of Africa from. Rome; the passing of the funeral train beneath the portico; the noble mourners; the crowd of people; the eulogy of, perhaps, some poet or orator, whose name has descended to us—the air seems to speak, and the gray stones of the monument against which the mourners of Scipio have leaned, seemed to have had life and thought, like the ashes they have sheltered.

We drove to the Catacombs. Here, the legend says, St. Sebastian was martyred; and the modern church of San Sebastiano stands over the spot. We entered the church, where we found a very handsome young Capuchin friar, with his brown cowl and the white cord about his waist, who offered to conduct us to the catacombs. He took three wax-lights from the sacristy, and we entered a side-door, behind the tomb of the saint, and commenced a descent of a long flight of stone steps. We reached the bottom, and found ourselves upon damp ground, following a narrow passage, so low, that I was constantly compelled to stoop, in the sides of which were numerous small niches of the size of a human body. These were the tombs of the early Christian martyrs. We saw near a hundred of them. They were brought from Rome, the scene of their sufferings, and buried in these secret catacombs by the small church of, perhaps, the immediate converts of St. Paul and the apostles. What food for thought is here, for one who finds more interest in the humble traces of the personal followers of Christ, who knew his face and had heard his voice, than in all the splendid ruins of the works of the persecuting emperors of his time! Most of the bones have been taken from their places, and are preserved at the Museum, or enclosed in the rich sarcophagi raised to the memory of the martyrs in the Catholic churches. Of those that are left we saw one. The niche was closed by a thin slab of marble, through a crack of which the monk put his slender candle. We saw the skeleton as it had fallen from the flesh in decay, untouched, perhaps, since the time of our Saviour.

We passed through several cross-passages, and came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the earth, with an earthern altar, and antique marble cross above. This was the scene of the forbidden worship of the early Christians; and before this very cross, which was, perhaps, then newly

TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA.

77

selected as the emblem of their faith, met the few dismayed followers of the Nazarene, hidden from their persecutors, while they breathed their forbidden prayers to their lately crucified Master.

We re-ascended to the light of day by the rough stone steps, worn deep by the feet of those who, for ages, for so many different reasons, have passed up and down: and, taking leave of our capuchin conductor, drove on to the next object upon the road-the tomb of Cecilia Metella. It stands upon a slight elevation, in the Appian Way, a "stern round tower," with the ivy dropping over its turrets, and waving from the embrasures, looking more like a castle than a tomb. Here was buried "the wealthiest Roman's wife," or, according to Corinne, his unmarried daughter. It was turned into a fortress by the marauding nobles of the thirteenth century, who sallied from this and the tomb of Adrian, plundering the ill-defended subjects of Pope Innocent IV. till they were taken and hanged from the walls by Brancaleone, the Roman senator. It is built with prodigious strength. We stooped in passing under the low archway, and emerged into the round chamber within -a lofty room, open to the sky, in the circular wall of which there is a niche for a single body. Nothing could exceed the delicacy and fancy with which Childe Harold muses on this spot; and, feeling that his speculations must quite supersede our own, we seated ourselves upon the ivied stone," and perused with increased feelings of delight his glorious stanzas.

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The lofty turrets command a wide view of the Campagna, the long aqueducts stretching past at a short distance, and forming a chain of noble arches from Rome to the mountains of Albano. Cole's picture of the Roman Campagna, as seen from one of these elevations, is, I think, one of the finest landscapes ever painted.

Just below the tomb of Metella, in a flat valley, lie the extensive ruins of what is called the "Circus of Caracalla " by some, and the "Circus of Romulus" by others-a scarcely distinguishable heap of walls and marble, halfburied in the earth and moss; and not far off stands a beautiful ruin of a small temple dedicated (as some say) to

Ridicule. One smiles to look at it. If the embodying of that which is powerful, however, should make a deity, the dedication of a temple to Ridicule is far from amiss. In our age, particularly, one would think, the lamp should be re-lit, and the reviews should repair the temple. Poor Keats sleeps in his grave scarce a mile from the spota human victim, sacrificed, not long ago, upon its most ruthless altar.

In the same valley, almost hidden with the luxuriant ivy waving before the entrance, flows the lovely fountain of Egeria, trickling as clear and musical into its pebbly bed as when visited by the enamoured successor of Romulus twentyfive centuries ago! The hill above leans upon the single arch of the small temple which embosoms it, and the green soft meadow spreads away from the floor, with the brightest verdure conceivable. We wound around by a half-worn path in descending the hill, and, putting aside the long branches of ivy, entered an antique chamber sprinkled with quivering spots of sunshine, at the extremity of which, upon a kind of altar, lay the broken and defaced statue of the nymph. The fountain poured from beneath in two streams, as clear as crystal. In the sides of the temple were six empty niches, through one of which stole, from a cleft in the wall, a little stream which had wandered from its way. Flowers, pale with growing in the shade, sprang from the edges of the rivulet as it wound about; the small creepers, dripping with moisture, hung from between the diamond-shaped stones of the roof; the air was refreshingly cool; and the leafy door at the entrance, seen against the sky, looked of a transparent green, as vivid as emerald. No fancy could create a sweeter spot. The fountain, and the inspiration it breathed into Childe Harold, are worthy of each other.

