blocks of this material
were found some years ago at the Marmorata which had been originally
imported from Parthia in the reign of Hadrian. One of them was
employed by the Jesuits, when cut up into thin slices, in ornamenting
the principal altar in the church of Il Gesu. One of the chambers in
the Baths of Titus was paved with slabs of the finest lapis
lazula--the _Lapis Cyanus_ of the ancients--derived from the spoils of
the Golden House of Nero, and originally procured by order of the
luxurious tyrant from Persia and the neighbourhood of Lake Baikal. We
can trace fragments of this exquisite pavement in the decoration of
the chapel of St. Ignatius in the Church of the Jesuits. The globe,
three feet in diameter, over the altar, beneath which repose the
remains of Ignatius Loyola, is sheathed with this most precious stone,
whose brilliant blue, contrasting with the white marble of the group
of the Trinity--one of whose members holds it in His hands--has a
splendid effect. The rare and costly marbles with which the Church of
Il Gesu is profusely adorned were mostly taken from the ruins of the
Baths of Titus by Cardinal Farnese in 1568. From the same source came
also the magnificent sarcophagus, sheathed with lapis lazula, under
the altar of St. Ignazio, which holds the body of St. Luigi Gonzaga.

But it is impossible, within the limits of this chapter, to describe
fully the relics of other precious and beautiful stones which may be
found among the ruins of ancient Rome, or among the churches to which
they have been transferred. Profuse as were the ancient Romans in
their general expenditure, upon no objects did they lavish their
wealth so extravagantly as upon their favourite marbles and precious
stones for the decoration of their public buildings and their private
houses. No effort was spared that Rome might be adorned with the
richest treasures of the mineral kingdom from all parts of the world.
Slaves and criminals were made to minister to this luxury in the
various quarries of the Roman dominions, which were the penal
settlements of antiquity. The antiquary Ficoroni counted the columns
in Rome in the year 1700, and he found no less than eight thousand
existing entire; and yet these were but a very small proportion of the
number that must once have been there. The palaces and modern churches
of Rome owe, as I have said, all their ornaments to this passion of
the ancients. There is not a doorstep nor a guardstone at the