many conclusions from what he saw in them; but as he has thought fit to do so, it is very necessary that the reader should have his attention called to those parts of the description, which help to set the controversial arguments in their proper place and at their due value.

It had always been the belief of the Church that these Catacombs existed, and constant allusions were made to them in the early Christian writings.

"When I was a boy," says S. Jerome, "being educated in Rome, I used every Sunday in company with other boys of my own age and tastes, to visit the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs, and to go into the crypts which are excavated there in the bowels of the earth. The walls on either side as you enter, are full of the bodies of the dead, and the whole place is so dark, that one seems almost to see the fulfilment of the words of the prophet, 'Let them go down alive into Hades.' Here and there a little light, admitted from above, suffices to give a momentary relief to the horror of the darkness, but as you go forwards and find yourself again immersed in the utter blackness of night, the words of the poet come spontaneously to your mind, "Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent. And Prudentius, describing the Cemetery of S. Hippolytus, tells us, that not far from the city walls. there lies hid among the vineyards a deep and handsome crypt; a steep path with winding steps leads you into its hidden recesses, and the light which gains admission through this entrance suffices for a while to guide you on your way. As you advance farther through the narrow and intricate streets, your progress is illuminated by an occasional ray finding its way through an opening made in the roof, so that in spite of the absence of the sun, you enjoy its light far below the level of the ground. In such a place as this lies the body of S. Hippolytus, near to the altar of GOD: so that the very table from whence is distributed the bread of life, is also the faithful guardian of the martyr's corpse; the same slab preserving his bones for the eternal judgment, and feeding the Romans with holy food."-Pp. 37, 38.

Two circumstances seem to have caused the Catacombs to have been shut up, neglected and in time almost forgotten. One, the constant invasion of Rome by the different barbarian hordes, some of which "rifled portions of the Catacombs in hopes of finding treasure, and thus began that system of devastation which led ulti

1 Allusion is here made to the "Luminaria, or apertures to the open air, which when the Catacombs were thrown open to the public, were made for the sake of freshening the air, and promoting its circulation through those long narrow galleries. They were generally so arranged, as to give air to two chapels at once, the upper opening, which broke the surface of the soil, was small-not more than two feet square, but after a few feet of perpendicular descent, the shaft was cut obliquely, so as to penetrate the roofs of the two chambers, situated immediately opposite one another on different sides of the gallery."-Pp. 39, 40. At the same time, it be came necessary to provide the different Catacombs with new and convenient entrances, instead of the original ones, which were made as narrow, and in as retired a situation as possible for the sake of secrecy.

mately to their neglect and ruin." The other, the troubled state of Rome itself, from the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century.

"The secession of the Popes to Avignon, and their long residence there, the turbulence of the various political factions, and the disorganized social state of the city and its neighbourhood, pressed too heavily, and we cannot wonder that when all minds were occupied with these distracting matters, the very knowledge of the ancient cemeteries should have perished, except only of such as were entered through some principal church."-P. 44.

For the discovery of these mighty receptacles of the dead, the world is indebted to the patient and self-denying labours of Antonio Bosio,

a Maltese by birth, and an advocate by profession, who had received his education from the Jesuits, and resided in Rome as agent or procurator of the Knights of Malta, towards the close of the sixteenth century. He appears to have been interested from his youth in Christian antiquities, and afterwards devoted his whole time and fortune to the exploring this subterranean world, about which public curiosity had just been somewhat awakened by the accidental falling in of a portion of the high road outside the Porta Salara, which brought to light the catacomb of Sta. Priscilla. At this discovery 'the city,' says a cotemporary writer, was amazed to find that she had other cities unknown to her concealed beneath her own suburbs, beginning now to understand what she had before only heard or read of.'"-Pp. 4, 5.

