nded hospitality to men of his
own sentiments and habit of thought; and transformed the old
_lararium_ into a chapel of S. Andrew. The place, which was governed
by the rule of S. Benedict, became known as the "Monastery of S.
Andrew in the street of Scaurus." The typical plan of a Roman palace
was not altered; the atrium, accessible to the clients and guests of
the monks, is described as having in the centre a "wonderful and most
salubrious" spring, no doubt the "spring of Mercury" of classical
times. It still exists, in a remote and hardly accessible corner of
the garden, but its waters are no longer believed to be
miracle-working, nor are they sought by crowds of ailing pilgrims as
formerly. Time has brought other changes upon this cluster of
buildings. In 1633 cardinal Scipione Borghese completed its
modernization by raising the facade, which does so little honor to him
and his architect, Giovanni Soria. But let us pause on the top of the
staircase which leads to it, with our faces towards the Palatine;
there is no more impressive sight in the whole of Rome. Placed as we
are between the Baths of Caracalla, the Circus Maximus, the dwelling
of the emperors, and the Coliseum, with the Via Triumphalis at our
feet, we can hardly realize the wonderful transformation of men and
things. From the hill beyond us the generals who led the Roman armies
to the conquest of the world took their departure; from this modest
monastery went a handful of humble missionaries who were to preach the
gospel and to bring civilization into countries far beyond the
boundary line of the Roman empire. Of their success in the British
Islands we have monumental evidence everywhere in Rome. Here in the
vestibule of this very church is engraved the name of Sir Edward
Carne, one of the Commissioners sent by Henry VIII. to obtain the
opinion of foreign universities respecting his divorce from Catherine
of Aragon; and, not far from it, that of Robert Pecham, who died in
1567, an exile for his faith, and left his substance to the poor.

These, however, are comparatively recent memories. In the vestibule of
S. Peter's, not far from the original grave of Gregory the Great, we
should have found that of a British king, reckoned among the saints in
the old martyrologies, who had come in grateful acknowledgment of the
double civilization which his native island had received from pagan
and Christian Rome.[111] Under the date of 688 the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle re