o the historian Eusebius to be no less than the
fulfilment of the apocalyptic vision of the New Jerusalem. Beyond this
scene stretches to the faint far-off horizon the desert Campagna; a
dim, misty, homeless land, where the moan of the wind sounds ever like
the voice of the past, and the pathos of a vanished people breathes
over all the scene; with here and there a gray nameless ruin, a
desolate bluff, or a grassy mound, marking the site of some mysterious
Etruscan or Sabine city that had perished ages before Romulus had laid
the foundations of Rome. From the contemplation of these wide
cheerless wastes beyond the confines of history, peopled with shadowy
forms, with whose long-buried hopes and sorrows no mortal heart can
now sympathise, I turn back to the fresh, warm, human interests that
await me in the Rome of to-day; feeling to the full that from home to
church I have passed through scenes and associations sufficient to
make a Sabbath in Rome a day standing out from all other days, never
to be forgotten!

CHAPTER II

THE APPIAN WAY

It was the proud boast of the ancient Romans that all roads led to
their city. Rome was the centre and mistress of the world; and as the
loneliest rill that rises in the bosom of the far-off mountain leads,
if followed, to the ocean, so every path in the remotest corner of the
vast empire conducted to the great gilded column in the Roman Forum,
upon which all distances without the walls were marked. To the Romans
the world is indebted for opening up communications with different
countries. They were the great engineers and road-makers of antiquity.
This seems to have been the work assigned to them in the household of
nations. Rome broke down the barriers that separated one nation from
another, and fused all distinctions of race and language and religion
into one great commonwealth. And for the cohesion of all the elements
of this huge political fabric nothing could have been more effectual
than the magnificent roads, by which constant communication was kept
up between all parts of the empire, and armies could be transported to
quell a rising rebellion in some outlying province with the smallest
expenditure of time and strength. In this way the genius of this
wonderful people was providentially made subservient to the interests
of Christianity. At the very time that our Lord commissioned, with His
parting breath, the apostles to preach the gospel to every creature,
the way was