im, and others who were admitted at this place to
join his suite. They were in the second story of the building, and the
Pope was in the act of addressing them, when suddenly the old floor,
unable to support the unaccustomed weight, gave way, and most of the
company fell with it to the floor below. The Pope was thrown down, but
did not fall through. The moment was one of great confusion and alarm,
the etiquette of the court was disturbed, but no person was killed and
no one dangerously hurt. In common language and in Roman belief, it was
a miraculous escape. The Pope, attributing his safety to the protection
of the Virgin and of St. Agnes, determined at once that the convent
should be rebuilt and reoccupied, and the church restored. The work
is now complete, and all the ancient charm of time and use, all the
venerable look of age and quiet, have been laboriously destroyed, and
gaudy, inharmonious color, gilding and polish have been substituted in
their place.

The debased taste and the unfeeling ignorance of restorers have been
employed, as so often in Italy, to spoil and desecrate the memorials
of the past; and the munificence of Pius, _Munificentia Pii IX._, is
placarded on the inner walls. One is too frequently reminded at Rome of
the old and new lamps in the story of Aladdin.

We turn reluctantly from the Nomentan Way, and passing through Rome,
we go out of the gate which opens on the Appian. About a mile from the
present wall, just where the road divides before coming to the Catacombs
of St. Callixtus, a little, ugly, white church, of the deformed
architecture of the seventeenth century, recalls, by its name of _Domine
quo vadis?_ "O Lord, whither goest thou?" one of the most impressive,
one of the earliest and simplest, of the many legends of the legendary
religious annals of Rome. It relates, that, at the time of the
persecution of Nero, St. Peter, being then in Rome, was persuaded to fly
secretly from the city, in the hope of escaping from the near peril.
Just as he reached this place, trembling, we may well believe, not more
with fear than with doubt, while past scenes rose vividly before him,
and the last words heard from his Master's lips came with a flood of
self-reproach into his heart,--as he hurried silently along, with head
bowed down, in the gray twilight, he became suddenly aware of a presence
before him, and, looking up, beheld the form of that beloved Master whom
he was now a second time denying. He