Catacombs are a stupendous monument of the faith and constancy
of the primitive Church. You have the satisfaction here of knowing that
you have the very scenes before you that met the eyes of the first
Christians. Time has not altered them; superstition has not disfigured
them. Such as they were when the primitive believers fled to them from a
Nero's cruelty or a Domitian's tyranny, so are they now.

These remarkable excavations were well known down till the sixth
century. Amid the barbarism of the ages that succeeded, all knowledge of
them was lost; but in the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the
art of printing had been invented, and the world could profit by the
discovery, the Catacombs were re-opened. Most of the gravestones were
removed to the Vatican, and built into the _Lapidaria Galleria_, where I
spent a day copying them; but so accurately have they been described by
Maitland, in his "Church in the Catacombs," that I beg to refer the
reader who wishes farther information respecting these deeply
interesting memorials, to his valuable work. They are plain, unchiselled
slabs of marble, with simple characters, scratched with some sharp
instrument by the aid of the lamp, recording the name and age of the
person whose remains they enclosed, to which is briefly added, "in
peace," or "in Christ." Piety here is to be tested, not by the
profession on the tombstone, but by the sacrifice of the life. A palm
branch carved on the stone is the usual sign of martyrdom. I saw a few
slabs still remaining as they had been placed seventeen centuries ago,
fastened into the tuffo rock with a cement of earth. When the Catacombs
were opened, a witness rose from the dead to confront Rome. No trace has
been discovered which could establish the slightest identity in
doctrine, in worship, or in government, between the present Church of
Rome and the Church of the Catacombs.

Will the reader accompany me to another and very different scene? We
leave these midnight vaults, and tread again the narrow lava-paved
Appian road; and through rural lanes we seek the summit of the Caelian
mount, where stands in statued pomp the church of St John Lateran. Here
are shown the _Scala Santa_ which were brought from Jerusalem, and which
the Church of Rome certifies as the very stairs which Christ ascended
when he went to be judged of Pilate. On the north side of the quadrangle
is an open building, with three separate flights of steps leading up
fr