Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 by Various

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A few months afterward, Pine Grove was offered for sale. He resolved to
purchase it, and give her a pleasant surprise by restoring her to her
old home, on her sixteenth birth-day. Madame Labasse, who greatly
delighted in managing mysteries, zealously aided in the preparations.
When the day arrived, Alfred proposed a long ride with Loo Loo,--in
honor of the anniversary; and during their absence, Madame, accompanied
by two household servants, established herself at Pine Grove. When
Alfred returned from the drive, he proposed to stop and look at the dear
old place, to which his companion joyfully assented. But nothing could
exceed her astonishment at finding Madame Labasse there, ready to
preside at a table spread with fruit and flowers. Her feelings
overpowered her for a moment, when Alfred said, "Dear sister, you said
you wished you could live here always; and this shall henceforth be your
home."

"You are too good!" she exclaimed, and was about to burst into tears.
But he arrested their course by saying, playfully, "Come, Loo Loo, kiss
my hand, and say, 'Thank you, Sir, for buying me.' Say it just as you
did six years ago, you little witch!"

Her swimming eyes smiled like sunshine through an April shower, and she
went through the pantomime, which she had often before performed at his
bidding. Madame stepped in with her little jest: "But, Sir, when do you
think you shall send her to that _pension_?"

"Never mind," he replied, abruptly; "Let us be happy!" And he moved
toward the table to distribute the fruit.

It was an inspiring spring-day, and ended in the loveliest of
evenings. The air was filled with the sweet breath of jessamines and
orange-blossoms. Madame touched the piano, and, in quick obedience to
the circling sound, Alfred and Loo Loo began to waltz. It was long
before youth and happiness grew weary of the revolving maze. But when at
last she complained of dizziness, he playfully whirled her out upon the
piazza, and placed her on a lounge under the Cherokee rose her mother
had trained, which was now a mass of blossoms. He seated himself in
front of her, and they remained silent for some minutes, watching the
vine-shadows play in the moonlight. As Loo Loo leaned on the balustrade,
the clustering roses hung over her in festoons, and trailed on her white
muslin drapery. Alfred was struck, as he had been many times before,
with the unconscious grace of her attitude. In imagination, he recalled
his first vision of her in early childhood, the singular circumstance
that had united their destinies, and the thousand endearing experiences
which day by day had strengthened the tie. As these thoughts passed
through his mind, he gazed upon her with devouring earnestness. She was
too beautiful, there in the moonlight, crowned with roses!

"Loo Loo, do you love me?" he exclaimed.

The vehemence of his tone startled her, as she sat there in a mood still
and dreamy as the landscape.

She sprang up, and, putting her arm about his neck, answered, "Why,
Alfred, you _know_ your sister loves you."

"Not as a brother, not as a brother, dear Loo Loo," he said,
impatiently, as he drew her closely to his breast. "Will you be my love?
Will you be my wife?"

In the simplicity of her inexperience, and the confidence induced by
long habits of familiar reliance upon him, she replied, "I will be
anything you wish."

No flower was ever more unconscious of a lover's burning kisses than she
was of the struggle in his breast.

His feelings had been purely compassionate in the beginning of their
intercourse; his intentions had been purely kind afterward; but he had
gone on blindly to the edge of a slippery precipice. Human nature should
avoid such dangerous passes.

Reviewing that intoxicating evening in a calmer mood, he was
dissatisfied with his conduct. In vain he said to himself that he had
but followed a universal custom; that all his acquaintance would have
laughed in his face, had he told them of the resolution so bravely kept
during six years. The remembrance of his mother's counsels came freshly
to his mind; and the accusing voice of conscience said, "She was a
friendless orphan, whom misfortune ought to have rendered sacred. What
to you is the sanction of custom? Have you not a higher law within your
own breast?"

He tried to silence the monitor by saying, "When I have made a little
more money, I will return to the North. I will marry Loo Loo on the way
and she shall be acknowledged to the world as my wife, as she now is in
my own soul."

Meanwhile, the orphan lived in her father's house as her mother had
lived before her. She never aided the voice of Alfred's conscience by
pleading with him to make her his wife; for she was completely satisfied
with her condition, and had undoubting faith that whatever he did was
always the wisest and the best.

[To be continued.]

CHARLEY'S DEATH.

The wind got up moaning, and blew to a breeze;
I sat with my face closely pressed on the pane;
In a minute or two it began to rain,
And put out the sunset-fire in the trees.

