the collecting faculties, memory is, what Sir William Hamilton has called it, the "conservative faculty"—the custodier of the collected treasures. In point of fact, we know that every mind from an early period possesses this power. In virtue of it the infant soon learns to distinguish its mother from all the world, and in virtue of it the inarticulate sages of our race- - those little Pythagoreans who have not yet finished their twelve months' novitiate of silence-have laid the foundations of a most valuable experimental philosophy. They have made the discovery, and they retain the conviction, that fire burns-that there is a certain point beyond which, if puss's good-nature is taxed, it is pretty sure to give way-that, in cases of collision, action and reaction being equal, it is inexpedient to butt violently against bed have very probably to deal with a resisting recipient; | possessions? If sensation, perception, attention, are but if at last you prevail, you may find him none the less a faithful conservator. The Church of Rome has studded Europe and the Holy Land with fossil footprints-with the life-like impress, heel and toe, of saints and Scripture worthies. But although Protestantism alleges that the footmarks on St. Paul's Rock and elsewhere are more indebted to monkish tools than to miraculous sandals, there can be no doubt that now they are made they are sufficiently permanent. And as there are subjects for which our minds are not always soft and plastic, we must have recourse to the hammer and chisel. A school-boy has no difficulty in recollecting in the month of May every bank and bush where a nest is built or in progress; and he can tell the exact number of eggs which were that morning reported in the census of ever so many separate establishments-wrens, tit-posts and the legs of chairs and tables. The first use of mice, finches, and linnets. These facts are interesting, and impress themselves. But "The verb agrees with the nominative before it in number and person"—" 9 times 6 are 54, 9 times 7 are 63"-although facts important and indisputable, are not particularly captivating; and yet the ingenuous youth has an interest in retaining them. Pains and penalties are involved in forgetting them. Accordingly, by dint of diligence, he does after a fashion get them inscribed on the reluctant stone -chipped and chiselled into that mysterious Runic pillar where, long after the statistics of birds' nests have crumbled away, rules of syntax and multiplication tables stand forth with triumphant distinctness. The memory may be strong where the intellect is weak; but without the former faculty there can be по intellectual growth. For, stripped of all mystery, what is memory? Is it not the mind's power of retaining its the conservative faculty is to treasure up experiences like these-just as one of the first uses of the reasoning or comparing faculty is to generalize them and draw deductions from them; and with the help of these two faculties your little philosopher on all-fours has already taught himself more important lessons in the art of selfpreservation than any which he will afterwards learn, even although he should attend Dr. Hassall's sanatory lectures, or study Sir John Sinclair on the art of longevity. If he had no memory, he would forget that the candle burned his finger yesterday, and so he would put it into the flame this evening; if he had no judgment, he would see no necessary resemblance between the red poker and the ignited gas-cone; but having both, he learns to "walk," or rather to creep "circumspectly," and grows cautious in his dealings with cats and candles, and such other dangerous friends or open enemies. THE ROMAN CATACOMBS AND THEIR RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS. A PART I. This description of the Catacombs in the fourth century is equally applicable to their appearance in the nineteenth. These wonderful excavations are situated, for the most part, near the great highways leading from Rome. According to the Cavaliere Di Rossi, the most eminent authority upon this subject, there are forty-two of these early Christian cemeteries. They so encompass MONG the cultivated grounds not | that cross each other, here and there opening into far from the city of Rome," writes chapels and sepulchral halls." * the Christian poet Prudentius, "lies a deep crypt with dark recesses. A descending path, with winding steps, leads through the dim turnings; and the daylight entering by the mouth of the cavern somewhat illumines the first part of the way. But the darkness grows deeper as we advance, till we meet with openings cut in the roof of the passages, admitting light from above. On all sides spreads the labyrinth, woven dense with paths * "Haud procul extremo culta ad pomaria vallo,” &c.