have been made. Considerable confusion had but for those dear to them; 5ʼn ev Ɖew, vivat been introduced in the names or designations in Domino, vivat in Deo; sometimes vivat of the cemeteries lying between the Via La- in Oew, and similar expressions." tina, the Via Appia, and the Via Ardentina; but the Salzburg Pilgrims distinctly affirmed that the entrance to the Catacomb of St. Calixtus was on the right of the Appian Way, somewhat nearer to the city than the Church of St. Sebastian, the Prætesta Catacomb being to the north, and that of St. Domitilla to the south. They also stated the names of the principal persons buried there, and in particular referred to the Pontifical crypt which they said contained the tombs of at least four of the Popes of the third century, whilst St. Cornelius and St. Cæcilia were interred in other parts of the cemetery. In one of these, not mentioned by M. Perret, the name of Sophronia repeatedly occurs, evidently traced by the same hand. "Sophronia, dulcis Sophronia," marks the track of the faithful pilgrim along the walls, until at length, in the crypt of St. Cornelius, which is in one of the most remote parts of the catacomb, the same touching remembrance occurs, with this addition, "Sophronia, dulcis Sophronia, vivis in Deo!" "By these and similar indications Cavaliere di Rossi was guided in the researches which have lately been crowned with still more remarkable success. A scaircase, partly of the fourth century, now conducts the traveller by about twenty-four steps to a passage broader than the galleries of the dead usually are, and thence to a "Down to the year 1854 it was almost uni- sepulchral chamber. On the sides of this versally believed that the centre of the ceme-chamber are tombs bearing in rude letters the tery of St. Calixtus was in the excavations names of ANTEP2C (a.D. 235), FABIANUS under the basilica of St. Sebastian. The (A.D. 236), LYCIOY (Lucius, A.D. 226), and tombs of the pontiffs interred in that cata- EUTYCHIANUS (A.D. 275). Each of these comb were shown there, and St. Urban was names is followed by the short designation supposed to have deposited the body of St. Cæcilia-inter collegas episcopos-in the EPIS. ET. MAR. Dean Milman expresses an same place. Since that time, M. di Rossi, relying on authentic monuments, has combated the prevailing opinion, and proved that the tombs of the pontiffs and of St. Cæcilia are under certain vineyards on the Appian Way. The excavations made under his directions have demonstrated the truth of his views. We borrow from the text of M. Perret's work the following succinct account of these researches : opinion that Fabian is the first Bishop of Rome whose martyrdom is historically authenticated; but it will be observed that in this crypt the tomb of Fabian is found side by side with his immediate predecessor Anteros, Cornelius lay in another part of the same "In this vineyard stands an ancient edifice, cemetery, and Lucius, who succeeded Cornewhich (though now used as a farm building) lius, lay beside Fabian. The history of these may be regarded as an ancient Christian ba- early bishops is doubtless very obscure, but silica. Near this edifice is a large staircase that they actually existed, and were bishops leading to the upper level of the cemetery, and martyrs of the Church in Rome, may be but, till lately, blocked up with earth and fairly inferred from the discovery of tombs ruins. An immense quantity of rubbish bearing their names and titles in the very closed the approaches and the crypts to which this staircase originally led. No sooner place of sepulture where they were stated to had a few feet of the chief entrance been have been interred. The title of "martyr" cleared, than a fine range of masonry was was however sometimes applied to those who discovered, reaching to the level of the soil. lived under the persecutions, though without On the right a large door opened upon a enduring actual martyrdom. All these precrypt which was equally full of earth and lates are mentioned by Tillemont in the third rubbish but the stucco of the vault was soon volume of his Ecclesiastical History, and the laid bare and found to be covered with Greek fact of their interment in the cemetery of St. and Latin inscriptions, scratched upon it by the numerous pilgrims who had visited this Calixtus is particularly noticed. spot, an evident proof that it was one of The central tomb under the arcosolium of peculiar importance. Most of the inscrip- this crypt is nameless and empty; but as it is tions were mere names or monograms scratched known that Pope Sixtus II. was buried in on the plaster. Thus, a certain Elaphis had this catacomb, after having