society has set apart for those wretches who are unworthy to continue in its midst. The voice of my dearly-loved mother will, perhaps, never again reach my ears. I shall know that she suffers, but shall not be able to comfort her with my presence. I shall be there altogether at the mercy of a fanatical governor, who will visit me with all the force of Popish cruelty. There, at the merest caprice of the officials, the unfortunate convicts are beaten, and buffeted, and abused, even when inoffensive; and I shall be exposed, perhaps, to the cruel blows of some vile criminal, who has been chosen as overseer, chiefly because his antecedents are such as to inspire his fellow-prisoners with terror.

Your precious letters, my much-loved friend, will never reach me; and this will be my life for eight long years. But, for all this, my cross I take up joyfully, and follow Jesus. If I have not been permitted to carry the word of God from village to village throughout Spain, I will publish it in prison. God rejoices over the conversion of the most abject, of the most sinful; and to those criminals I will show the way of life. There I will be, if the Lord allows me, just what I was when free. My hearers will not be honourable citizens; they will be miserable convicts. But, perhaps, these very convicts may see how horrible their past life has been, and will begin to live a new one, and will respect and follow Jesus. You can fancy how I rejoice to be able to dedicate myself to such a glorious work.

Alhama has been sentenced to nine years. The additional year of punishment is given (amongst some other reasons) because he wrote and acknowledged that letter, directed to me, which was seized, and which, bearing my name and address in full, and containing important intelligence, was the cause of my imprisonment also in Barcelona. The judges believed that Granada was the chief seat and origin of these troubles, of which they suppose me to be a victim. Notwithstanding, they condemned me to eight years. The Lord pardon them!

Trigo has been pronounced "not guilty," and will soon be set free. He will return to the bosom of his family. I do heartily rejoice. Dear Trigo may the Lord enlighten and protect him for the future!

*

I shall address a letter to the Queen on her arrival at Granada; not to ask for mercy, which I do not need from her. No! for my crime, if it existed, would only be judged by the God who judges the consciences of men. But I will represent, to her our inoffensive lives, the liberty of our brothers in Seville, Malaga, and Granada, and the inalienable right of Christians to meet together to worship round the household hearth.

I forgot to tell you that the rest of the prisoners have been or will immediately be set at liberty. My most loving remembrances to all dear to you. Salute all my brothers in my name.

Your affectionate Brother in the Lord,

MANUEL MATAMOROS.

36

CATACOMBS OF ROME.

THE Romans of the noble and wealthy classes were ambitious to live in the remembrance of posterity; and, as it has been remarked, they often spent as much on their graves as on their palaces. Some of these habitations of the dead, erected in the times of Paganism, remain to this day among the best-preserved monuments of the ancient city. Such is the huge pyramid of Caius Cestius, a contemporary of Cicero ; and such, too, is the tower-like tomb of Cæcilia Metella, which was actually converted into a fortress in the middle ages.

At length, in the midst of imperial profligacy and heathen idolatry, a Christian population sprung up at Rome;-for the most part, a poor and oppressed flock, having neither the means nor the inclination to give a costly appearance to the grave, but assured that, while their elder brethren had triumphantly overcome the sharpness of death, to the living in Christ the sting was taken away. A proscribed profession speedily connected them, in life and death, with subterranean excavations around the city; and their remains, consisting of skeletons, bones, lamps, and inscriptions, discovered during the sixteenth century in those dark and silent retreats, have conferred singular interest upon the Roman catacombs. To these remarkable memorials of a band of despised and persecuted men, witnesses for their Lord in evil times, public attention was called by the early explorers; nor has the subject been neglected in later days.

