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

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.

The debased taste and the unfeeling ignorance of restorers have been employed, as so often in Italy, to spoil and desecrate the memorials of the past; and the munificence of Pius, Munificentia Pii IX., is placarded on the inner walls. One is too frequently reminded at Rome of the old and new lamps in the story of Aladdin.

We turn reluctantly from the Nomentan Way, and passing through Rome, we go out of the gate which opens on the Appian. About a mile from the present wall, just where the road divides before coming to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, a little, ugly, white church, of the deformed architecture of the seventeenth century, recalls, by its name of Domine quo vadis? "O Lord, whither goest thou?" one of the most impressive, one of the earliest and simplest, of the many legends of the legendary religious annals of Rome. It relates, that, at the time of the persecution of Nero, St. Peter, being then in Rome, was persuaded to fly secretly from the city, in the hope of escaping from the near peril. Just as he reached this place, trembling, we may well believe, not more with fear than with doubt, while past scenes rose vividly before him, and the last words heard from his Master's lips came with a flood of self-reproach into his heart,—as he hurried silently along, with head bowed down, in the gray twilight, he became suddenly aware of a presence before him, and, looking up, beheld the form of that beloved Master whom he was now a second time denying. He beheld him, moreover, in the act of bearing his cross. Peter, with his old ardor, did not wait to be addressed, but said, Domine, quo vadis?—"O Lord, whither goest thou?" The Saviour, looking at him as he had looked but once before, replied, Venio Romam iterum crucifigi,—"I come to Rome to be crucified a second time"; and thereupon disappeared. Peter turned, reëntered the gate, and shortly after was crucified for his Lord's sake. His body, it is said, was laid away in a grave on the Vatican Hill, where his great church was afterwards built.

And here we come upon another legend, which takes us out again on the Appian Way, to the place where now stands the Church of St. Sebastian. St. Gregory the Great relates in one of his letters, that, not long after St. Peter and St. Paul had suffered martyrdom, some Christians came from the East to Rome to find the bodies of these their countrymen, which they desired to carry back with them to their own land. They so far succeeded as to gain possession of the bodies, and to carry them as far as the second milestone on the Appian Way. Here they paused, and when they attempted to carry the bodies farther, so great a storm of thunder and lightning arose, that they were terrified, and did not venture to repeat their attempt. By this time, also, the Romans had become aware of the carrying off of the sacred bodies, and, coming out from the city, recovered possession of them. One of the old pictures on the wall of the portico of the ancient basilica of St. Peter's preserved a somewhat different version of the legend, representing the Romans as falling violently upon the Oriental robbers, and compelling them, with a storm of blows, to yield up the possession of the relics they were carrying away by stealth.

But the legend went on further to state, that, on the spot where they thus had regained the bodies of their saints, the Romans made a deep hole in the ground, and laid them away within it very secretly. Here for some time they rested, but at length were restored to their original tombs, the one on the Ostian Way, the other on the Vatican. But St. Peter was again to be laid in this secret chamber in the earth on the Appian Way. In the episcopate of the saint and scoundrel Callixtus, the Emperor Elagabalus, with characteristic extravagance and caprice, resolved to make a circus on the Vatican, wide enough for courses of chariots drawn by four elephants abreast. All the older buildings in the way were to be destroyed, to gratify this imperial whim; and Callixtus, fearing lest the Christian cemetery, and especially the tomb of the prince of the apostles might be discovered and profaned, removed the body of St. Peter once more to the Appian Way. Here it lay for forty years, and round it and near it an underground cemetery was gradually formed; and it was to this burial-place, first of all, that the name Catacomb,5 now used to denote all the underground cemeteries, was applied.

Though at length St. Peter was restored to the Vatican, from which he has never since been removed, and where his grave is now hidden by his church, the place where he had lain so long was still esteemed sacred. The story of St. Sebastian relates how, after his martyred body had been thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, that his friends might not have the last satisfaction of giving it burial, he appeared in a vision to Lucina, a Roman lady, told her where his body might be found, and bade her lay it in a grave near that in which the apostles had rested. This was done, and less than a century afterward a church rose to mark the place of his burial, and connected with it, Pope Damasus, the first great restorer and adorner of the catacombs, [A.D. 266-285,] caused the chamber that was formed below the surface of the ground around the grave of the apostles to be lined with wide slabs of marble, and to be consecrated as a subterranean chapel. It is curious enough that this pious work should have been performed, as is learned from an inscription set up here by Damasus himself, in fulfilment of a vow, on the extinction among the Roman clergy of the party of Ursicinus, his rival. This custom of propitiating the favor of the saints by fair promises was thus early established. It was soon found out that it was well to have a friend at court with whom a bargain could be struck. If the adorning of this chapel was all that Damasus had to pay for the getting rid of his rival's party, the bargain was an easy one for him. There had been terrible and bloody fights in the Roman streets between the parties of the contending aspirants for the papal seat. Ursicinus had been driven from Rome, but Damasus had had trouble with the priests of his faction. Some of them had been rescued, as he was hurrying them off to prison, and had taken refuge with their followers in the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore. Damasus, with a mob of charioteers, gladiators, and others of the scum of Rome, broke into the church, and slew a hundred and sixty men and women who had been shut up within it. Ursicinus, however, returned to the city; there were fresh disturbances, and a new massacre, on this occasion, in the Church of St. Agnes; and years passed before Damasus was established as undisputed ruler of the Church.