suffered martyrwritten Fyadov eiç uvelav exere,-a Dionysius, dom under the Emperor Valerian, A.D. 258, Διονούσιν εις μνείαν έχετε. Some of them were invocations of the pilgrims, not for themselves, in the adjoining galleries of the Prætesta, : there is a strong presumption that this was tion of the whole tablet, which had been his grave. This presumption is fortified by a shattered into one hundred and twenty-six striking piece of evidence. Pope Damasus, fragments, the entire inscription was recovered, towards the close of the fourth century, ren- and may now be seen as legible as when Pope dered himself remarkable for the care he be- Demasus had it executed some fourteen hunstowed on the sacred edifices of Rome, for his dred and fifty years ago. skill in composing a species of bastard epigram, and for his zeal in having these compositions cut in marble in Roman letters of a peculiar form and of extreme elegance. The inscriptions of Pope Damasus are some of the most beautiful in the world, and the hand of the workman he employed is so peculiar that it is almost impossible to mistake it when once it is known. A fac-simile of one of them is given with great success by M. Perret, vol. v. plate 39. Many of the original inscriptions have of course perished, but they are preserved in considerable numbers by contemporary historians, and amongst them the following lines are recorded. They were written by the Pope to be placed in or over a sepulchral chamber in the cemetery of St. Calixtus, and they describe the holy persons interred there, with whose remains Damasus was too modest to confound his own. rem, Hic fateor Damasus volui mea condere membra, Sed cineres timui sanctos vexare piorum." What had become of this celebrated monumental inscription, which was, as it were, the title and frontispiece of the catacomb itself? Our antiquarian readers will sympathize with the excitement of Cavaliere di Rossi when he found, amongst the rubbish cleared from the chapel, a broken fragment of a marble tablet containing the word "Hic" in Damasian characters, three times repeated, one below the other. The commencement of the fourth, fifth, and sixth lines of the well-known inscription flashed on his mind; and, in short, after a careful search, and an ingenious reconstruc Supposed by Cavaliere di Rossi to be Pope Melchiades, who lay in another crypt of the same catacomb. The discoveries made in this catacomb did not end here. It was stated by the Salzburg Itineraries and by other authorities, that Cornelius, who succeeded to the see of Rome next after the martyrdom of Fabian (A.D. 249), was interred in a remote part of the same cemetery. During the earlier excavations a broken slab had been discovered with the syllables LIUS . . . TYR. . . . upon it, and this had been deposited in the Kircherian Museum. Some time afterwards the other portions of the same slab, with the syllables CORNE. . . MAR . . . found to have been built in an adjoining wall. The two fragments fitted, and now form the tablet which once covered the grave of CORNELIUS, MARTYR.* Hard by the spot is a rude wall painting representing the saint, and by his side St. Cyprian, whose name is introduced; a remarkable confirmation of the intimacy between these two eminent men, who resisted, with equal firmness, the progress of the Novatian heresy, the one in Carthage, the other, in Rome; and both died the death of martyrs. were The legend of St. Cæcilia has been so disguised by the Roman martyrologists, that it is difficult to establish for her a positive historical character. Yet some of the particulars of her reputed life and death are confirmed by evidence which demonstrate, at least, the anti quity of her story. The church of St. Cæcilia in Trastevere, was certainly in existence in the year 500, when Pope Symmachus held a council there. It was then believed to have been erected on the site of the mansion of Cæcilia herself, and the chapel in which she is supposed to have suffered the first attempt on her life, still contains the conduits for steam or hot air, showing it to have formed part of the baths of a Roman palace. The legend goes on to relate that after she had converted her husband, Valerian, to the faith, he and his brother were first put to death, and buried by her care in the cemetery of St. Calixtus. Her own execution speedily followed; and having chia on the 14th September, 252, and was buried in *Cornelius suffered martyrdom at Civita Vec St. Calixtus' cemeteries. wall may be seen the painted figure of a woman (an object of unfrequent occurrence in the Christian cemeteries), by whose side stands a venerable figure designated by the name of Urban. Whether, therefore, "divine