“It was to the ancient acts of the martyrs, and other ecclesiastical records, that Bosio betook himself, in order to guide his researches, by ascertaining with some degree of probability where each cemetery was to be found. Having learned, for instance, that many martyrs were buried in a cemetery on the Appian Way, about three miles out of the city, he would set himself to explore with the utmost diligence all the vineyards and other places in the neighbourhood, to discover, if possible, where was the original entrance; being sometimes obliged to return again and again to the same spot, searching for it in vain, while yet he had reason to know that the catacomb existed; while at other times a fortunate accident, such as the giving way of a road, or of a portion of a vineyard, or it might be the digging of a new well or cellar, or pit for extracting sand, would give him unexpected help. But even when the entrance to a catacomb was discovered, the difficulties in his way were by no means removed, for it was commonly found to be blocked up and inaccessible without immense labour. At his own expense, and not unfrequently with his own hands, he had to force a passage through the rubbish which ages of neglect and various external causes had accumulated into the interior; and here also new difficulties awaited him, from the innumerable windings in the galleries, in which it required the utmost caution to advance many steps without the danger of being hopelessly lost, to say nothing of the chances which frequently occurred of finding the pathway suddenly interrupted by a fall of the earth, or laid under water. He tells us that the first time he got into the

cemetery of S. Callisto, in the Appian Way, (December 10, 1593,) he had some difficulty in finding his way out; but on the second visit he carried with him a large ball of twine and a quantity of candles, and thus armed with a spade or two for digging, and with plenty of provisions, he spent whole days and nights in exploring its innumerable galleries. He was indefatigable also in copying the principal paintings he found, and in making drawings of the most interesting chambers, and of other curious and valuable objects he met with in his search, in order to publish to the world the result of his thirty-three years of unintermitted labour. . . . Bosio's work, which was not published for thirty years after his death, introduced these newly-discovered treasures to the knowledge of foreigners, and of the world at large.”—Pp. 5, 6, 7.

Since this period the work of exploring has been continuously progressive, until the extent of these subterranean passages, each filled with the memorials and remains of the dead, is such as to excite amazement as well as awe.

It is computed that in all there are sixty catacombs on the different sides of Rome, bordering her fifteen great consular roads And " even of those that have been most visited, not one has yet been examined in all its ramifications. Taking, however, for a guide the map of a part of the catacomb of S. Agnes, on the Via Nomentana, the greatest length of the portion thus measured is not more than 700 feet, and its greatest width about 550, giving to the whole of the streets that have been measured an extent of two English miles.

"This would give fifteen or sixteen miles as the united length of all the streets in the cemetery of S. Agnes alone; and if we look upon this as a fair specimen of the rest, (for it certainly is larger than some, and smaller than others,) about 900 miles in all the catacombs taken together." P. 3.

1

It is quite impossible to speak confidently as to the number of graves, as the catacombs are sometimes seven, sometimes as many as fifteen feet high, so that in some galleries there would be only four, in others thirteen or fourteen graves one over the other in the wall. But taking Father Marchi's calculation "which only allows ten graves, that is, five on each side to every seven feet of road, the Roman catacombs may be believed to contain almost seven millions of graves." (P. 4.)2

1 "We learn, both from inscriptions and other sources, that there was a particular class of the Christian community, who devoted their life to this work of excavation; they were called the fossores, or diggers, and constituted a religious confraternity. In some of the inscriptions the price of the grave is named, as well as of the fossor to whom it was paid. One of these belonging to the consulate of Theodosius and Valentinian, or the year A.D. 426, mentions a solidus and a half as the price paid for a single grave; a sum equivalent to about eighteen shillings of our coin."-P. 28.

2 It is often asked, in objection, how so much soil as must have been removed in the process of excavation could have been disposed of without betraying to the Pagans the secret of the work that was going on. But to this there are several satis

"What a people!" Sir W. Scott makes his hero exclaim as he surveyed the extent of the celebrated Roman Wall, "whose labours even at this extremity of their empire comprehended such space, and were executed upon a scale of such grandeur . . . . Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public works bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language; while our modern labours like our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of the fragments."

But to enter into a more minute description of these most interesting monuments of the past-"The Roman catacombs may be briefly said to be labyrinths of subterranean galleries crossing one another in every direction, and here and there opening into chambers more or less lofty and spacious, the whole hewn with the most exact regularity out of the living rock, whose entire walls present a series of narrow shelves one above the other, evidently excavated for the purpose of receiving the bodies of the dead, and afterwards closed with facings of tile or marble, on which were often inscribed the names of the persons buried within.” (P. 1.)

According to Mr. Northcote's theory, the peculiar form of these graves is suggested by what took place at the burial of our Blessed LORD. "He was buried," we are told, "in a new sepulchre hewn out of the rock, wherein never yet had any man been laid." Narrow horizontal shelves excavated in the natural wall of subterranean streets, each shelf sufficiently deep to receive a human corpse, having a cornice on the outside, against which the heavy tile or marble slab might rest, with which the monument was to be closed,-such are the graves which we see in the catacombs. (P. 24.)