In the clouds' black faces broke out dismay
That ran of a sudden up half the sky,
And the team, cutting ruts in the grass, went by,
Heavy and dripping with sweet wet hay.

Clutching the straws out and knitting his brow,
Walked Arthur beside it, unsteady of limb;
I stood up in wonder, for, following him,
Charley was used to be;--where was he now?

"'Tis like him," I said, "to be working thus late!"--
I said it, but did not believe it was so;
He could not have staid in the meadow to mow,
With rain coming down at so dismal a rate.

"He's bringing the cows home."--I choked at that lie:
They were huddled close by in a tumult and fret,
Some pawing the dry dust up out of the wet,
Some looking afield with their heads lifted high.

O'er the run, o'er the hilltop, and on through the gloom
My vision ran quick as the lightning could dart;
All at once the blood shocked and stood still in my heart;--
He was coming as never till then he had come!

Borne 'twixt our four work-hands, I saw through the fall
Of the rain, and the shadows so thick and so dim,
They had taken their coats off and spread them on him,
And that he was lying out straight,--that was all!

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.

[Continued.]

Custodit Dominus emnia ossa eorum.
Ps. xxxiii. 20

III.

Not quite two miles from the city-gate known as the Porta Pia, there
stands, on the left hand of the Nomentan Way, the ancient, and, until
lately, beautiful, Church of St. Agnes outside the Walls. The chief
entrance to it descends by a flight of wide steps; for its pavement is
below the level of the ground, in order to afford easy access to the
catacombs known as those of St. Agnes, which opened out from it and
stretched away in interlacing passages under the neighboring fields.
It was a quiet, retired place, with the sacredness that invests every
ancient sanctuary, in which the prayers and hymns of many generations
have risen. The city was not near enough to disturb the stillness within
its walls; little vineyards, and plots of market-garden, divided from
each other by hedges of reeds and brambly roses, with wider open fields
in the distance, lay around it; a deserted convent stood at its side;
its precious marble columns were dulled and the gold ground of its
mosaics was dimmed by the dust of centuries; its pavement was deeply
worn; and its whole aspect was that of seclusion and venerable age,
without desertion and without decay.

The story of St. Agnes is one of those which at the beginning of the
fourth century became popular among the Christians and in the Church of
Rome. The martyrdom, under most cruel tortures and terrors, of a young
girl, who chose to die rather than yield her purity or her faith,
and who died with entire serenity and peace, supported by divine
consolations, caused her memory to be cherished with an affection and
veneration similar to that in which the memory of St. Cecilia was
already held,--and very soon after her death, which is said to have
taken place in the year 304, she was honored as one of the holiest of
the disciples of the Lord. Her story has been a favorite one through all
later ages; poetry and painting have illustrated it; and wherever the
Roman faith has spread, Saint Agnes has been one of the most beloved
saints both of the rich and the poor, of the great and of the humble.

In her Acts[A] it is related that she was buried by her parents in a
meadow on the Nomentan Way. Here, it is probable, a cemetery had already
for some time existed; and it is most likely that the body of the Saint
was laid in one of the common tombs of the catacombs. The Acts go on
to tell, that her father and mother constantly watched at night by her
grave, and once, while watching, "they saw, in the mid silence of the
night, an army of virgins, clothed in woven garments of gold, passing
by with a great light. And in the midst of them they beheld the most
blessed virgin Agnes, shining in a like dress, and at her right hand a
lamb whiter than snow. At this sight, great amazement took possession of
her parents and of those who were with them. But the blessed Agnes asked
the holy virgins to stay their advance for a moment, when she said to
her parents, 'Behold, weep not for me as for one dead, but rejoice with
me and wish me joy; for with all these I have received a shining seat,
and I am united in heaven to Him whom while on earth I loved with all my
heart.' And with these words she passed on." The report of this vision
was spread among the Christians of Rome. The pleasing story was received
into willing hearts; and the memory of the virgin was so cherished, that
her name was soon given to the cemetery where she had been buried,
and, becoming a favorite resting-place of the dead, its streets were
lengthened by the addition of many graves.

[Footnote A: This is the name given to the accounts of the saints and
martyrs composed in early times for the use of the Church.]

