grosser sense. At any rate the disembodied shadow is nearest to the
soul.

* * * * *

From the "French and Italian Note Books."

=_302._= A DUNGEON OF ANCIENT ROME.

We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison,
one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served
the Romans as a state prison for hundreds of years before the Christian
era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have
languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha
starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and methinks, there
can not be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black
memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I
suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath.
It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so
obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,--the
stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The
custode showed us a stone post at the side of the cell, with the hole in
the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened;
and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor,
which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the Saint to
baptize his jailor. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought,
inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet.
However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these
matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and
wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the
prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more, gives a
sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an
iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip;
and, what is very, remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost
brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect
that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities
according to the faith of those who drink it.

* * * * *

=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.)

From "Eutaw, a Sequel to The Foragers."

=_303._= THE BATTLE OF EUTAW.

Up to this moment nothing had seemed more certain than the victory of
the Americans. The consternation in the British camp was complete.