egio Romano and Father Perrone--An American Student--The
English Protestant Chapel--Preaching there--American
Chaplain--Collection in Rome for Building a Cathedral in
London--Sermon on Immaculate Conception in Church of Gesu--Ave
Maria--Family Worship in Hotel--Early Christians of Rome--Paul.

I have already mentioned my arrival at midnight, and how thankful I was
to find an open door and an empty bed at the Hotel d'Angleterre. The
reader may guess my surprise and joy at discovering next morning that I
had slept in a chamber adjoining that of my friend Mr Bonar, from whom I
had parted, several weeks before, at Turin. After breakfast, we sallied
out to see the Catacombs. I had found Rome in cloud and darkness on the
previous night; and now, after a deceitful morning gleam, the storm
returned with greater violence than ever. Torrents swept the streets;
the lightning was flashing on the old monuments; fearful peals of
thunder were rolling above the city; and we were compelled oftener than
once during our ride to seek the shelter of an arched way from the
deluge of rain that poured down upon us. Skirting the base of the
Palatine, and emerging on the Via Appia, we arrived at the Baths of
Caracalla, which we had resolved to visit on our way to the Catacombs.
No words can describe the ghastly grandeur of this stupendous ruin,
which, next to the Coliseum, is the greatest in Rome. Besides its
saloons, theatre, and libraries, it contained, it is said, sixteen
hundred chairs for bathers. As was its pristine splendour, so now is its
overthrow. Its cyclopean walls, and its vast chambers, the floors of
which are covered to the depth of some twelve or twenty feet with fallen
masses of the mosaic ceiling, like immense boulders which have rolled
down from some mountain's top, are spread over an area of about a mile
in circuit. The ruins, here capped with sward and young trees, there
rising in naked jagged turrets like Alpine peaks, had a romantic effect,
which was not a little heightened by the alternate darkness of the
thunder-cloud that hung above them, and the incessant play of the
lightning among their worn pinnacles.

Resuming our course along the Appian Way, we passed the tomb of the
Scipios; and, making our exit by the Sebastian gate, we came, after a
ride of two miles in the open country, to the basilica of San
Sebastiano, erected over the entrance to the Catacombs. Pulling a bell
which hung in the vestibu