Not many years afterwards, Constantia, the daughter of the Emperor
Constantine, suffering from a long and painful disease, for which she
found no relief, heard of the marvellous vision, and was told of
many wonderful cures that had been wrought at the tomb and by the
intercession of the youthful Saint. She determined, although a pagan,
to seek the aid of which such great things were told; and going to the
grave of Agnes at night, she prayed for relief. Falling suddenly into a
sweet sleep, the Saint appeared to her, and promised her that she should
be made well, if she would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. She awoke,
as the story relates, full of faith, and found herself well. Moved with
gratitude, she besought her father to build a church on the spot in
honor of Saint Agnes, and in compliance with her wish, and in accordance
with his own disposition to erect suitable temples for the services of
his new faith, Constantine built the church, which a few centuries later
was rebuilt in its present form and adorned with the mosaics that still
exist.

Nearly about the same time a circular building was erected hard by the
church, designed as a mausoleum for Constantia and other members of the
imperial family. The Mausoleum of Hadrian was occupied by the bodies of
heathen emperors and empresses, and filled with heathen associations.
New tombs were needed for the bodies of those who professed to have
revolted from heathenism. The marble pillars of the Mausoleum of
Constantia were taken from more ancient and nobler buildings, its walls
were lined with mosaics, and her body was laid in a splendid sarcophagus
of porphyry. In the thirteenth century, after Constantia had been
received into the liberal community of Roman saints, her mausoleum was
consecrated as a church and dedicated to her honor. A narrow, unworn
path leads to it from the Church of St. Agnes; it has been long left
uncared-for and unfrequented, and, stripped of its movable ornaments,
it is now in a half-ruinous condition. But its decay is more impressive
than the gaudy brightness of more admired and renovated buildings.
The weeds that grow in the crevices of its pavement and hang over the
capitals of its ancient pillars, the green mould on its walls, the
cracks in its mosaics, are better and fuller of suggestion to the
imagination than the shiny surface and the elaborate finish of modern
restorations. Restoration in these days always implies irreverence and
bad taste. But the architecture of this old building and the purpose
for which it was originally designed present a marked example of the
rapidity of the change in the character of the Christians with the
change of their condition at Rome, during the reign of Constantine. The
worldliness that follows close on prosperity undermined the spirit of
faith; the pomp and luxury of the court and the palace were carried into
the forms of worship, into the construction of churches, into the manner
of burial. Social distinctions overcame the brotherhood in Christ.
Riches paved an easy way into the next world, and power set up guards
around it. Imperial remains were not to mingle with common dust, and the
mausoleum of the princess rose above the rock-hewn and narrow grave of
the martyr and saint.

The present descent into the catacombs that lie near the churches of St.
Agnes and St. Constantia is by an entrance in a neighboring field, made,
after the time of persecution, to accommodate those who might desire
to visit the underground chapels and holy graves. A vast labyrinth of
streets spreads in every direction from it. Many chambers have been cut
in the rock at the side of the passages,--some for family burial-places,
some for chapels, some for places of instruction for those not yet fully
entered into the knowledge of the faith. It is one of the most populous
of the subterranean cemeteries, and one of the most interesting,
from the great variety in its examples of underground architectural
construction, and from the number of the paintings that are found upon
its walls. But its peculiar interest is, that it affords at one point a
marked example of the connection of an _arenarium_, or pit from which
_pozzolana_ was extracted, with the streets of the cemetery itself. At
this point, the bed of compact _tufa_, in which the graves are dug,
degenerates into friable and loosely compacted volcanic sand,--and it
was here, very probably, that the cemetery was begun, at a time when
every precaution had to be used by the Christians to prevent the
discovery of their burial-places. No other of the catacombs gives a
clearer exhibition of the differences in construction resulting from
the different objects of excavation. In the Acts known as those of St.
Valentine it is related, that in the time of Claudius many Christians
were condemned to work in certain sand-pits. Under cover of such
opportunities, occasions might be found in which hidden graves could
be formed in the neighboring harder soil. In digging out the sand, the
object was to take out the greatest quantity consistent with
safety, leaving only such supports as were necessary to hold up the
superincumbent earth. There are few regular paths, but wide spaces with
occasional piers,--the passages being of sufficient width to admit of
the entrance of beasts of burden, and even of carts. The soil crumbles
so easily, that no row of excavations one above another could be made in
it; for the stroke of the pick-axe brings it down in loose masses. The
whole aspect of the sand-pit contrasts strikingly with that of the
catacombs, with their three-feet wide galleries, their perpendicular
walls, and their tier on tier of graves.