—Пeptσréparov, Hymn 10. the city, like a military circumvallation, that they | of worship. Sometimes four or five were grouped have been called "the encampment of the Christian host besieging Pagan Rome, and driving inward its mines and trenches, with the assurance of final victory." After descending a steep and narrow stairway, the traveller enters a long passage, varying from two to five feet in width, and from five to twelve feet high, arched, and occasionally protected with masonry, and plastered. The walls are completely honey-combed with graves, in tiers one above another, like shelves in a library or berths in a ship. They are of all sizes,-from an infant's to that of a full-grown man. They are generally closed with tiles of terra-cotta or slabs of marble, put edgeways in a groove or mortise cut in the rock, and fastened with cement-on which the marks of the trowel may be seen as fresh as if made yesterday. Many of the slabs are broken, revealing the bones or dust and ashes of the dead within. Others still retain the inscriptions-to be hereafter mentioned. Some of the tombs called arcosolia-are excavated in an arched recess, and covered by a horizontal slab. There are numerous passages, branching off at right angles, forming a complete network of corridors, often extending over many acres. Signor Michell Di Rossi, who has carefully surveyed and mapped several of the Catacombs, computes that the aggregate length of these galleries amounts to 876,000 mètres, or 587 geographical miles. The average number of graves is about five on each side, for every two yards and a half; which would give the enormous aggregate of 3,831,200. This seems an almost incredible number; but we know that for nearly four centuries almost the entire Christian population of Rome, which even at an early date was of great extent, was buried here. There are also numerous chambers, or cubicula, varying from eight or ten feet square to as much as twenty feet square in certain isolated examples. These are often plastered, and adorned with paintings in fresco. They are sometimes ornamented with stucco columns and mouldings, and lined with marble or mosaic. They generally occur in pairs, on opposite sides of the gallery. Those of the smaller size were probably family tombs; and those of larger dimensions, places of meeting or together, affording space for eighty or a hundred persons; and the whole were illuminated by a shaft or luminaria, opening to the sky. Here, during the storms of persecution, the primitive Church took refuge; meeting by stealth for the celebration of the rites of religion, and burying in these silent recesses the holy dead. Here reposed the proto-martyrs and confessors of the faith-the forlorn hope of the army of Christianity their holy dust making a true terra sancta of these gloomy vaults. Here arose the funeral hymn, the chant of praise, the voice of exhortation or of prayer; no less acceptable to God than if from the stateliest of human temples. Often beneath this deep there is a lower deep -or even as many as four or five sets of galleries on different levels, each being excavated as the one above became filled with graves. The worse than Cimmerian darkness of these gloomy labyrinths was illumined by terra-cotta lamps, placed in niches at the junction of the principal galleries, or suspended from the roof. Multitudes of these lamps have been found in situ, and are preserved in the various museums of Rome. When the age of persecution passed away, the Catacombs continued to be invested with a deep and pathetic interest, as the cradle of the faith, the refuge of the Church during the storm of calamity, and the sepulchre of the saints and martyrs; and it became an object of ambition to share the resting-place of those who had been so holy in life and so glorious in death. In course of time these feelings degenerated into a superstitious reverence for the martyr-shrines; and numerous pilgrims came from afar to pay their devotions amid these sacred scenes. Commodious entrances were constructed, easy stairways hewn in the rock for the accommodation of visitors, and many of the principal tombs were adorned with marble and votive offerings. With the barbarian invasion and the breaking up of the Empire, subterranean sepulture ceased; and the Catacombs were given up to pillage by Goth and Vandal, who destroyed many of the sacred monuments in their search for supposed hidden wealth. During the gathering gloom of the Middle Ages, when faction, civil war, and anarchy laid waste the land, and even the classic mausolea above ground were converted into armed fortresses, these gloomy vaults became the rendezvous of insurgents and conspirators. Frequently armed bands of the retainers of hostile housesthe Montagues and Capulets of the day—met in these subterranean vaults, and the war-cry of Guelph and Ghibelline rang through the hollow corridors, and bloodshed and cruelty desecrated the spot sacred to religion and the ashes of the sainted dead. In course of time all knowledge of the Catacombs became entirely lost; and it was not till the revival of learning in the sixteenth century had stimulated the minds of men to the study of the past, that this treasury of Christian Evidences was rediscovered, and again thrown open to the investigation of mankind. To Father Antonio Bosco, a Roman priest, is the honour due of unveiling to the sight of Europe the ancient monuments of the faith buried in their depths. Sustained by a lofty enthusiasm, he spent thirty-three years groping in these gloomy corridors, threading their tangled labyrinths-sometimes lost in their intricacies deciphering the half-effaced inscriptions, and copying the remains of early Christian art. D'Agincourt was another original explorer in these mines of Christian antiquity. He came to Rome near the close of the last century, with the intention of spending six months in the study of the Catacombs. But the absorbing interest of the subject so grew upon him, that he remained for fifty years, collecting the materials for his magnificent posthumous work, "Histoire de l'Art par les Monumens." The literature of the Catacombs is very voluminous,-chiefly in the Latin and Italian languages. Arringhi, Bottare, BolArringhi, Bottare, Boldetti, Marchi, and Di Rossi, have all written ponderous tomes on the subject; and in French, M. Raoul Rochetti, the Abbés Gawone