Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 by Various

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It is not to be supposed that the normal state of the Christian
community in Rome, during the first three centuries, was that of
suffering and alarm. A period of persecution was the exception to long
courses of calm years. Undoubtedly, during most of the time, the faith
was professed under restraint, and possibly with a sense of insecurity
which rendered it attractive to ardent souls, and preserved something
of its first sincerity. It must be remembered that the first Christian
converts were mostly from among the poorer classes, and that, however
we might have admired their virtues, we might yet have been offended by
much that was coarse and unrefined in the external exhibitions of their
religion. The same features which accompany the religious manifestations
of the uncultivated in our own days, undoubtedly, with somewhat
different aspect, presented themselves at Rome. The enthusiasms,
the visions, the loud preaching and praying, the dull iteration and
reiteration of inspired truth till all the inspiration is driven out,
were all probably to be heard and witnessed in the early Christian days
at Rome. Not all the converts were saints,--and none of them were
such saints as the Catholic painters of the last three centuries have
prostituted Art and debased Religion in producing. The real St. Cecilia
stood in the beauty of holiness before the disciples at Rome far purer
and lovelier than Raphael has painted her. Domenichino has outraged
every feeling of devotion, every sense of truth, every sympathy for the
true suffering of the women who were cruelly murdered for their faith,
in his picture of the Martyrdom of St. Agnes. It is difficult to destroy
the effect that has been produced upon one's own heart by these and
innumerable other pictures of declining Art,--pictures honored by the
Roman Church of to-day,--and to bring up before one's imagination, in
vivid, natural, and probable outline, the life and form of the converts,
saints, and martyrs of the first centuries. If we could banish all
remembrance of all the churches and all 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 relics shall be contained
within an altar before it is held to be consecrated, probably began.
Perhaps it was with some reference to that portion of the Apocalypse in
which St. John says, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were
slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And
they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true,
dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the
earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was
said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until
their fellow-servants also and their brethren that should be killed as
they were should be fulfilled."[G] At any rate, these words must have
dwelt in the memories of the Christians who came to worship God in the
presence of the dead by whom they were surrounded in the catacombs. But
they knelt before the altar-tombs, not as before altars consecrated with
relics of saints, but as before altars dedicated to God and connected
with the memory of their own honored and beloved dead, whom he had
called from them into his holy presence.

[Footnote F: These chapels are generally about ten feet square. Some are
larger, and a few smaller than this.]

[Footnote G: Revelations, vi. 9-11. It seems probable that another
custom of the Roman Church took its rise in the catacombs,--that of
burning candles on the altar; a custom simple in its origin, now turned
into a form of superstition, and often abused to the profit of priests.]

It is impossible to ascertain the date at which these chapels were first
made; probably some time about the middle of the second century they
became common. In many of the catacombs they are very numerous, and it
is in them that the chief ornaments and decorations, and the paintings
which give to the catacombs an especial value and importance in the
history of Art, and which are among the most interesting illustrations
of the state of religious feeling and belief in the early centuries, are
found. Some of the chapels are known to be of comparatively late date,
of the fourth and perhaps of the fifth century. In several even of
earlier construction is found, in addition to the altar, a niche cut out
in the rock, or a ledge projecting from it, which seems to have been
intended to serve the place of the credence table, for holding the
articles used in the service of the altar, and at a later period for
receiving the elements before they were handed to the priest for
consecration. The earliest services in the catacombs were undoubtedly
those connected with the communion of the Lord's Supper. The mystery
of the mass and the puzzles of transubstantiation had not yet been
introduced among the believers; but all who had received baptism as
followers of Christ, all save those who had fallen away into open and
manifest sin, were admitted to partake of the Lord's Supper. Possibly
upon some occasions these chapels may have been filled with the sounds
of exhortation and lamentation. In the legends of the Roman Church we
read of large numbers of Christians being buried alive, in time of
persecution, in these underground chambers where they had assembled for
worship and for counsel. But we are not aware of any proof of the truth
of these stories having been discovered in recent times. This, and
many other questionable points in the history and in the uses of the
catacombs, may be solved by the investigations which are now proceeding;
and it is fortunate for the interests, not only of truth, but of
religion, that so learned and so honest-minded a man as the Cavaliere de
Rossi should have the direction of these explorations.

