Beneath the most distant of these is a square hole, which once probably contained a cup. On the right is a lateral passage, blocked up to prevent accidents, so liable to happen to those who might wander away and be lost in these intricate windings.

In some places the passages expand into the apartments mentioned by Baronius, which traditions state to have been intended as places of worship by the proscribed and suffering followers of our LORD. In one of these little chapels, which tradition has thus consecrated, we saw still remaining, a simple earthen altar, and an antique cross cut in the rock above it. It was with no ordinary feelings that we stood on this spot and looked on these evidences of early worship. In this gloomy cavern the followers of our LORD were accustomed to meet in secret to eat the bread of life, and with bitter tears to drink the water of life. What solemn services must this spot have witnessed! With what a depth of feeling must they have heard of the Resurrection, surrounded by the dead in Christ, and the symbols of that hidden and eternal life which lies beyond the grave! How earnest the prayers which were here poured forth by men, whose faith was certain, because they had received it from the lips of apostles themselves, and glowed more brightly because they stood in jeopardy every hour! These relics of their worship may perhaps have remained here unchanged, since the name of Jesus of Nazareth was first uttered as a strange sound in the neighboring city, and where we were, men may have bowed in prayer who had themselves seen their LORD in the flesh. The remains were around us of those who

had received the mightiest of all consecrations, that of suffering, and whose spirits were as noble as any who had their proud monuments on the Appian Way, and whose names are now as "familiar in our ears as household words." But no historian registered the deeds of the despised Nazarenes. They had no poet, and they died.

"Carent quia vate sacro."

A stone chair formerly stood in this little chapel, but it was unfortunately removed to Pisa by Cosmo III., of Tuscany.

The earliest of these chapels, like the one we have just mentioned, were of the simplest form, evidently mere enlargements of the gallery into an oblong or square chamber, often lined with graves on every side. Others, probably of later construction, were more elevated, with a hole pierced through to the soil above for light and air. Some of these openings in the roof are the holes to which we have already referred, as scattered over the Campagna and frequently mentioned in the "Acts of the Martyrs." In one place, for instance, they tell us of Candida, a saint and virgin, who was thrown down the light hole of the crypt and overwhelmed with stones.

When the days of persecution had passed and these places became objects of superstitious reverence, the custom began of ornamenting these chapels with architecture and more elaborate fresco paintings. We are told that, before the year 400, the tomb of Hippolytus had been adorned with Parian marble and precious metals. The roof was 3*

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extended and vaulted, and the skill of the artist exhausted in representing sacred subjects on the walls. Arringhi has numerous engravings of chapels when thus changed by the taste of later times, one of which we copy, to show at a glance the wide difference between their appearance and that which they bore in earlier days as represented in the last engraving we gave. In this we have instances of the "arched monument"-a grave cut like a sarcophagus from the rock and an arch constructed above it.

In one case, copied by Maitland, the sarcophagus or case for the body, at the end of the chapel, was separated from it by a cancellated slab of marble, which is now broken.

The largest of these chapels are in the cemetery of St. Agnes. One of them, it is estimated, would hold eighty persons.

The graves were originally closed by a thin piece of marble, often of most irregular figure, or sometimes by slabs of terra-cotta, cemented to the rock by plaster. In the subjoined engravings, copied originally by Boldetti, we have a view of two graves, the first of which is closed by three pieces of cotta, while the latter is partially opened, so that the skeleton lying within can be seen. The palm branch and cup have been rudely scratched upon. the stone. It was thus on these slabs, were cut the Christian emblems which the early followers of our LORD SO much delighted to use, and there too they scrawled the brief epitaphs by which, in that age