, and when completed were capable of accommodating sixteen hundred bathers-a fact that tells of the splendour of the city, when it is remembered that in the time of Constantine there were cleven other establishments of the same kind in Rome, some of them being even larger than these. The ruins, which are exceedingly picturesque, are a mile in circumference; and as the different chambers have been clearly identified, the manner of bathing-which closely resembles that of the Turkish bath-is illustrated. Traces of the mosaic pavements have been found in many parts of the ruins, and innumerable statues have been dug up, and these have been placed in the Roman galleries. In the preface to "Prometheus Unbound," Shelley says: "This poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in everwidening labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air."

In this neighbourhood are to be found some of the principal catacombs. The catacombs are a vast labyrinth of galleries excavated in the bowels of the earth in the hills around the Eternal City-not in the hills on which the city was built, but in those beyond the walls. Their extent is enormous-not as to the amount of superficial soil which they underlie; for they rarely, if ever, pass beyond the third mile-stone from the city; but in the actual length of their galleries; for these are often excavated on various levels, or piani, three, four, or even five, one above the other, and they cross and recross one another, sometimes at short intervals, on each of these levels; so that, on the whole, there are certainly not less than three hundred and fifty miles of them; that is to say, if stretched out in one continuous line, they would extend the whole length of Italy itself. These vast excavations once formed the ancient Christian cemeteries of Rome; they were begun in apostolic times, and continued to be used as burial-places of the faithful till the capture of the city by Alaric in the year 410.”* The catacombs bear the names, in many instances, of their original owners. Others are known by the names of those who presided over their formation, and others by the names of the principal martyrs who were buried there.

Among the most interesting of the series are the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. In one small chapel four bishops and martyrs of Rome of the dates A.D. 235, 236, 256, and 275-are entombed, and marble slabs bear their names in Greek-viz., Anteros, Fabianus, Lucius, and Eutychianus. In another chamber the tomb of St. Cecilia was found (the remains were removed to the Church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, where they now repose); and in this chamber, as throughout the different catacombs, there are frescoes on the walls.

"Roma Sotterranea."

The most interesting of all the catacombs, however, is that which has been last and only recently discovered by Signor de Rossi-the Catacomb of Santa Domitilla, in which has been found the Basilica of Santa Petronilla, who, it is said, was the daughter of St. Peter. "Important as were the discoveries made in the Catacomb of St. Calixtus, with its papal crypt, this possesses far deeper interest; for it is not to the fourth century only, but to the times of the Apostles that it carries us back."

Of some of the great churches of Rome we have already spoken, but there are many to which reference must be made, as they form important atttractions to this great city. We can, however, glance at them but hastily, and at only a few at most. There are in Rome seven basilicas, and upwards of three hundred churches, some of which are only open for service on certain days of the year. Many of them have been constructed out of the ruins of ancient basilicas or temples, and two of them-the Temple of Vesta and the Pantheon-remain unchanged in form, the dedication being simply transferred from a pagan deity to a Christian saint: the Temple of Vesta being now the Church of S. Maria del Sole; and the Pantheon, S. Maria Rotonda.

The basilicas are those of St. Peter, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, within the walls; and St. Paul, S. Lorenzo, and St. Sebastian outside.

The Temple of Vesta is very small, the circumference of the peristyle being only one hundred and fifty-six feet; nineteen out of the twenty Corinthian columns which surrounded it remain, but the roof is modern. It was probably built about the end of the first century, and, like many other buildings in Rome and Athens, owes its preservation to the fact that it has been utilised for Christian purposes. When it was first dedicated as a Christian church, under the name of S. Stefano delle Carrozze, the spaces between the columns were walled up, and it was not until the present century that these spaces were reopened, when the temple, which is a great favourite with artists, was revealed as it was in its original condition.

The Pantheon-the only ancient edifice in Rome in a perfect state of preservation— was, twenty-seven years before the birth of Christ, dedicated by Agrippa to "All the Gods." It is probable, however, that the main body of the building had been in existence long before that date, and Agrippa only added the portico. As early as the year A.D. 59, the building was known as the Pantheum; in 610, Pope Boniface IV. consecrated it as a Christian church under the name of S. Maria ad Martyres; and at the present time it bears the name of S. Maria Rotonda, or more commonly La Rotonda. The portico consists of sixteen Corinthian columns of granite, over thirty-eight feet in height, eight of them in front, and the remainder forming three colonnades. The exquisite beauty of the dome, which has served as a model for that of Santa Sophia at Constantinople and St. Peter's in this city, is universally admired. In the interior, the first thing that strikes the attention is the wonderful light, coming solely from an opening in the centre of the dome, and open to the sky. The pavement is that which was trod by Augustus and Agrippa; the seven niches once contained the statues of Mars, Venus, and other deities; the "clouds of incense from popish altars creep through the same aperture in the dome through which ascended the smoke and incense of old heathen sacrifices."

In this church rest the remains of the greatest of all the painters, Raphael. He

was buried in 1520, and some doubt having arisen as to whether or not his remains were actually here, search was made, and on the 14th September, 1833, it was found that the remains were intact. In this church, also, other celebrated artists are buried-among them Annibale Caracci, Zucchero, and Peruzzi.

There is no other building in Rome more familiar to travellers before they cross the Tiber than this; there is no other that leaves a deeper impression on the memory; and

those who have had the good fortune to be in the Pantheon on a moonlight night, and have seen the light streaming through that open aperture, and falling on statues, and altars, and on the porphyry floor, have seen a sight they can never see elsewhere.

"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime

Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods
From Jove to Jesus-spared and blest by time,
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods

His way through thorns to ashes-glorious dome!

Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods

Shiver upon thee-sanctuary and home

Of art and piety-Pantheon! pride of Rome."