and Gerbet, and M. Perret. The work of the latter consists of seven magnificent folios, published at the expense of the French Government, and costing about £100 sterling. The origin of the Catacombs was long erroneously attributed to the pagan quarrymen or sanddiggers, who supplied the materials for the innumerable palaces, temples, baths, theatres, and private buildings of the adjacent city. Recent examination of the geological formation in which the Catacombs are constructed refutes this theory. They are not excavated in the compact and rocklike tufa lithoide, from which the building-stone was hewn; nor in the more friable tufa pozzolano, out of which the sand was dug; but in the tufa granolare, an accretion of volcanic scoria of intermediate position and hardness. It is probable, however, that the early Christians made use of the pre-existing armariae as masks to the entrance of the Catacombs; as we still see at those of S. Agnese, where the passage descending to the subterranean sepulchres dives abruptly down from the old pagan excavation above. They were doubtless also used as at least partial receptacles for the excavated débris, of which it is difficult to conceive how they disposed otherwise. The present condition of the Catacombs is one of the utmost dilapidation and ruin. Many of the galleries and chambers are filled with earth, either by the falling in of the walls, or by infiltration through the roof or through the crumbling luminaria. This was frequently done, also, by the hunted Christians in time of persecution, in order to prevent the pursuit of their heathen foes. The luminaria are frequently choked with rubbish or overgrown with weeds, and have become sources of danger to the horseman traversing the Campagna. The once stately entrances have in many cases so fallen in through age as to resemble more a fox's burrow than a passage for human beings. The paintings of the cubicula are often spoiled by dampness, or begrimed by the smoke of the innumerable torches of visitors during successive ages. As the pilgrim to these chambers of silence and gloom walks through the vaulted corridors his footsteps echo strangely down the distant passages-the graves yawn weirdly as he passes, torch in hand-deep mysterious shadows crouch around -the air is hot and stifling, and seems laden with the dry dust of death. Most of the inscriptions have been removed, and are affixed to the walls of the different churches and museums of the city. About eleven thousand of these inscriptions have been carefully examined and classified; and nowhere else can we find such direct and important testimony concerning the spirit and character of the primitive Christians as in these humble epitaphs of the early centuries. By their careful study we may follow the development of Christian thought from age to age-we may trace the successive changes of doctrine and discipline-we may read the irrefragable evidence, written with a pen of iron on the rock for ever, of the purity of the primitive faith, and of the gradual corruption it has undergone. "What insight into the familiar feelings and thoughts of the primitive ages of the Church," remarks the learned and eloquent Dean Stanley, "can be compared with that afforded by the Roman Catacombs ! Hardly noticed by Gibbon or Mosheim, they yet give us a likeness of those early times beyond that derived from any of the written authorities on which Gibbon and Mosheim repose......He who is thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the Catacombs will be nearer to the thought of the early Church than he who has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian or Origen." In this era of critical investigation of the very foundations of the faith, it will be well to examine the vast body of Christian evidences as to the doctrinal teachings of the primitive times which have been handed down from believers living in or near the apostolic age, and thus providentially preserved as a perpetual memorial of the faith and practice of the golden prime of Christianity. While we should not expect to find in these inscriptions a complete system of theology, we would certainly look for some definite expression of the religious belief of those who wrote these memorials of the dead. We would expect some reference to the lives of the departed, to the virtues of their character, and to the hopes of the survivors as to their future condition in the spirit world. In this expectation we are not disappointed. We find in these inscriptions a body of evidence on the doctrine and discipline of the primitive Church, whose value it is scarcely possible to over-estimate. We are struck with the infinite contrast of their sentiment from that of the pagan sepulchral monuments; and also by the conspicuous absence, in the earlier and purer period of Christianity, of the doctrines by which the Church of Rome is characterized, and by which it proves its alienation from the true, apostolic, and holy catholic Church of Christendom. We shall also find references to some of the numerous heresies which, like plague spots, began to infect the Church even in the early centuries, some of which found ecclesiastical patronage at Rome. Protestantism, therefore, has nothing to fear from the closest investigation of these evidences of primitive Christianity. The science of epigraphy yields no warrant for the doctrines and practice of the modern Church of Rome. There is not a single inscription, or painting, or sculpture, before the middle of the fourth century, that lends the least countenance to her arrogant