Few of the chapels that are to be seen now in the catacombs are in their
original condition. As time went on, and Christianity became a corrupt
and imperial religion, the simple truths which had sufficed for the
first Christians were succeeded by doctrines less plain, but more
adapted to touch cold and materialized imaginations, and to inflame dull
hearts. The worship of saints began, and was promoted by the heads of
the Church, who soon saw how it might be diverted to the purposes of
personal and ecclesiastical aggrandizement. Consequently the martyrs
were made into a hierarchy of saintly protectors of the strayed flock of
Christ, and round their graves in the catacombs sprang up a harvest of
tales, of visions, of miracles, and of superstitions. As the Church sank
lower and lower, as the need of a heavenly advocate with God was more
and more impressed upon the minds of the Christians of those days, the
idea seems to have arisen that neighborhood of burial to the grave of
some martyr might be an effectual way to secure the felicity of the
soul. Consequently we find in these chapels that the later Christians,
those perhaps of the fifth and sixth centuries, disregarding the
original arrangements, and having lost all respect for the Art, and all
reverence for the memorial pictures which made the walls precious, were
often accustomed to cut out graves in the walls above and around the
martyr's tomb, and as near as possible to it. The instances are numerous
in which pictures of the highest interest have been thus ruthlessly
defaced. No sacredness of subject could resist the force of the
superstition; and we remember one instance where, in a picture of which
the part that remains is of peculiar interest, the body of the Good
Shepherd has been cut through for the grave of a child,--so that only
the feet and a part of the head of the figure remain.

There is little reason for supposing, as has frequently been done, that
the catacombs, even in times of persecution, afforded shelter to any
large body of the faithful. Single, specially obnoxious, or timid
individuals, undoubtedly, from time to time, took refuge in them, and
may have remained within them for a considerable period. Such at least
is the story, which we see no reason to question, in regard to several
of the early Popes. But no large number of persons could have existed
within them. The closeness of the air would very soon have rendered life
insupportable; and supposing any considerable number had collected near
the outlet, where a supply of fresh air could have reached them, the
difficulty of obtaining food and of concealing their place of retreat
would have been in most instances insurmountable. The catacombs were
always places for the few, not for the many; for the few who followed
a body to the grave; for the few who dug the narrow, dark passages in
which not many could work; for the few who came to supply the needs of
some hunted and hidden friend; for the few who in better times assembled
to join in the service commemorating the last supper of their Lord.

It is difficult, as we have said before, to clear away the obscuring
fictions of the Roman Church from the entrance of the catacombs; but
doing this so far as with our present knowledge may be done, we find
ourselves entering upon paths that bring us into near connection and
neighborhood with the first followers of the founders of our faith at
Rome. The reality which is given to the lives of the Christians of the
first centuries by acquaintance with the memorials that they have left
of themselves here quickens our feeling for them into one almost of
personal sympathy. "Your obedience is come abroad unto all men," wrote
St. Paul to the first Christians of Rome. The record of that obedience
is in the catacombs. And in the vast labyrinth of obscure galleries one
beholds and enters into the spirit of the first followers of the Apostle
to the Gentiles.

[To be continued.]

THE NEST.

MAY.

When oaken woods with buds are pink,
And new-come birds each morning sing,--
When fickle May on Summer's brink
Pauses, and knows not which to fling,
Whether fresh bud and bloom again,
Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,--

Then from the honeysuckle gray
The oriole with experienced quest
Twitches the fibrous bark away,
The cordage of his hammock-nest,--
Cheering his labor with a note
Rich as the orange of his throat.

High o'er the loud and dusty road
The soft gray cup in safety swings,
To brim ere August with its load
Of downy breasts and throbbing wings,
O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves
An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.

