Romans of this period. The expression corpus integrum conditum, which frequently occurs in Roman sarcophagi and tomb-stones, renders this probable. But the sarcophagus was by no means a seemly inmate for the cenotaphs and other ornamental buildings in pleasure-grounds, where the Patricians were in the habit of depositing the cinerary urns of their ancestors. They, therefore, also began to bury in the catacombs, which at the time of the introduction of Christianity into Rome had become pretty nearly the common burial-place of the city. The author proceeds very satisfactorily to show that the opinion entertained by some Protestant authorities that Christians and Heathens were buried in the catacombs promiscuously, is utterly untenable. He then gives a brief but interesting account of their employment by the Christians as a refuge from persecution, and of their living and worshipping there; citing an epitaph upon the body of one individual, who was detected by the persecutors in the catacombs, and led away to execution. It is as follows: "In Christ. Alexander is not dead, but lives beyond the stars, and his body rests in this tomb. He lived under the Emperor Antonine, who, foreseeing that great benefit would result from his services, returned evil for good. For, while on his knees, and about to sacrifice to the true God, he was led away to execution. O, sad times! in which sacred rites and prayers, even in caverns, afford no protection to us. What can be more wretched than such a life? and what than such a death? when they could not be buried by their friends and relations-at length they sparkle in heaven. He has scarcely lived, who has lived in Christian times."-(p. 33.) Upon this part of his subject Dr. Maitland makes the following very important remark, which we have the utmost pleasure in transcribing. "When we reflect upon the trials which awaited the Church, and the combined powers of earth and hell which menaced its earliest years, it is impossible not to recognise the fostering care of a heavenly Hand, in thus providing a cradle for the infant community. Perhaps to the protection afforded by the catacombs, as an impregnable fortress from which persecution always failed to dislodge it, the Church in Rome owed much of the rapidity of its triumph; and to the preservation of its earliest sanctuaries, its ancient superiority in discipline and manners. The customs of the first ages, stamped indelibly on the walls of the catacombs, must have contributed to check the spirit of innovation soon observable throughout Christendom: the elements of a pure faith were written with an iron pen, in the rock, for ever;' and if the Church of after-times had looked back to her subterranean home,' to the hole of the pit whence she was digged,' she would there have sought in vain for traces of forced celibacy, the invocation of saints, and the representation of deity in painting or sculpture. Whatever dates may be attributed to other remains, this fact is certain, that the Lapidarian Gallery, arranged by the hands of the modern Romanists, contains no support whatever for the dogmas of the Council of Trent. Resting upon this distinction, virtually drawn by themselves, between what belongs to a pure age, and what to the times of innovation, we may safely refer to the latter a number of inscriptions of doubtful date, preserved in the vaults of St. Peter's, which contain prayers to the Virgin Mary, and other peculiaries of Romanist theology. The history of Christendom as well as that of Art supplies the means of fixing the age of many such monuments: for instance, the time of Vigilantius, when some bishops, moved by his arguments, refused to ordain unmarried deacons, cannot be confounded with an age in which the celibacy of the clergy became compulsory: nor can we easily mistake for the work of a century that knew only the sign of the cross in its simplest form of two straight lines, the wretched representation of the passion, in a crucifix the size of life, smeared with the imitation of blood, and surmounted by a crown of actual thorns.”— (pp. 24-25.) The following delightful extract from the next chapter we lay at once before the reader without weakening the effect of it by any prefatory remarks of our own. "St. Paul speaks of the Christian as one not intended to sorrow as others who had no hope: how literally their sorrow was described by him, may be judged from the following Pagan inscription, copied from the right hand wall of the Lapidarian Gallery: C. IVLIVS. MAXIMVS ATROX O FORTVNA TRVCI QVAE FVNERE GAVDES 2 years and 5 months. O, relentless Fortune, who delightest in cruel death, He, who lately used to lie, beloved, on my bosom. "But the Christian, not content with calling his burial-ground a sleepingplace, pushes the notion of a slumber to its full extent. We find the term in a Latin dress, as DORMITIO ELPIDIS. 'The sleeping-place, or dormitory, of Elpis.' (Fabretti, lib. 8.) "Elsewhere it is said, that VICTORINA DORMIT. 'Victorina sleeps.' (Boldetti.) ZOTICVS HIC AD DORMIENDVM. 'Zoticus laid here to sleep.' (Boldetti.) Of another we read GEMELA DORMT 'Gemella sleeps in peace.' (Lapidarian Gallery.) **And, lastly, we find the certainty of a resurrection and other sentiments equally befitting a Christian, expressed in the following (copied literatim from the Lapidarian Gallery). HIC MIHI SEMPER DOLOR ERIT IN AEVO PAX ET TVVM BENERABILEM BVLTVM LICEAT VIDERE SO-ORE RELICTVM ME TVO GREMIO QVEROR QVOD MIHI SANCTVM TE DEDERAT DIVINITVS AVTOR RELICTIS TVIS IACES IN PACE SOPORE MERITA RESVRGIS Y TEMPORALIS TIBI DATA REQVETIO DEPOSITA IN PACE FECIT PLACVS Y MARITVS PEACE. 'This grief will always weigh upon me: may it be granted me to behold in sleep your revered countenance. My wife Albana, always chaste and modest, I grieve, deprived of your support, for our Divine Author gave you to me as a sacred (boon). You, well-deserving one, having left your (relations), lie in peace-in sleep-you will arise-a temporary rest is granted you. She lived forty-five years, five months, and thirteen days: buried in peace. Placus, her husband, made this.' "Nor was the hope of the Christians confined to their own bosoms. They published it abroad to all the world, in a manner which, while it provoked the scorn and malice of many, proved also a powerful inducement to others to join their community. The dismal annihilation of the soul taught by the Pagans, or the uncertain Elysium, which, though received by the uneducated, was looked upon as mere matter of superstition by the learned, had in it something so utterly unsuited to the wants and longings of mankind, that the spectacle of a Christian, thoroughly assured of a future state, so blessed and so certain as to have power to draw him irresistibly towards it through the extremest tortures, must have awakened in the heart of many a wishing, doubting Pagan, a feeling in favour of Christianity not easily suppressed."