alone presents an
agreeable object; at that time it was one of the towers of the city, a
distinctive sign which marked it on the old plans so black and sharp,
and stamped it forever on the still corporeal imaginations of monks and
wayfarers. There are traces of every age in these old basilicas; you see
the diverse states of Christianity, at first enshrined in pagan forms,
and then traversing the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to muffle itself
up finally, and bedeck itself with modern finery. The Byzantine epoch
has left its imprint in the mosaics of the great nave and the apsis,
and in its bloodless and lifeless Christs and Virgins, so many staring
specters motionless on their gold backgrounds and red panels, the
fantoms of an extinct art and a vanished society.

CATACOMBS AND CRYPTS[22]

BY CHARLES DICKENS

There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prison, over what is said to
have been--and very possibly may have been--the dungeon of St. Peter.
This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint;
and it lives, as a distinct and separate place, in my recollection, too.
It is very small and low-roofed; and the dread and gloom of the
ponderous, obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a
dark mist through the floor. Hanging on the walls, among the clustered
votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely in keeping, and
strangely at variance, with the place--rusty daggers, knives, pistols,
clubs, divers instruments of violence and murder, brought here, fresh
from use, and hung up to propitiate offended Heaven; as if the blood
upon them would drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry
with. It is all so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and the dungeons
below are so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked; that this
little dark spot becomes a dream within a dream; and in the vision of
great churches which come rolling past me like a sea, it is a small
wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and does not flow on with
the rest.

It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are entered
from some Roman churches, and undermine the city. Many churches have
crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which, in the ancient
time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples, and what not; but I do
not speak of them. Beneath the church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo,
there are the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock,
and sai