there they were buried; and their simple tombstones, recording that they died in peace, and in the hope of eternal life through Christ, are still to be seen to the number of many thousands. How came these tombstones there, if early Christianity and the early martyrs be a fable? If Christianity be a forgery, the arch of Titus, with its sacred symbols, is also a forgery; the catacombs, with all their tombstones, are also a forgery; and the hundred monuments in Rome, with the traces of early Christianity graven upon them, are also a forgery; and the person or persons who forged Christianity, in order to give currency to their forgery, must have been at the incredible pains of building the arch of Titus, and chiselling out its sculpture work; they must have dug out the catacombs, and filled them, with infinite labour, with forged tombstones; and they must have covered the monuments of Rome with forged inscriptions. Would any one have been at the pains to have done all this, or could he have done it without being detected When the Romans rose in the morning, and saw these forged inscriptions, they must have known that they were not ther the day before, and would have exposed the trick. But the idea is absurd, and no man can seriously entertain it whom a inveterate scepticism has not smitten with the extreme of seni lity or idiotcy. There is far more evidence at Rome for th historic truth of Christianity than for the existence of Juliu Cæsar or of Scipio, or of any of the great men whose existenc no one ever takes it into his head to doubt.

Here, in the Forum, are THREE WITNESSES, which testif respectively to three leading facts of Christianity. These wit nesses are, the Arch of Titus, the fallen Palace on the Pala tine, and the Column of Phocas. The Arch of Titus proclaim the end of the Old Testament economy; for there, graven o its marble, is the record of the fall of the temple, and the dis

that the "let" which hindered the revelation of the Man of Sin has now been "taken out of the way," as Paul foretold ; for there lies the prostrate throne of the Cæsars, which, while it stood, effectually forbade the rise of the popes. But this solitary pillar, which stands erect where so many temples have fallen, with what message is it freighted? It witnesses to the rise of Antichrist. That column rose with the popes; for Phocas set it up to commemorate the assumption of the title of Universal Bishop by the pastor of Rome; and here has it been standing all the while, to proclaim that "that wicked" is now revealed, "whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." Such is the united testimony borne by these three Witnesses,—even that the Antichrist is come.

To complete this coup d'œil of Rome, it is necessary only that we transfer our gaze for an instant to the more distant objects. Though swept, as the site of Rome now is, with the besom of destruction, the outlines, which no ruin can obliterate, are yet grand as ever. Immediately beneath you are the red roofs and glittering domes of the city; around is a gay fringe of vineyards and gardens; and beyond is the dark bosom of the Campagna, stretching far and wide, meeting the horizon on the west and south, and confined on the east and north by a wall of glorious hills,-the sweet Volscians, the blue Sabines, the craggy Apennines, with their summits—at least when I saw them-hoary with the snows of winter. Spectacle terrible and sublime! Ruin colossal and unparalleled! The Campagna is a vast hall, amid the funereal shadows and unbroken stillness of which repose in mournful state the ASHES OF ROME.

CHAPTER XXIII.

STRIKING OBJECTS IN ROME.

The Baths of Caracalla-The Catacombs-Evidence thence Romanism-The Scala Santa, or Pilate's Stairs-Peasants climbing them-Irreverence of Devotees-Unequal Terms Pope offers Heaven-Church of Ara Cali--The Santissim Conversation with the Monks who exhibit it-The Ghe Quarter-Efforts to Convert them to Romanism-Tyran tions still imposed upon them-Their Ineradicable Cha Race-The Vatican-The Apollo Belvedere-Pio Nono-E Person-St Peter's-Its Grandeur and Uselessness-Motto Obelisk-Gate of San Pancrazio-Graves of the French-Exhibition of Nuns-Collegio Romano and Father Perron rican Student-The English Protestant Chapel-Preach American Chaplain-Collection in Rome for Building a London-Sermon on Immaculate Conception in Church of Maria-Family Worship in Hotel-Early Christians of Ron

I HAVE already mentioned my arrival at midnight, thankful I was to find an open door and an empty b Hotel d'Angleterre. The reader may guess my sur joy at discovering next morning that I had slept in a adjoining that of my friend Mr Bonar, from whom I ha several weeks before, at Turin. After breakfast, w out to see the Catacombs. I had found Rome in cl

morning gleam, the storm returned with greater violence than ever. Torrents swept the streets; the lightning was flashing on the old monuments; fearful peals of thunder were rolling above the city; and we were compelled oftener than once during our ride to seek the shelter of an arched way from the deluge of rain that poured down upon us. Skirting the base of the Palatine, and emerging on the Via Appia, we arrived at the Baths of Caracalla, which we had resolved to visit on our

way to the Catacombs. No words can describe the ghastly grandeur of this stupendous ruin, which, next to the Coliseum, is the greatest in Rome. Besides its saloons, theatre, and libraries, it contained, it is said, sixteen hundred chairs for bathers. As was its pristine splendour, so now is its overthrow. Its cyclopean walls, and its vast chambers, the floors of which are covered to the depth of some twelve or twenty feet with fallen masses of the mosaic ceiling, like immense boulders which have rolled down from some mountain's top, are spread over an area of about a mile in circuit. The ruins, here capped with sward and young trees, there rising in naked jagged turrets like Alpine peaks, had a romantic effect, which was not a little heightened by the alternate darkness of the thunder-cloud that hung above them, and the incessant play of the lightning among their worn pinnacles.

Resuming our course along the Appian Way, we passed the tomb of the Scipios; and, making our exit by the Sebastian gate, we came, after a ride of two miles in the open country, to the basilica of San Sebastiano, erected over the entrance to the Catacombs. Pulling a bell which hung in the vestibule, a monk appeared as our cicerone, and we might have been pardoned a little misgiving in committing ourselves to such a guide through the bowels of the earth.

His cloak was old and tattered, his

face was scourged with scorbutic disease, misery or tion had worn him to the bone, and his restless eye cas glances on all around. He carried in his hand a littl of tallow candles, as thin and worn as himself almost; a ing lighted them, he gave one to each of us, and bad low. We descended with him into the doubtful nig place was a long shaft or corridor, dug out of the bro rock, with the roof about two feet overhead, and the two thirds or so of the height. The descent was turnings frequent, and light there was none, save the ings of our slender tapers. The origin of the Cata still a disputed question; but the most probable op that they were formed by digging out the pozzolana canic earth, which was used as a cement in the grea ings of Rome. They extend in a zone round the o form a labyrinth of subterranean galleries, which trav Campagna, reaching, according to some, to the shore Mediterranean. He who adventures into them wi guide is infallibly lost. They speak at Rome of a and his students, to the number of sixty, who entered tacombs fifty years ago, and have not yet returned. it is, that many melancholy accidents have occurred in which have induced the Government to wall them certain extent. I had not gone many yards till I felt was entirely at the mercy of the monk, and that, sho play me false, I must remain where I was till doomsda

p

But what invests the Catacombs with an interest of so ing a kind is the fact, that here the Christian Church, of persecution, made her abode. What! in darkness, the bowels of the earth? Yes: such were the Ch which that age produced. At every few paces along t leries you see the quadrangular excavations in which th