Just above the fountain, on the crest of a hill, stands a thick grove, supposed to occupy the place of the consecrated wood in which Numa met the nymph. It is dark with shadow, and full of birds, and might afford a fitting retreat for meditation to another king and law-giver. The fields about it are so thickly studded with flowers, that you cannot step without crushing them, and the whole neighbourhood seems a favourite of nature. The rich banker, Torlonia,

has bought this and several other classic spots about Rome -possessions for which he is more to be envied than for his purchased dukedom.

All the travelling world assembles at Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week. Naples, Florence, and Pisa, send their hundreds of annual visitors, and the hotels and palaces are crowded with strangers of every nation and rank. It would be difficult to imagine a gayer or busier place than this usually sombre city has become within a few days.

LETTER XV.

PALM SUNDAY-SISTINE CHAPEL-ENTRANCE OF THE POPE-THE CHOIR-THE POPE ON HIS THRONE-PRESENTING THE PALMS

PROCESSION-HOLY TUESDAY-THE MISERERÉ-ACCIDENTS IN THE CROWD-TENEBRÆ-THE EMBLEMATIC CANDLES—A SOIRÉE -HOLY THURSDAY-FRESCOS OF MICHAEL ANGELO-"CREATION OF EVE"-" LOT INTOXICATED"-DELPHIC SIBYL-POPE WASHING PILGRIMS' FEET-POPE AND CARDINALS WAITING UPON PILGRIMS AT DINNER.

MARCH, 1833.

PALM Sunday opens the ceremonies. We drove to the Vatican this morning at nine, and, after waiting a halfhour in the crush, kept back, at the point of the spear, by the pope's Swiss guard, I succeeded in getting an entrance into the Sistine chapel. Leaving the ladies of the party behind the grate, I passed two more guards, and obtained a seat among the cowled and bearded dignitaries of the Church and State within, where I could observe the ceremony with ease.

He

The pope entered, borne in his gilded chair by twelve men, and, at the same moment, the chaunting from the Sistine choir commenced with one long, piercing note, by a single voice, producing the most impressive effect. mounted his throne as high as the altar opposite him, and the cardinals went through their obeisances, one by one, their trains supported by their servants, who knelt on the lower steps behind them. The palms stood in a tall heap beside the altar. They were beautifully woven in wands

of perhaps six feet in length, with a cross at the top. The cardinal nearest the papal chair mounted first, and a palm was handed him. He laid it across the knees of the pope, and, as his Holiness signed the cross upon it, he stooped, and kissed the embroidered cross upon his foot, then kissed the palm, and, taking it in his two hands, descended with it to his seat. The other forty or fifty cardinals did the same, until each was provided with a palm. Some twenty other persons, monks of apparent clerical rank of every order, military men, and members of the Catholic embassies, followed and took palms. A procession was then formed, the cardinals going first with their palms held before them, and the pope following, in his chair, with a small frame of palm-work in his hands, in which was woven the initial of the Virgin. They passed out of the Sistine chapel, the choir chaunting most delightfully, and, having made a tour around the vestibule, returned in the same order.

With all the vast crowd of strangers in Rome, I went to the Sistine chapel on Holy Tuesday, to hear the farfamed Misereré. It is sung several times during the holy week, by the pope's choir, and has been described by travellers, of all nations, in the most rapturous terms. The vestibule was the scene of shocking confusion for an hour; a constant struggle going on between the crowd and the Swiss guard, amounting occasionally to a fight, in which ladies fainted, children screamed, men swore, and, unless by force of contrast, the minds of the audience seemed likely to be little in tune for the music. The chamberlains at last arrived, and two thousand people attempted to get into a small chapel which scarce holds four hundred. Coat-skirts, torn cassocks, hats, gloves, and fragments of ladies' dresses were thrown up by the suffocating throng, and, in the midst of a confusion beyond description, the mournful notes of the tenebræ (or lamentations of Jeremiah) poured in full volume from the choir. Thirteen candles burned in a small pyramid within the paling of the altar; and twelve of these, representing the apostles, were extinguished, one by one, (to signify their desertion at the cross,) during the singing of the tenebræ. The last, which was left burning, represented the mother of Christ. As the last before this was extinguished, the music ceased. The crowd had, by this