Below, the noisy World drags by
In the old way, because it must,--
The bride with trouble in her eye,
The mourner following hated dust:
Thy duty, winged flame of Spring,
Is but to love and fly and sing.

Oh, happy life, to soar and sway
Above the life by mortals led,
Singing the merry months away,
Master, not slave of daily bread,
And, when the Autumn comes, to flee
Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

PALINODE.--DECEMBER.

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood
Stands roofless in the bitter air;
In ruins on its floor is strewed
The carven foliage quaint and rare,
And homeless winds complain along
The columned choir once thrilled with song.

And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise
The thankful oriole used to pour,
Swing'st empty while the north winds chase
Their snowy swarms from Labrador:
But, loyal to the happy past,
I love thee still for what thou wast.

Ah, when the Summer graces flee
From other nests more dear than thou,
And, where June crowded once, I see
Only bare trunk and disleaved bough,
When springs of life that gleamed and gushed
Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed,--

I'll think, that, like the birds of Spring,
Our good goes not without repair,
But only flies to soar and sing
Far off in some diviner air,
Where we shall find it in the calms
Of that fair garden 'neath the palms.

* * * * *

EBEN JACKSON.

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thine earthly task hast done.

The large tropical moon rose in full majesty over the Gulf of Mexico,
that beneath it rolled a weltering surge of silver, which broke upon the
level sand of the beach with a low, sullen roar, prophetic of storms to
come. To-night a south wind was heavily blowing over Gulf and prairie,
laden with salt odors of weed and grass, now and then crossed by a
strain of such perfume as only tropic breezes know,--a breath of heavy,
passionate sweetness from orange-groves and rose gardens, mixed with the
miasmatic sighs of rank forests, and mile on mile of tangled cane-brake,
where jewel-tinted snakes glitter and emit their own sickly-sweet odor,
and the deep blue bells of luxuriant vines wave from their dusky censers
steams of poisonous incense.

I endured the influence of all this as long as I dared, and then turned
my pony's head from the beach, and, loitering through the city's hot
streets, touched him into a gallop as the prairie opened before us, and
followed the preternatural, colossal shadow of horse and man east by the
moon across the dry dull grass and bitter yellow chamomile growth of
the sand, till I stopped at the office door of the Hospital, when,
consigning my horse to a servant, I commenced my nightly round of the
wards.

There were but few patients just now, for the fever had not yet made
its appearance, and until within a week the unwontedly clear and cool
atmosphere had done the work of the physician. Most of the sick were
doing well enough without me; some few needed and received attention;
and these disposed of, I betook myself to the last bed in one of the
long wards, quite apart from the others, which was occupied by a sailor,
a man originally from New England, whose hard life and continual
exposure to all climates and weathers had at length resulted in slow
tubercular consumption.

It was one of the rare cases of this disease not supervening upon an
original strumous diathesis, and, had it been properly cared for in the
beginning, might have been cured. Now there was no hope; but the case
being a peculiar and interesting one, I kept a faithful record of its
symptoms and progress for publication. Besides, I liked the man; rugged
and hardy by nature, it was curious to see what strange effects a long,
wasting, and painful disease produced upon him. At first he could not be
persuaded to be quiet; the muscular energies were still unaffected, and,
with continual hemorrhage from the lungs, he could not understand that
work or exercise could hurt him. But as the disease gained ground, its
characteristic languor unstrung his force; the hard and sinewy limbs
became attenuated and relaxed; his breath labored; a hectic fever burnt
in his veins like light flame every afternoon, and subsided into chilly
languor toward morning; profuse night-sweats increased the weakness; and
as he grew feebler, offering of course less resistance to the febrile
symptoms, they were exacerbated, till at times a slight delirium showed
itself; and so, without haste or delay, he "made for port," as he said.

