who seemed hovering about the
capital of the old world; as if he had been a citizen of ancient Rome
travelling in the modern. So men of genius have roved amid the awful ruins
till the ideal presence has fondly built up the city anew, and have become
Romans in the Rome of two thousand years past. POMPONOIUS LETUS, who
devoted his life to this study, was constantly seen wandering amidst the
vestiges of this "throne of the world." There, in many a reverie, as his
eye rested on the mutilated arch and the broken column, abstracted and
immovable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome and of the
Romans.[A] Another enthusiast of this class was BOSIUS, who sought beneath
Rome for another Rome, in those catacombs built by the early Christians
for their asylum and their sepulchre. His work of "Roma Sotteranea" is the
production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent and perilous
labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal for the week, this new Pliny
often descended into the bowels of the earth, by lamp-light, clearing away
the sand and ruins till a tomb broke forth, or an inscription became
legible. Accompanied by some friend whom his enthusiasm had inspired with
his own sympathy, here he dictated his notes, tracing the mouldering
sculpture, and catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primitive
ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the historian of the
Christian catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which
were hidden beneath the earth.[B]

[Footnote A: Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the
ruins of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill; and the
impression made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully
evinced in his "Childe Harold."--ED.]

[Footnote B: A large number of these important memorials have been since
removed to the _Galleria Lapidaria_ of the Vatican, and arranged on the
walls by Marini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at
Rome. Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation. The Rev. C.
Maitland's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly
displaying their intrinsic historic value--ED.]

The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with that creative
imagination which has startled even men of science by its peculiar
discoveries. WERNER, the mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures,
appears, by some accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised
this faculty. Werner