the churches, the tombs, perhaps the palaces, of the last
Roman and the first Teutonic rulers of Italy. In the Old and in the New
Rome, and in Milan also, works of the same date exist; but either they
do not form the chief objects of the city, or they have lost their
character and position through later changes. If Ravenna boasts of the
tombs of Honorius and Theodoric, Milan boasts also, truly or falsely, of
the tombs of Stilicho and Athaulf. But at Milan we have to seek for the
so-called tomb of Athaulf in a side-chapel of a church which has lost
all ancient character, and the so-called tomb of Stilicho, tho placed in
the most venerable church of the city, stands in a strange position as
the support of a pulpit.

At Ravenna, on the other hand, the mighty mausoleum of Theodoric, and
the chapel which contains the tombs of Galla Placidia, her brother, and
her second husband, are among the best known and best preserved
monuments of the city. Ravenna, in the days of its Exarchs, could never
have dared to set up its own St. Vital as a rival to Imperial St.
Sophia. But at St. Sophia, changed into the temple of another faith, the
most characteristic ornaments have been hidden or torn away, while at
St. Vital Hebrew patriarchs and Christian saints, and the Imperial forms
of Justinian and his strangely-chosen Empress, still look down, as they
did thirteen hundred years back, upon the altars of Christian worship.
Ravenna, in short, seems, as it were, to have been preserved all but
untouched to keep up the memory of the days which were alike Roman,
Christian, and Imperial.

BENEDICTINE SUBIACO[31]

BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

One of the excellent mountain roads constructed by Pius IX. leads
through a wild district from Olevano to Subiaco. A few miles before
reaching Subiaco we skirt a lake, probably one of the Simbrivii Lacus
which Nero is believed to have made by damming up the Anio. Here he
fished for trout with a golden net, and here he built the mountain villa
which he called Sublaqueum--a name which still exists in Subiaco.

Four centuries after the valley had witnessed the orgies of Nero, a
young patrician of the family of the Anicii-Benedictus, or "the blessed
one," being only fourteen at the time, fled from the seductions of the
capital to the rocks of Mentorella, but, being followed thither, sought
a more complete solitude in a cave above the falls of the Anio. Here he
lived unknown to any except the hermit Roman