(pp. 42-44.) These "sermons in stones," as our author in another place felicitously calls them, strike us as most edifying ones. We only regret that he has not given us the fuller illustration he is so abundantly competent to give, of the state of the ancient heathen mind on the subject of death; in order that the contrast with the touching simplicity of these primitive Christian epitaphs may be perfect. We shall find that the condition after death was a subject of care and anxiety which tormented every individual mind in the ancient world, from the highest to the lowest. Even amongst the philosophers and sages of antiquity, though we are lost in admiration at their stupendous intellectual efforts to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, and the rewards of virtue; yet the very magnitude of those efforts only shows the depth of their conviction of the importance of these questions, and the distressing doubts that torment them, that after all they have reached nothing beyond approximations and probabilities. The mind needs certainty upon these questions, and that certainty the reasoning powers cannot supply. It is thus, that we account for the air of boisterous loquacity which always seems to us to mar, by its want of harmony with the matter in hand, the most brilliant passages of Plato and Cicero upon the immortality of the soul. The writer is evidently "whistling aloud to keep his courage up." The Gemella of our epitaphs was probably enough,--some poor old woman, the wife of a slave who was knocked in the head during an outbreak of popular violence against the Christians. Yet Gemella dormit in pace embodies a tone of quiet assurance, of comfortable certainty of hope, for which we shall search in vain in the pages of Cicero de senectute. This was the condition of philosophers and sages, of intellects of the higher order; what then must the fear of death have been, among the mass of mankind in the ancient world, with whom what we are wont to term the fictions of the poets, were the only articles of faith regarding the future state? We have but scanty records of their sorrows, for they were far beneath the notice of philosophers and poets, whose works alone could have transmitted them to us. We get but a very dim shadow of their woes in the frantic ravings of the wretched woman who had lost her son, in Apuleius, who shrieking and cursing both gods and men, finds consolation in beating with a cudgel the entirely unoffending ass, from whose back her worthless son had been torn by a bear. Passages of similar import might also be selected from Terence and Plautus, whence it would abundantly appear that the utmost ambition of the bulk of mankind in Greece and Rome was to forget altogether the subject of death; and that when by any accident the consideration of it was forced upon them, they were in uncontrollable agonies. They could indeed adopt the inimitable language of our own poet ; Aye but to die, and go we know not where; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod, and the de-lighted spirit, To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside To what we fear of death.' Perhaps we shall obtain the clearest notion of the misery endured ' Lib. 7, ad finem. si.e. deprived of light, in darkness. : upon this subject by the common people of Greece and Rome, by considering the Egyptian mythology, which became so exceedingly popular both in Rome and the other great cities of the empire, during the period that immediately preceded the introduction of Christianity and on the express testimony of Plutarch, (de Iside et Osiride) we know that it became so, solely on account of the clearness of its teaching regarding the state after death. With the nature of his doctrine we are now in some measure acquainted, through the hieroglyphic exposition of it, which is often found in the tombs of Egypt. The mode of deciphering this strange writing is now understood; and though our acquaintance with it is far from complete, enough is known to enable us to give a general idea of the purport of any passage. The exposition consists of a number of precatory hymns addressed to the deities presiding over the world under ground by the dead, who were most probably impersonated during the funeral ceremonies. The doctrine of existence after death is certainly stated in it clearly enough, as Plutarch had told us; but what were the promises held out by this idolatry to its dying votaries? During the forty days that were occupied in embalming, the deceased, both body and soul, underwent actual death or non-existence: but this ceremony rightly performed, the spirit of the gods entered into the mummy, -which became a divinity and the proper object of worship. It was removed to the place of burial in a procession similar to those which accompanied the images of the gods, and had acts of devotion addressed to it and hymns sung in its praise, to which the deceased (impersonated by an attendant) responded. But, once deposited in the tomb, and a new and fearful vitality returned to it; the body and the soul parted, and each set out on a series of separate adventures. The soul descended into the abyss in the bark of the setting sun, and propitiated an endless succession of manifestations of Thoth or Hermes, the god of speech, constantly exposed to the assaults of the apes, the ministers of vengeance, from which the god alone could protect it. While the body pursued its still drearier way through caverns in the bowels of the earth,climbed precipices, crossed rivers, encountered demons, fought with dragons, oryxes, and monsters of every shape, until it reached the region in the nether world where, reunited to the body, it appeared before the unexorable bar of the deified Sun or Osiris. There the deceased stood, while his own heart was poised in the balance against that unerring justice, or truth, to which the conscience of every child of Adam tells him that his actions during life are amenable ! Upon the issue of this fearful trial depended the eternal destinies of the immortal man! This was all the consolation that the reli |