Catacombs appear in the vicinity of many ancient and modern cities; for example, of Paris, Naples, Syracuse, and Alexandria, as well as of Rome. They have been appropriated to receive mortal remains, rather than excavated for that purpose. Those of Paris were originally quarries, out of which the stone was obtained for building; and were formed as accident, or the facility of working, determined. Upon becoming exhausted, the quarries were abandoned; and, gradual accumulations of rubbish closing up the entrances, their existence was almost forgotten. But, accidents occurring through the falling in of houses built over the hollows, they were examined by the municipal authorities, and at an immense expense converted into subterranean streets and galleries. The government finally resolved to empty the over-crowded burial-places of the metropolis, and transfer the contents to these extensive vaults. The principal entrance is at the Barrière d'Enfer, by a descent of seventy feet, from which a long gallery conducts to a vestibule with a black gate, on which a Latin motto is inscribed, signifying, "BEYOND THESE BOUNDS REST THOSE WAITING THE BLESSED PROMISE,”—and a line in French from the poet Delille, "STOP! HERE IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH!" On passing the gate, the visiter finds the passages lined, from the floor to the roof, with the bones of more than two millions of human beings, arranged in a manner that is almost grotesque, although pointing also, with deep solemnity, the lesson of human frailty.

The story of the Roman catacombs is soon told. In the latter days of

the republic, the city rapidly increased in extent and grandeur; and the neighbouring plain was largely quarried for building materials, especially for the pozzuolana, or volcanic earth, used in forming cement. The subterranean passages are said to follow the veins of the pozzuolana, which will account for the perplexed and tortuous course attributed to them. Thus, the volcanic sand which forms the subsoil of the Campagna became perforated with a network of excavations, so intricate as only to be readily threaded by the workmen constantly accustomed to its windings; thus affording a comparatively secure retreat from all but the arenarii, or sanddiggers, themselves.

Christianity is generally supposed to have been first planted in the city by some of those "strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes," who heard Peter preach at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. To the church thus formed in the metropolis of the ancient world, Paul addressed an Epistle; at which time its place of assembly was a private house. (Rom. xvi. 5.) According to ecclesiastical tradition, both apostles laid down their lives for the truth, and were added to the noble army of martyrs, at Rome. This is highly probable with regard to Paul, for he was a prisoner within its walls; but no evidence of the same kind sustains the idea that Peter ever passed its gates, or was even in Italy. As in other places, while a few persons of conspicuous station and middle rank received the faith, its converts were principally from the common people; and the conjecture is likely that the Gospel early reached the arenarii, a low grade of the populace, (probably a distinct class,) and was welcomed by them. To these men the subterranean scenes in which their employment lay were places of refuge when persecution arose; and they naturally offered their brethren an asylum in the same obscure retreats. The remains of the martyrs, as opportunity arose, were brought hither by their friends for interment. Others, permitted to die peacefully, wished to have their bones laid by the side of these honoured witnesses for the truth; and thus the catacombs were converted into ranges of sepulchres, receiving the entire Christian population of the city, till some time after the faith escaped from the bonds of persecution.

But the fact rests upon good evidence, that here the living frequently conducted their prescribed worship, having taken sanctuary "in dens and caves of the earth" from the violence of their enemies. Thousands of terra cotta lamps have been found, used by those who were compelled to retreat from the light of day. Wells and springs in various parts of the corridors ministered to the support of life in the subterranean haunts; and heathen edicts at the beginning of a persecution, prohibiting entrance into the cemeteries, proclaim the customary flight of the Christians to them, and the difficulty of pursuing them through these intricate windings. Yet many a time did the emissaries of the emperors fall upon the track of the refugees, and the catacombs became a scene of martyrdom. The following inscription tells a tale to this effect. It refers to the fifth persecution, which began A.D. 161, under the second Antonine.

"In Christ. Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars; and his body rests in this tomb. He lived under the Emperor Antonine, who, foreseeing that great benefit would result from his services, returned evil for good. For, while on his knees, and about to sacrifice to the true God, he was led away to execution. O sad times! in which rites and prayers, even in caverns, afford no protection to us. What can be more wretched than such a life? O, what than such a death, when they could not be buried by their friends and relations? At length they sparkle in heaven. He has scarcely lived, who has lived in Christian times."

Cyprian tells us of Quartus and Sistus, unknown persons, whose names are written in heaven, who were put to death in the catacombs, whither they had fled. And it is recorded of a bishop, named Stephen, that he was there beheaded, while sitting in the episcopal chair, after Divine service had been performed.