Cæcilia," is to be regarded as myth of the Romish Church, or whether a martyr of that name was actually interred there under the circumstances described, there is a chain of direct evidence connecting the present tomb, which was erected only two centuries and a half ago, with the remains existing in the Catacombs probably as early as the third century. distributed her goods to the poor, and desired |chral chamber. Here lay an open tomb, from that her house might be converted into a place which the body had been removed, and on the of Christian worship, she too expired, and was buried by St. Urban in the same catacomb. The story is a touching and a graceful one; but, as Tillemont observes, there is no evidence that she ever saw St. Urban at all; and he conjectures that she suffered in Sicily about the year 178. However, he adds, with real or affected submission to authority, "il nous suffit" that the Church placed her in all its oldest martyrologies and in the Litanies of the Saints. Our present concern is not with the saint, but with the tomb which was believed to contain her remains-whether apocryphal or not is immaterial. The records of the pilgrims relate, that in the seventh century the tomb of Cæcilia was resorted to as a place of great sanctity within the sepulchral chamber of the Popes. In the ninth century, Pope Paschal I. removed her remains to the church consecrated to her within the city.; and, to descend to more recent times, when we find ourselves within reach of actual testimony, the sarcophagus in which these remains were placed by Paschal, was opened with great solemnity, in the year 1599, in the presence of Cardinal Baronius, who has left an exact description of the ceremony and of the appearance of the body. "She was lying within a coffin of cypress wood, enclosed in a marble sarcophagus, not in the manner of one dead and buried, but on her right side, as one asleep; and in a very modest attitude, covered with a simple stuff of taffety, having her head bound with cloth, and at her feet the remains of the cloth of gold and silk which Pope Paschal found in her original tomb." This attitude was seized with great felicity by the sculptor Stefano Maderno, who executed the recumbent figure which may still be seen over her shrine. Could then any traces be found of the crypt in the catacomb of St. Calixtus, in which the alleged body of St. Cæcilia was originally deposited, and where-whether it was authentic or spurious-it certainly was held in high veneration for several centuries anterior to the removal by Pope Paschal? We have already mentioned that this crypt was recorded to be within the Potifical Chamber, and, a closer search being recently made, traces of a passage were discovered by Cavaliere di Rossi on the left hand of the arcosolium; the passage was cleared, and found to lead into an inner sepul This example may serve to show the nature and effect of the last change the Catacombs were destined to undergo. We have seen that from the fourth to the eighth centuries, they had become the resort of innumerable pilgrims, and the plaster or soft tufa of the walls is still marked in a thousand places with the graffiti or scratches of those, who, like more modern visitors, seem in all ages to have had a passion for leaving their names to be deciphered by posterity. But, towards the ninth century, partly from fear of the incursions of barbarians, especially of the Lombards, partly from a desire to give additional sanctity to the churches and shrines within the city of Rome, the popes encouraged the removal of the remains of the early Christians from their real places of interment to other sanctuaries. The progress of superstition had led to the belief that every altar ought, if possible, to be consecrated by the relics of a martyr. The Catacombs afforded an inexhaustible supply of these memorials; the chain of local evidence which gave an interest and a meaning to the actual tombs of the early Christians, was altogether broken; the cemeteries were literally rifled, and their contents were promiscuously transferred to the marble altars and the gilded shrines of a faith widely different from that simple creed for which so many of them had died.