'Our Lady of Snows,' for Damasus to burn when Orsino
seized it,--but the people spoke of it as the Basilica of Liberius. It
was called also 'Our Lady of the Manger,' from the relic held holy
there; and Sixtus the Third named it 'Our Lady, Mother of God'; and
under many popes it was rebuilt and grew, until at last, for its size,
it was called, as it is today, 'The Greater Saint Mary's.' At one time,
the popes lived near it, and in our own century, when the palace had
long been transferred to the Quirinal, a mile to northward of the
basilica, Papal Bulls were dated 'From Santa Maria Maggiore.'

It is too gorgeous now, too overladen, too rich; and yet it is imposing.
The first gold brought from South America gilds the profusely decorated
roof, the dark red polished porphyry pillars of the high altar gleam in
the warm haze of light, the endless marble columns rise in shining
ranks, all is gold, marble and colour.

Many dead lie there, great men and good; and one over whom a sort of
mystery hangs, for he was Bartolommeo Sacchi, Cardinal Platina,
historian of the Church, a chief member of the famous Roman Academy of
the fifteenth century, and a mediaeval pagan, accused with Pomponius
Letus and others of worshipping false gods; tried, acquitted for lack of
evidence; dead in the odour of sanctity; proved at last ten times a
heathen, and a bad one, today, by inscriptions found in the remotest
part of the Catacombs, where he and his companions met in darkest secret
to perform their extravagant rites. He lies beneath the chapel of Sixtus
the Fifth, but the stone that marked the spot is gone.

Strange survivals of ideas and customs cling to some places like ghosts,
and will not be driven away. The Esquiline was long ago the haunt of
witches, who chanted their nightly incantations over the shallow graves
where slaves were buried, and under the hideous crosses whereon dead
malefactors had groaned away their last hours of life. Maecenas cleared
the land and beautified it with gardens, but still the witches came by
stealth to their old haunts. The popes built churches and palaces on it,
but the dark memories never vanished in the light; and even in our own
days, on Saint John's Eve, which is the witches' night of the Latin
race, as the Eve of May-day is the Walpurgis of the Northmen, the people
went out in thousands, with torches and lights, and laughing tricks of
exorcism, to scare away the powers of evil for the year.

On that nig