le, a monk appeared as our cicerone, and we
might have been pardoned a little misgiving in committing ourselves to
such a guide through the bowels of the earth. His cloak was old and
tattered, his face was scourged with scorbutic disease, misery or
flagellation had worn him to the bone, and his restless eye cast uneasy
glances on all around. He carried in his hand a little bundle of tallow
candles, as thin and worn as himself almost; and, having lighted them,
he gave one to each of us, and bade us follow. We descended with him
into the doubtful night. The place was a long shaft or corridor, dug out
of the brown tuffo rock, with the roof about two feet overhead, and the
breadth two thirds or so of the height. The descent was easy, the
turnings frequent, and light there was none, save the glimmerings of our
slender tapers. The origin of the Catacombs is still a disputed
question; but the most probable opinion is, that they were formed by
digging out the pozzolana or volcanic earth, which was used as a cement
in the great buildings of Rome. They extend in a zone round the city,
and form a labyrinth of subterranean galleries, which traverse the
Campagna, reaching, according to some, to the shore of the
Mediterranean. He who adventures into them without a guide is infallibly
lost. They speak at Rome of a professor and his students, to the number
of sixty, who entered the Catacombs fifty years ago, and have not yet
returned. Certain it is, that many melancholy accidents have occurred in
them, which have induced the Government to wall them up to a certain
extent. I had not gone many yards till I felt that I was entirely at the
mercy of the monk, and that, should he play me false, I must remain
where I was till doomsday.

But what invests the Catacombs with an interest of so touching a kind is
the fact, that here the Christian Church, in days of persecution, made
her abode. What! in darkness, and in the bowels of the earth? Yes: such
were the Christians which that age produced. At every few paces along
the galleries you see the quadrangular excavations in which the dead
were laid. There, too, are the niches in which lamps were placed, so
needful in the subterranean gloom; and occasionally there opens to your
taper a large square chamber, with its walls of dark-brownish tuffo and
its stuccoed roof, which has evidently been used for family purposes, or
as a chapel. How often has the voice of prayer and praise resounded
here! The