assumptions and erroneous dogmas. All previous to this date are remarkable for their evangelical character; and it is only after that period that the distinctive peculiarities of Romanism begin to appear. The wholesome breath of persecution and the "sweet uses of adversity" in the early ages tended to preserve the moral purity of the Church; but the enervating influence of imperial favour, and the influx of wealth and luxury, led to corruptions of practice and errors of doctrine. Her trappings of worldly pomp and power were a Nepus garment which empoisoned her spiritual life. Hence the Catacombs, the rude cradle of the early faith, became also the grave of much of its simplicity and purity. PART II. In the investigation of early Christian epigraphy, the determination of dates is of the utmost importance, as it is only inscriptions of the earlier and acknowledged purer period of the Church which can bear authoritative testimony as to primitive doctrine. We will take the inscriptions as given by the Cavaliere Di Rossi, the most eminent living authority on this subject, in his great work, "Inscriptionæ Christianæ;" but while accepting his facts, and acknowledging his candour and honesty of research-which qualities we will seek to imitate-we cannot in all cases accept his conclusions. We will endeavour to examine the subject from a strictly philological and scientific point of view; and, anxious only to discover truth, will seek to avoid the odium theologicum, that compound of vinegar and gall which has lent such bitterness to religious controversy. The first dated inscription possessing any doc trinal character occurs in the year A.D. 217.* It is taken from a large sarcophagus, and commemorates PROSENES RECEPTVS AD DEVM. V. NON...... "Prosenes received to God, on the fifth day before the nones of......" We have here the earliest indication of doctrinal belief as to the condition of the departed; but it is no dark and gloomy apprehension of purgatorial fires, but the joyous confidence of immediate reception into the presence of God. An inscription of date A.D. 234 is accompanied by the first examples of the fish and anchor, symbols which afterwards became so common, but with no other distinctively Christian feature. In the next year, A.D. 235, occurs the following epitaph, in which there is possibly an intimation of immortality in the expression de sæculo recessit-"retired from the world," or from the age. The epithet "very sweet daughter" is peculiarly appropriate to the Christian character, although common on pagan tombs :: AVRELIA DVLCISSIMA FILIA QVE DE SECVLO RECESSIT In the year A.D. 238, on a sarcophagus which bears the first extant representation of the Good Shepherd, we find the following touching inscription. It conveys nothing doctrinal beyond the phrase "most devout," or "God-loving "-expressive of the youthful piety of the deceased. The mention of the duration of the illness is very rare in these epitaphs. The yearning affection of the father is beautifully expressed in the last clause: НРАКЛІТОС О ѲЕОФІЛЕСТАТОС EZHCEN The very devout Heraclitus lived eight years and thirteen days. He was ill twelve days...Xanthias his father to his son sweeter than light and life. The next example merely gives the consular date, A.D. 249, and the assurance that the deceased sleeps-DORMIT-a distinctively Christian • The earlier ones express merely the consular dates, and in one instance only the name and age of the deceased. The use of recedo in the sense of "to die" is classical; but in the above form is unknown in pagan epigraphy. synonym for death. In the year A.D. 268 occurs a fragment, on which one may with difficulty decipher the inscription, by the parents, "to their well-deserving son, who lived twelve years and eleven months." The chief interest attaches to the last line, VIBAS INTER SANCTIS [sic] IHA. May you live among the holy ones! The meaning of the last three letters is unknown. The natural ejaculation of the sorrowing friends, expressed in the preceding words, is certainly no indication of the later Romish practice of prayers for the dead, or the intercession of the saints, but is merely the yearning desire of the human heart for the happiness of the dear departed. The next dated inscription, of the year 269 A.D., is of a very barbarous character-Latin words in the slab. It is evidently, as is indicated by the Greek letters, not engraved but rudely painted on wretched grammar and orthography, the production of extreme ignorance. It requires a strong dogmatic prepossession to detect in its incoherent language any meaning beyond the attestation of the sanctity of character of the deceased. After giving the date, it reads thus:: AEYKEC IAEIE CEBHPE KAPECEME IOCOYETE⚫ READ: Leuces filiæ Severa carissima posuit et spiritui sancto tuo. Leuce erected this (memorial) to her very dear daughter and to thy holy spirit. Nothing further of dogmatic import occurs till the year A.D. 291, when we find the following example of barbarous Latinity. The grammar and spelling are atrocious; and, as will be noticed, the pointing by no means indicates the proper division of words: EX VERGINIO TVO BEN E MECO VIXISTI LIB ENIC ONIVGA INNOCENTISSI MACERVONIA SILVANA READ: Ex virginio tuo bene mecum vixisti, libens in conjuga innocentissima, Macervonia Silvana. Refrigera cum spiritis sanctis. Macervonia Silvana, thou didst live well with me from thy maidenhood, rejoicing in most innocent wedlock. Refresh thyself among the holy spirits. No candid interpreter can discover in this rude epitaph anything beyond the expression of a |