The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 07, May, 1858

"Home?" she repeated, with a sigh. "This is my home. I wish I could stay here always. I feel as if the spirits of my father and mother were with us here." Had she sighed for an ivory palace inlaid with gold, he would have wished to give it to her,—he was so much in love!

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 Labassé, 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 Labassé 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 Acts4 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.

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.