ll the pictures contained in them,
built and painted, since the fourteenth century, we might hope to gain
some better view of the Christians who lived above the catacombs, and
were buried in them. It is from the catacombs that we must seek all that
is left to enable us to construct the image that we desire.

On other graves beside those of the martyrs there are often found some
little signs by which they could be easily recognized by the friends who
might wish to visit them again. Sometimes there is the impression of a
seal upon the mortar; sometimes a ring or coin is left fastened into
it; often a _terra-cotta_ lamp is set in the cement at the head of the
grave. Touching, tender memorials of love and piety! Few are left now in
the opened catacombs, but here and there one may be seen in its original
place,--the visible sign of the sorrow and the faith of those who
seventeen or eighteen centuries ago rested upon that support on which we
rest to-day, and found it, in hardest trial, unfailing.

But the galleries of the catacombs are not wholly occupied with graves.
Now and then they open on either side into chambers (_cubicula_) of
small dimension and of various form, scooped out of the rock, and
furnished with graves around their sides,--the burial-place arranged
beforehand for some large family, or for certain persons buried with
special honor. Other openings in the rock are designed for chapels, in
which the burial and other services of the Church were performed. These,
too, are of various sizes and forms; the largest of them would hold but
a small number of persons;[F] but not unfrequently two stand opposite
each other on the passage-way, as if one were for the men and the other
for the women who should be present at the services. Entering the chapel
through a narrow door whose threshold is on a level with the path, we
see at the opposite side a recess sunk in the rock, often semicircular,
like the apsis of a church, and in this recess an _arcosolium_,--which
served at the same time as the grave of a martyr and as the altar of the
little chapel. It seems, indeed, as if in many cases the chapel had been
formed not so much for the general purpose of holding religious service
within the catacombs, as for that of celebrating worship over the
remains of the martyr whose body had been transferred from its original
grave to this new tomb. It was thus that the custom, still prevalent
in the Roman Church, of requiring that some