The stratum of pozzolana at the Catacombs of St. Agnes overlies a
portion of the more solid stratum of tufa, and the entrance to the
sand-pit from the cemetery is by steps leading up from the end of a long
gallery. Such an entrance could have been easily concealed; and the tufa
cut out for the graves, after having been reduced to the condition of
pozzolana, might easily at night have been brought up to the floor of
the pit. In many of the Acts of the Martyrs it is said that they were
buried _in Arenario_, "in the sand-pit,"--an expression which, there
seems no good reason for doubting, meant in the catacombs whose entrance
was at the sand-pit, they not having yet received a distinctive name.

It is difficult to convey to a distant reader even a small share of the
interest with which one sees on the spot evidences of the reality of the
precautions with which, in those early centuries, the Christians of Rome
were forced to guard themselves against a persecution which extended to
their very burial-places,--or even of the interest with which one walks
through the unchanged paths dug out of the rock by this _tenebrosa et
lucifugax natio_. In the midst of the obscurity of history and the fog
of fable, here is the solid earth giving evidence of truth. Here one
sees where, by the light of his dim candle, the solitary digger hollowed
out the grave of one of the near followers of the apostles; and here one
reads in hasty and ill-spelt inscriptions something of the affection and
of the faith of those who buried their dead in the sepulchre dug in the
rock. The Christian Rome underground is a rebuke to the Papal Rome above
it; and, from the worldly pomp, the tedious forms, the trickeries, the
mistakes, the false claims and falser assertions, the empty architecture
that reveals the infidelity of its builders, the gross materialism, and
the crass superstition of the Roman Church, one turns with relief of
heart and eyes to the poverty and bareness of the dark and narrow
catacombs, and to the simple piety of the words found upon their
graves. In them is at once the exhibition and the promise of a purer
Christianity. In them, indeed, one may see only too plainly the
evidences of ignorance, the beginnings of superstitions, the first,
traces of the corruption of the truth, the proofs of false zeal and of
foolish martyrdoms,--but with these are also to be plainly seen the
purity and the spirituality of elevated Christian faith.

In the service of the Roman Church used at the removal of the bodies of
the holy martyrs from their graves in the catacombs is a prayer in which
are the words,--"Thou hast set the bodies of thy soldiers as guards
around the walls of this thy beloved Jerusalem";--and as one passes from
catacomb to catacomb, it is, indeed, as if he passed from station to
station of the encircling camp of the great army of the martyrs. Leaving
the burial-place of St. Agnes, we continue along the Nomentan Way to the
seventh milestone from Rome. Here the Campagna stretches on either side
in broad, unsheltered sweeps. Now and then a rough wall crosses the
fields, marking the boundaries of one of the great farms into which the
land is divided. On the left stands a low farm-house, with its outlying
buildings, and at a distance on each side the eye falls on low square
brick towers of the Middle Ages, and on the ruinous heaps of more
ancient tombs. The Sabine mountains push their feet far down upon the
plain, covered with a gray-green garment of olive-woods. Few scenes in
the Campagna are more striking, from the mingling of barrenness and
beauty, from the absence of imposing monumental ruins and the presence
of old associations. The turf of the wide fields was cropped in the
winter by the herds driven down at that season from the recesses of the
Neapolitan mountains, and the irregular surface of the soil afforded no
special indications of treasures buried beneath it. But the Campagna is
full of hidden graves and secreted buildings.

In the Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Alexander, who, according to the
story of the Church, was the sixth successor of St. Peter, and who was
put to death in the persecution of Trajan, in the year 117, it was said
that his body was buried by a Roman lady, Severina, "on her farm, at the
seventh milestone from Rome on the Nomentan Way." These Acts, however,
were regarded as apocryphal, and their statement had drawn but little
attention to the locality. In the spring of 1855, a Roman archaeologist,
Signore Guidi, obtained permission from the Propaganda, by whom the land
was now held, as a legacy from the last of the Stuarts, the Cardinal
York, to make excavations upon it. Beginning at a short distance from
the road, on the right hand, and proceeding carefully, he soon struck
upon a flight of steps formed of pieces of broken marble, which, at
about fifteen feet below the surface of the ground, ended upon a
floor paved with bits of marble, tombstones, and mosaics. As the work
proceeded, it disclosed the walls of an irregular church, that had been
constructed, like that of St. Agnes, partially beneath the soil, for the
purpose of affording an entrance into adjoining catacombs. Remains of
the altar were found, and portions of the open-work marble screen which
had stood before it over the crypt in which the bodies of St. Alexander
and one of his fellow-martyrs had been placed. A part of the inscription
on its border was preserved, and read as follows: ET ALEXANDRO DEDICATUS
VOTUM POSUIT CONSECRANTE URSO EPISCOPO,--"Dedicatus placed this in
fulfilment of a vow to ---- and Alexander, the Bishop Ursus consecrating
it." The Acts supply the missing name of Eventius,--an aged priest, who,
it was said, had conversed with some of the apostles themselves. His
greater age had at that early and simple time given him the place of
honor in the inscription and in men's memory before the youthful,
so-called, Pope Alexander. Probably this little church had been built in
the fourth century, and here a bishop had been appointed to perform the
rites within it.