* *This most objectionable practice has not only prevailed throughout the later ages of the Romish Church, but, we are sorry to say, is not even now entirely abandoned. Dr. Wordsworth has recently exposed in his "Notes in Paris," published in 1854, a most remarkable case of this kind, which complain. Some time ago the following inscripforcibly illustrates the gross abuse of which we tion was discovered in the Catacombs of Rome near the Via Salaria: credulity of another, it is not surprising that the result has been injurious to religion and debasing to mankind. The more curious therefore, is it to compare the simplicity of the original tombs and the humility of their evangelical ornaments, with the prodigious superstructure raised by Rome on this founda tion. But in removing the remains of the early Christians to more pompous receptacles, the popes appear to have been unconscious that they were destroying part of the actual historical evidence of the primitive Church; to substitute one tomb for another is to raise grave doubts of the authenticity of both. This transformation seems to us to explain, | appears to have followed from its origin in in a very striking manner, some of the char- these very Catacombs; and when it is conacteristic practices of the later Romish Church, | sidered how large are the temptations it offers from which Protestant Christians most cor- to the frauds of one class of men and to the dially dissent. Planted, as it were, in the earlier ages of the Church, within the recesses of these subterranean crypts which were dedicated to and peopled by the dead, the offices of religion began to partake in some degree of tomb-worship. The celebration of the Lord's Supper was transferred, as we have seen, from the table in front of the arcosolium to the slab behind it-retro sanctos-and beneath that slab slept a martyr, so that the very idea of the altar became connected with the relics of a saint. The churches of the Christian metropolis which arose in great number and magnificence, after the ascendency of the faith had been proclaimed, aspired to vie in sanctity with those mysterious sepulchres which had witnessed the first trials and triumphs of the Christian community. The relics and supposed remains were therefore removed; and the early Christians who had been laid centuries before in the cells of the Catacombs, anticipating certainly no earthly disinterment, were brought to the light of day, and invested with legendary histories and miraculous powers. Such was the exact course the doctrine of the veneration of saints AURELIE THEUDOSLE NAT. AMBIANA. B. M. F. We hope, on every account, that a more candid and judicious spirit now prevails in the management of this department of Christian antiquities; and the reputation of Cavaliere di Rossi as an antiquary and a scholar, stands too high for him to lend himself in any way to these devices, which are absolutely destructive of that which is of interest to the whole literary world, as long as it is reserved for the purposes of history and not prostituted to those of superstition. The publication of the entire collection of the Christian inscriptions of Rome is a great work which cannot fail to shed additional lustre on the reign of the present pontiff, who has certainly not been wanting in the encouragement and assistance he has been able to bestow on Roman archæology. The funds for the purchase of the vineyard leading to the entrance of the cemetery of St. Calixtus were provided, not without difficulty, from the Pope's own purse, and Pius IX. was one of the first persons who proceeded to visit these curious discoveries. We trust, therefore, the success of this experiment may encourage the Papal Government to re-open the Catacombs for the only legitimate purpose they can serve, namely, as the repository of the remains of the primitive Church. The different sects and opinions of The Congregation of Relics decided that this lady was a Christian, which is probable, -a martyr, which is uncertain,—a saint and a native of Amiens in France. The pope decreed that the name of St. Theudosia, a name wholly unknown even to the Roman Calendar, should be added to the ritual of the church of Amiens: and her body (or what was supposed to remain of it) was actually transported to Amiens on the 12th October, 1853, and received there in the cathedral with extraordinary splendor by twenty-eight mitred prelates. Cardinal Wiseman preached the first sermon on the occasion. All this rests on the assumption, made in defiance of the laws of grammar, that the words NAT. AMBIANA agree with "Thieudosia" and mean, as the Abbé Gerbert the present day may find in these memorials says, "née Amienoise." Dr. Wordsworth, how-various meanings; but as long as they are Ambiana-a more correct form of expression-preserved in their genuine simplicity, they meaning that she was of the nation of the Ambiani. cannot fail to add an interesting page to the Amiens was called Samanobria and not Ambianum records of mankind. ever, suggests that these words stand for "Natione until the time of Gratian (A.D. 382), when the age of martyrdom had long passed away. to think him as