nset, after
having walked all the way from Rome, "I almost felt as if the sun
would never rise again, but look its last that night upon a ruined
world."

We can picture St. Paul's memorable journey from Puteoli to Rome by
this route. The thought that the eye of the great apostle must have
rested upon the same features of the landscape, and many of the same
objects, though now in ruins, that we still behold, invests them with
an indescribable charm. From beyond the gates of Albano, near which
stood the lofty tomb of Pompey, whose ashes had only recently been
brought from the scene of his murder in Egypt, by his devoted wife
Cornelia, he would obtain his first glimpse of Rome. And if now it is
the most thrilling moment in a man's life to see Rome in its ruin,
what must it have been to see it then in its glory! We can imagine
that, with the profound emotion of his Master when gazing upon the
splendour of Jerusalem from the slope of Olivet, St. Paul would look
down from that spot on the capital of the world, and see before him
the signs of a magnificence never before or since equalled; but alas!
as he knew well, a magnificence that was only the iridescence of
social and spiritual corruption, as the pomp of the sepulchres of the
Appian Way was but the shroud of death. Doubtless with a sad and
pitying heart, he would be led by the cohort of soldiers along the
street of tombs, then the most crowded approach to a city of nearly
two millions of souls; tombs whose massiveness and solidity were but a
vain craving for immortality, and whose epitaphs were the most deeply
touching of all epitaphs, on account of the profound despair with
which they bade their eternal farewell. Entering into Rome through the
Porta Capena; and winding through the valley between the Coelian and
Aventine hills, crowded with temples and palaces, he would be brought
to the Forum, then a scene of indescribable grandeur; and from thence
he would be finally transferred to the charge of Burrus, the prefect
of the imperial guards, at the praetorium of Nero's palace, on the
Palatine. And here he disappears from our view. We only know of a
certainty that for two whole years "he dwelt in his own hired house,
and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God,
and teaching those things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all
confidence, no man forbidding him."

Of all the splendid associations of the Appian Way, along which
history may be sai