It was a strange and touching discovery, that of this long-buried, rude
country-church,--the very existence of which had been forgotten for more
than a thousand years. On the 3d of May, 1855, the day set apart in the
calendar to the honor of the saints to whom it was consecrated, the holy
services were once more performed upon the ancient altar of the roofless
sanctuary. The voices of priest and choir sounded through the long
silent chapels, while the larks sang their hymns of gladness over the
fields above. On the rough floor, inscriptions, upon which, in the
early centuries, the faithful had knelt, were again read by kneeling
worshippers. On one broken slab of marble was the word MARTYR; on
another, the two words, SPARAGINA FIDELIS; on another, POST VARIAS
CURAS, POST LONGE MONITA VITAE.

The catacombs opening from the church have not been entered to a great
distance, and though more rudely excavated than most of those nearer the
city, as if intended for the burial-places of a poorer population, they
are of peculiar interest because many of their graves remain in their
original state, and here and there, in the mortar that fastens their
tiled fronts, portions of the vessel of glass or pottery that held the
collected blood of the martyr laid within are still undisturbed. No
pictures of any size or beauty adorn the uneven walls, and no chapels
are hollowed out within them. Most of the few inscriptions are scratched
upon the mortar,--_Spiritus tuus in bono quiescat_,--but now and then a bit
of marble, once used for a heathen inscription, bears on its other side some
Christian words. None of the inscriptions within the church which bear
a date are later than the end of the fifth century, and it seems likely
that shortly after this time this church of the Campagna was deserted,
and its roof falling in, it was soon concealed under a mass of rubbish
and of earth, and the grass closed it with its soft and growing
protection.

During two years, the uncovered church, with its broken pillars, its
cracked altar, its imperfect mosaics, its worn pavement, remained open
to the sky, in the midst of solitude. But how could anything with such
simple and solemn associations long escape desecration at Rome? How
could such an opportunity for _restoration_ be passed over? How could so
sacred and venerable a locality be protected from modern superstition
and ecclesiastical zeal? In the spring of 1837, preparations were being
made for building upon the ground, and a Carthusian convent, it was
said, was to be erected, which would enclose within its lifeless walls
the remains of the ancient church. Once more, then, it is to be shut
out of the sky; and now it is not Nature that asserts her predominance,
protecting while she conceals, and throwing her mantle over the martyrs'
graves to keep them from sacrilege,--but she is driven away by the
builders of the papal court, and all precious old associations are
incongruous with those of modern Roman architecture and Roman conventual
discipline.

One morning, in the spring of 1855, shortly after the discovery had been
made, the Pope went out to visit the Church of St. Alexander. On his
return, he stopped to rest in the unoccupied convent adjoining the
Church of St. Agnes. Here there was a considerable assemblage of those
who had accompanied him, and others who were admitted at this place to
join his suite. They were in the second story of the building, and the
Pope was in the act of addressing them, when suddenly the old floor,
unable to support the unaccustomed weight, gave way, and most of the
company fell with it to the floor below. The Pope was thrown down, but
did not fall through. The moment was one of great confusion and alarm,
the etiquette of the court was disturbed, but no person was killed and
no one dangerously hurt. In common language and in Roman belief, it was
a miraculous escape. The Pope, attributing his safety to the protection
of the Virgin and of St. Agnes, determined at once that the convent
should be rebuilt and reoccupied, and the church restored. The work
is now complete, and all the ancient charm of time and use, all the
venerable look of age and quiet, have been laboriously destroyed, and
gaudy, inharmonious color, gilding and polish have been substituted in
their place.

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