tame as a kitten, gave him, by way of peace-offering, bits of meat with our fingers, and some of the bolder among us even ventured to stroke his speckled breast. This, however, was not done without some apprehension, for he had sharp claws, and his beak was formidable. When he had already been with us eight or ten days, we came in sight of Etna, towering ten thousand feet into the blue firmament, and with its deep, snowy cap looking like a stationary cloud. The falcon no doubt saw it much sooner than we did; but he had been kindly treated, and was doubtless loath to break hospitable ties. But when liberty or servitude was the question, he could not long hesitate; and, after wheeling twice or thrice about the ship, as if to take an affectionate leave of us, he rose aloft, plunged into space, and disappeared in the direction of the great mountain. We could not blame him, though, as he had grown friendly and familiar, we much regretted his departure. From Chambers's Journal. VISITANTS OF SHIPS AT SEA. ALL persons who have made long voyages especially in land-locked seas and on board of sailing vessels, must remember painfully the wearisomeness of protracted calms. But travellers who have a turn for natural history, often find amusement in circumstances which kill others with ennui. At particular seasons of the year, a ship proceeding, for instance, to the Mediterranean, has no sooner been two or three days out at sea, than the passengers observe birds of various kinds perched upon the rigging. Fatigue is generally supposed to be the cause of these visits, though we cannot always have recourse to this explanation, since even when the shore is near at hand, these little explorers of strange things will come and display their beauty to the mariner, reminding him of green woods and sunny glades, in the midst of vast billows, and the watery waste. We believe that hawks and falcons are not usually reckoned among migratory birds; yet it is certain that they sometimes cross the Mediterranean where it is broadest, as well from Africa to Europe as from Europe to Africa. One day in summer, lying almost midway between Marmorice and Greece, we observed a golden falcon coming up swiftly from the south, and resting upon the top-gallant-sail-yard. As he remained there a considerable time, we inferred that he meant to make the passage to Europe in our company; and a young sailor went up to do the honors of the ship, and invite him to descend. Having evidently had enough of flying, the falcon made no objection. He suffered himself to be taken without the least resistance; and when brought down to the-they have travelled far, and need a little deck, looked about him, as we thought, with repose. Unfortunately, sailors have formed tokens of pleasure. Perhaps he detected the smell of meat; and certainly when some was offered him, the voracity with which he fell upon it suggested the probability that we were indebted for the pleasures of his company to hunger rather than weariness. Some of the old Dutch navigators being, like the rest of their countrymen, possessed strongly by the love of gardening, often used to make the attempt to indulge in the pleasures of horticulture on board ship. They made large, long, and deep boxes, filled them with fine earth, and raised for themselves cresses and other salads during their voyages to the east. When the keen-eyed birds perceived, as they could from a great distance, these little floating patches of verdure, they often alighted on the vessels to examine them. But most of the visits paid to ships by birds are owing to precisely the same motive as makes wayfarers pause at an inn on the road a strange theory respecting the appearance of birds in the neighborhood of their vessels, on their sails, or among the rigging; they look upon them as the sure forerunner of storms. Even the most observant travellers are sometimes betrayed-by putting confiBeing treated with much kindness, he dence in old sea-faring men, usually full of showed no desire to quit us, though allowed prejudice and superstition-into sharing this his full freedom. He flew fore and aft, soared up to the vane, and then, when he thought proper, came down like an arrow. Everybody on board was amused with him, and loved to gaze at his large bright eyes as he watched every thing around him, or turned up quick glances at the clouds. We began belief. An able naturalist, sailing out of the Baltic, observed, just before losing sight of the island of Gothland a small gray bird of the sparrow tribe following the ship, upon which the captain said they should certainly have bad weather. Accordingly, in less than half an hour, the wind rose, the sea ran high, |