Jerome, of the fourth century, relates :-" When I was at Rome, still a youth, and employed in literary pursuits, I was accustomed, in company with others of my own age, and actuated by the same feelings, to visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs; and often to go down into the crypts dug in the heart of the earth, where the walls on each side are lined with the dead. And so intense is the darkness, that we almost realize the words of the prophet, 'They go down alive into hades;' though here and there a scanty aperture, ill deserving the name of window, admits scarcely light enough to mitigate the gloom which reigns around. As we advance through the shades with cautious steps, we are forcibly reminded of the words of Virgil,- Horror on all sides: even the silence terrifies the mind.'"

Prudentius also, about the same period, states:-"We have seen in the city of Romulus innumerable remains of saints. You ask, What are the names of those buried?—a question difficult for me to answer; so great a host of the just did the impious rage of the heathen sweep away, when Trojan Rome worshipped her country's gods. Many sepulchres marked with letters display the name of the martyrs, or some anagram. There are also stones, closing silent tombs, which tell only the number buried within; so that we know how many human bodies lie in the heap, though we read no names belonging to them. I remember finding that sixty were buried under one mound, whose names Christ alone preserves, as those of His peculiar friends."

During the stormy period of the decline and fall of the empire, the catacombs were lost sight of; and they continued almost unknown till the revival of letters,-an interval of a thousand years. Upon their discovery, a controversy concerning relics, in the pontificate of Sixtus V., which commenced in 1585, called the attention of antiquaries to these longneglected sites. They were, in consequence, diligently explored; the rubbish by which the entrances had become closed up, and many of the passages themselves, being removed. The learned Bosio spent thirty years

in opening and examining them, meeting with adventures which rival in interest those of Belzoni among the tombs of Thebes. His results were published in a posthumous work, in 1632. Fabretti, appointed Curator of the Catacombs, prepared a collection of the epitaphs; and most of the antiquities, with plans of the ranges, are minutely described by Bottari. The crypts were rapidly despoiled of their monumental treasures, which went to enrich private collections of the antique, and the Vatican Museum. The latter abounds with sarcophagi, bas-reliefs, and inscriptions, taken from these recesses and galleries, ranged in an apartment appropriately called "the Christian Museum." A long corridor at the entrance contains, on the one hand, sepulchral remains of Pagan origin; on the other, of Christian. To this the name of "Galleria Lapidaria" has been given, from its monumental stones. On one side, you recognise, as you walk along, the mournful emblems of hopeless mortality: on the other, you decipher such words as these:-"THE SWEET JULIA, SCARCELY TWENTYFIVE YEARS OF AGE. THOU LIVEST IN THE LORD." "TO THE MOST SWEET AND MOST HAPPY WIFE-IN PEACE;"-and, with these words, the palm of victory, or the Alpha and Omega. Here you see two figures clasped in each other's arms, while a tiger is in the act of springing upon them; a painful record of one of the many terrible martyrdoms of the Colosseum. It is said, that when the Romans hunted the Christians into their last refuge, in these catacombs, even little children ran forward, crying out, "We are Christians! we are Christians!"-in order that they might be allowed to die with their parents for the testimony of Jesus. Among the simple emblematical figures which have been found is one representing the Good Shepherd, bearing a feeble lamb on His shoulder.

The excavations now shown are in separate ranges; but a general communication between all is said to have existed, though now interrupted by the falling in of the soil. Their windings, and the absence of masonry or vaulting anywhere, have sufficed to deter most persons from exploring their gloomy recesses. Those most commonly visited are entered from the Church of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way, at a short distance from the city. It was here that I entered them. The Church of St. Sebastian is built on the cemetery of St. Calixtus, and is one of the seven basilica of Rome. The door near the left entrance leads to the cemetery, or catacombs. They form an immense labyrinth of unknown extent, intersecting each other so frequently, and so inextricably, that it is dangerous to advance far. The galleries are generally about eight feet high, and five wide. The graves are in the side walls, and consist mostly of three tiers cut horizontally, and shut in by slabs. At irregular intervals the passages converge, and expand into large chapel-like apartments, many of which have, doubtless, resounded with the voice of prayer and praise. Little is now to be seen but a few ashes of the skeletons in some of the compartments. Occasionally, a portion of the skeleton is found, the bones of which retain their original form and relative position; but, if you attempt to lay hold of them, they crumble to powder in the fingers. The entire extent of the