His name was Eben Jackson, and the homely appellation was no way belied
by his aspect. He never could have been handsome, and now fifteen
years of rough-and-tumble life had left their stains and scars on his
weather-beaten visage, whose only notable features were the deep-set
eyes retreating under shaggy brows, that looked one through and through
with the keen glance of honest instinct; while a light tattooing of red
and blue on either cheek-bone added an element of the grotesque to his
homeliness. He was a natural and simple man, with whom conventionalities
and the world's scale went for nothing,--without vanity as without
guile.--But it is best to let him speak for himself. I found him that
night very feverish, yet not wild at all.

"Hullo, Doctor!" said he, "I'm all afire! I've ben thinkin' about my old
mother's humstead up to Simsbury, and the great big well to the back
door; how I used to tilt that 'are sweep up, of a hot day, till the
bucket went 'way down to the bottom and come up drippin' over,--such
cold, clear water! I swear, I'd give all Madagascar for a drink on't!"

I called the nurse to bring me a small basket of oranges I had sent out
in the morning, expressly for this patient, and squeezing the juice from
one of them on a little bit of ice, I held it to his lips, and he drank
eagerly.

"That's better for you than water, Jackson," said I.

"I dunno but 'tis, Doctor; I dunno but 'tis; but there a'n't nothin'
goes to the spot like that Simsbury water. You ha'n't never v'yaged to
them parts, have ye?"

"Bless you, yes, man! I was born and brought up in Hartford, just over
the mountain, and I've been to Simsbury, fishing, many a time."

"Good Lord! _You_ don't never desert a feller, ef the ship _is_ a-goin'
down!" fervently ejaculated Eben, looking up as he did sometimes in his
brief delirium, when he said the Lord's Prayer, and thought his mother
held his folded hands; but this was no delirious aspiration. He went
on:--

"You see, Doctor, I've had somethin' in the hold a good spell't I wanted
to break bulk on, but I didn't know as I ever was goin' to see a shipmet
agin; and now you've jined convoy jist in time, for Davy Jones's a'n't
fur off. Are you calculatin' to go North afore long?"

"Yes, I mean to go next spring," said I.

Jackson began to fumble with weak and trembling hands about his throat,
to undo his shirt-collar,--he would not let me help him,--and presently,
flushed and panting from the effort, he drew out a length of delicate
Panama chain fastened rudely together by a link of copper wire, and
suspended on it a little old-fashioned ring of reddish gold, twisted of
two wires, and holding a very small dark garnet. Jackson looked at it as
I have seen many a Catholic look at his reliquary in mortal sickness.

"Well," said he, "I've carried that 'are gimcrack nigh twenty long year
round my old scrag, and when I'm sunk I want you to take it off, Doctor.
Keep it safe till you go to Connecticut, and then some day take a tack
over to Simsbury. Don't ye go through the Gap, but go 'long out on
the turnpike over the mountain, and down t'other side to Avon, and so
nor'ard till jist arter you git into Simsbury town you see an old red
house 'longside o' the mountain, with a big ellum-tree afore the door,
and a stone well to the side on't. Go 'long in and ask for Hetty Buel,
and give her that 'are thing, and tell her where you got it, and that I
ha'n't never forgot to wish her well allus, though I couldn't write to
her."

There was Eben Jackson's romance! It piqued my curiosity. The poor
fellow was wakeful and restless,--I knew he would not sleep, if I left
him,--and I encouraged him to go on talking.

"I will, Jackson, I promise you. But wouldn't it be better for you to
tell me something about where you have been all these long years? Your
friends will like to know."

His eye brightened; he was like all the rest of us, pleased with any
interest taken in him and his; he turned over on his pillow, and I
lifted him into a half-sitting position.

"That's ship-shape, Doctor! I don't know but what I had oughter spin a
yarn for you; I'm kinder on a watch to-night; and Hetty won't never know
what I did do, if I don't send home the log 'long 'i' the cargo.

