ive
the bones of a saint, or to become baptismal fonts. Yet not a few remained
in their desolation till the walls dropped down upon them, or the dust
covered them for centuries. In course of time the rain perforated the
uncared-for vaultings of these shady galleries. Having served for refuge to
the thief, the coiner, or the assassin, they became like dripping grottoes.

Thus stood the temples, triumphal arches, pillars, and statues before the
eyes of a young Roman noble, one out of the few patrician families still
surviving. These were the sights with which St. Gregory, who claimed
kindred with the Anician race, was familiar from his boyhood, so that the
desolation of Jerusalem rose before his mind as the state of his own Rome
pressed on his eyes and seared his heart.

This skeleton of a city was scarcely inhabited by the remnant of a people,
decimated by hunger and pestilence, and in perpetual fear to see its
ill-defended gates broken into by Lombard savages. The walls of Aurelian,
half demolished by Totila and hurriedly repaired by Belisarius, alone saved
it year after year from the horrors which fell upon captured cities; and
would not have saved it but for the indomitable spirit, the perpetual
wisdom, foresight, and courage of a son who had been exalted to the Chair
of Peter.

While Old Rome lay thus, the shadow of its former self, bereft of all
political power, looking to the imperial exarch at Ravenna for its temporal
rule, in danger moreover of inundation from its own Tiber, whose banks were
no longer maintained with unremitting care, New Rome beside the Bosporus
rioted in all the pomp and circumstance of a court still the head of a vast
empire. The tributes of all the East, of numberless cities in Asia Minor,
in Syria, in Egypt, were still borne unceasingly within its walls, which
rose as an impregnable fortress between Europe and Asia. Its emperor still
thought himself the lord of the world; its bishop assumed the title of
Ecumenical Patriarch. Both emperor and bishop cast but a disdainful glance
on the widowed rival which threatened to sink into the grave of waters
brought down by her own river. Constantinople could raise and pay armies
from all the races of the North and East. A single imperial regiment was
quartered at Rome, which, being ill-paid, became disaffected and neglectful
of its charge, and could not be counted upon by the Pope for vigorous
defence against the ever-pressing danger of a Lombard inro