Though there is a total absence of regularity in the arrangement of the several tiers of graves, except in the catacomb of S. Cyriaca, belonging evidently to a much later period of the Church, "a most careful economy of labour characterizes the whole work, no more soil having been removed than was absolutely necessary for the purpose required." (P. 26.) It is also evident that the bodies of the dead, also in accordance with the pattern of the LORD's burial, were wrapped in linen. "Bosio found many entire corpses in the catacombs still retaining their linen envelopes, of which indeed fragments may yet be seen clinging here and there to portions of the broken skeletons." (P. 28.)2

factory answers. First, the catacombs being often immediately under the sand pits, the soil broken and crushed by long subterranean carriage, (for many parts of the cemeteries are distant a quarter of a mile and more from any exit into the open air), may have been brought out through the common entrances, as if it had been pure pezzolana, dug in an ordinary way. Then again, the catacombs were often excavated under the private property of Christians of the wealthier classes, where concealment was of course comparatively easy. Moreover, it is not unfrequently found that the soil has never been taken out of the catacomb at all, but removed to some one gallery, whose walls have been already filled with as many bodies as they were capable of containing."-Pp. 17, 18.

Guy Mannering, Vol. i. 215.

2 "There is reason to believe that bodies were sometimes brought to the cemetery

"A very striking characteristic of these cemeteries is that there is no distinction of rich and poor, but that the same unornamented niches received all alike. Those who wished to set any mark upon the grave of their friend or relative, that so it might be distinguished from others around it, either had the name engraved upon the marble slab, or rudely scratched with the sharp end of the trowel in the mortar by which the slab was secured; or a ring, coin, seal, or any other object which came to hand was secured in the same way, whilst yet the mortar was wet. Small lamps, also, of terra cotta were similarly attached to many of the graves; and to those of the martyrs, a little ampulla or glass vessel, containing a portion of the martyr's blood. There is abundant testimony in the records of ancient Christianity to the zeal, with which the precious relic of a martyr's blood was collected and treasured in early times, even at a great personal risk; and the numerous ampullæ which are found in the catacombs still retain the blood-red stain of their former contents. If the martyrdom was by drowning, or in any other way which did not involve shedding of blood, or if for any other reason no blood could be collected, a palm branch served the same purpose, of a sign whereby to designate the sacred spot."-Pp. 29, 30.

Having endeavoured to furnish the reader with a general idea of the extent and formation of the Roman catacombs,-it is time to give a short digest of Mr. Northcote's arguments for his theory, that these receptacles of the dead were the exclusive works of the early Christians and not of heathen origin. And it is only fair to Mr. Northcote to state, that his arguments seem most convincing, and that he has managed this portion of his subject with great ability, and with considerable powers of arrangement.

His first adversary is Bishop Burnet,2 who asserts that "those burying places now graced with the pompous title of catacombs are no other than the 'Puteoli,' mentioned by Festus Pompeius, where the meanest sort of the Roman slaves were laid-but that becoming burying places of the dead in the fourth and fifth centuries, a few monks made some miserable sculptures and some inscriptions, and perhaps shut up the entries into them with much care and secrecy,

before the graves were made, in which they were deposited; and on the other hand, that occasionally the Christians were too jealously watched for some considerable space of time, to be able to bring their dead hither at all. In which case they seem to have incased the bodies in lime, and so to have kept them perhaps in their own houses; such at least seems the best explanation that can be given of the large pieces of lime, which may still be seen in many of the graves, having a double impress of the texture of linen upon them, on the outside of course, and in the inside, next to the body, of fine linen."-P. 26.

1 A few of the graves were of a more ornamental character, "the same length of horizontal excavation was begun in the wall, as would have been required for an ordinary grave, but instead of being finished in the shape of a parallelogram, it was formed into that of a low vaulted arch, the hollow niche thus made being intended not to receive the body, but to remain open and empty, and in the flat surface thus provided, the grave was sunk perpendicularly, and then closed up by a heavy slab of stone or marble, resting on a ledge left expressly for that purpose. These arched monuments were called Arcosolia,' and were made sufficiently wide to receive at least two bodies; sometimes even three or four."-P. 30.

2 "Some letters from Italy and Switzerland" in the years 1685-6.-Pp. 209, 211.