"Well, you see I was born in them parts, down to Canton, where father
belonged; but mother was a Simsbury woman, and afore I was long-togged,
father he moved onter the old humstead up to Simsbury, when gran'ther
Peck died. Our farm was right 'longside o' Miss Buel's; you'll see't
when you go there; but there a'n't nobody there now. Mother died afore
I come away, and lies safe to the leeward o' Simsbury meetin'-house.
Father he got a stroke a spell back, and he couldn't farm it; so he sold
out and went West, to Parmely Larkum's, my sister's, to live. But I
guess the house is there, and that old well.--How etarnal hot it's
growin'! Doctor, give me a drink!

"Well, as I was tellin', I lived there next to Miss Buel's, and Hetty'n'
I went to deestrict-school together, up to the cross-roads. We used to
hev' ovens in the sand together, and roast apples an' ears of corn in
'em; and we used to build cubby-houses, and fix 'em out with broken
chiny and posies. I swan 't makes me feel curus when I think what
children du contrive to get pleased, and likewise riled about! One day I
rec'lect Hetty'd stepped onto my biggest clam-shell and broke it, and
I up and hit her a switch right across her pretty lips. Now you'd 'a'
thought she would cry and run, for she wasn't bigger than a baby, much;
but she jest come up and put her little fat arms round my neck, and
says,--

"'I'm so sorry, Eben!'

"And that's Hetty Buel! I declare I was beat, and I hav'n't never got
over bein' beat about that. So we growed up together, always out in the
woods between schools, huntin' checker-berries, and young winter-greens,
and prince's piney, and huckleberries, and saxifrax, and birch, and all
them woodsy things that children hanker arter; and by-'n'-by we got to
goin' to the 'Cademy; and when Hetty was seventeen she went in to
Hartford to her Aunt Smith's for a spell, to do chores, and get a little
Seminary larnin', and I went to work on the farm; and when she come
home, two year arter, she was growed to be a young woman, and though I
was five year older'n her, I was as sheepish a land-lubber as ever got
stuck a-goin' to the mast-head, whenever I sighted her.

"She wasn't very much for looks neither; she had black eyes, and she
was pretty behaved; but she wasn't no gret for beauty, anyhow, only
I thought the world of her, and so did her old grandmother;--for her
mother died when she wa'n't but two year old, and she lived to old Miss
Buel's 'cause her father had married agin away down to Jersey.

"Arter a spell I got over bein' so mighty sheepish about Hetty; her
ways was too kindly for me to keep on that tack. We took to goin' to
singin'-school together; then I always come home from quiltin'-parties
and conference-meetin's with her, because 'twas handy, bein' right next
door; and so it come about that I begun to think of settlin' down for
life, and that was the start of all my troubles. I couldn't take the
home farm; for 'twas such poor land, father could only jest make a live
out on't for him and me. Most of it was pastur', gravelly land, full of
mullens and stones; the rest was principally woodsy,--not hickory, nor
oak neither, but hemlock and white birches, that a'n't of no account
for timber nor firing, 'longside of the other trees. There was a little
strip of a medder-lot, and an orchard up on the mountain, where we used
to make redstreak cider that beat the Dutch; but we hadn't pastur' land
enough to keep more'n two cows, and altogether I knew 'twasn't any use
to think of bringin' a family on to't. So I wrote to Parmely's husband,
out West, to know about Government lands, and what I could do ef I was
to move out there and take an allotment; and gettin' an answer every way
favorable, I posted over to Miss Buel's one night arter milkin' to tell
Hetty. She was settin' on the south door-step, braidin' palm-leaf; and
her grandmother was knittin' in her old chair, a little back by the
window. Sometimes, a-lyin' here on my back, with my head full o' sounds,
and the hot wind and the salt sea-smell a-comin' in through the winders,
and the poor fellers groanin' overhead, I get clear away back to that
night, so cool and sweet; the air full of treely smells, dead leaves
like, and white-blows in the ma'sh below; and wood-robins singin' clear
fine whistles in the woods; and the big sweet-brier by the winder
all a-flowered out; and the drippin' little beads of dew on the
clover-heads; and the tinklin' sound of the mill-dam down to Squire
Turner's mill.

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