It was then, in fulfilment of the vow he had made during his troubles, that Saint Damasus (for he became a saint long since, success being a great sanctifier) adorned the underground chapel of the apostles. The entrance to it is through the modern basilica of St. Sebastian. It is a low, semicircular chamber, with irregular walls, in which a row of arched graves (arcosolia) has been formed, which once were occupied, probably, by bodies of saints or martyrs. Near the middle of the chapel is the well, about seven feet square, within which are the two graves, lined with marble, where the bodies of the apostles are said to have lain hid. Fragments of painting still remain on the walls of this pit, and three faint and shadowy figures may be traced, which seem to represent the Saviour between St. Peter and St. Paul. Over the mouth of the well stands an ancient altar. However little credence may be given to the old legends concerning the place, it is impossible not to look with interest upon it. For fifteen hundred years worshippers have knelt there as upon ground made holy by the presence of the two apostles. The memory of their lives and of their teachings has, indeed, consecrated the place; and though superstition has often turned the light of that memory into darkness, yet here, too, has faith been strengthened, and courage become steadfast, and penitence been confirmed into holiness, by the remembrance of the zeal, the denial of Peter, and the forgiveness of his Master, by the remembrance of the conversion, the long service, the exhortations, and the death of Paul.

The catacombs proper, to which entrance may be had from the Basilica of St. Sebastian, are of little importance in themselves, and have lost, by frequent alteration and by the erection of works of masonry for their support, much that was characteristic of their original construction. During a long period, while most of the other subterranean cemeteries were abandoned, this remained open, and was visited by numerous pilgrims. It led visitors to the church, and the guardians of the church found it for their interest to keep it in good repair. Thus, though its value as one of the early burial-places of the Christians was diminished, another interest attached to it through the character of some of those visitors who were accustomed to frequent its dark paths. Saint Bridget found some of that wild mixture of materialism and mysticism, (a not uncommon mingling,) which passes under the name of her Revelations, in the solitude of these streets of the dead. Here St. Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, the wise and liberal founder of the Oratorians, the still beloved saint of the Romans, was accustomed to spend whole nights in prayer and meditation. Demons, say his biographers, and evil spirits assailed him on his way, trying to terrify him and turn him back; but he overcame them all. Year after year he kept up this practice, and gained strength, in the solitude and darkness, and in the presence of the dead, to resist fiercer demons than any that had power to attack him from without. And it is related, that, when St. Charles Borromeo, his friend, the narrow, but pure-minded reformer of the Church, came to Rome, from time to time, he, too, used to go at night to this cemetery, and watch through the long hours in penitence and prayer. Such associations as these give interest to the cemetery of St. Sebastian's Church.

The preëminence which the Appian Way, regina viarum, held among the great streets leading from Rome,—not only as the road to the South and to the fairest provinces, but also because it was bordered along its course by the monumental tombs of the greatest Roman families,—was retained by it, as we have seen, as the street on which lay the chief Christian cemeteries. The tombs of the Horatii, the Metelli, the Scipios, were succeeded by the graves of a new, less famous, but not less noble race of heroes. On the edge of the height that rises just beyond the Church of St. Sebastian stand the familiar and beautiful ruins of the tomb of Cecilia Metella. Of her who was buried in this splendid mausoleum nothing is known but what the three lines of the inscription still remaining on it tell us,—

CAECILIAE Q. CRETICI F. METELLAE CRASSI

She was the daughter of Quintus, surnamed the Cretan, and the wife of Crassus. But her tomb overlooks the ground beneath which, in a narrow grave, was buried a more glorious Cecilia.6 The contrast between the ostentation and the pride of the tombs of the heathen Romans, and the poor graves, hollowed out in the rock, of the Christians, is full of impressive suggestions. The very closeness of their neighborhood to each other brings out with vivid effect the broad gulf of separation that lay between them in association, in affection, and in hopes.

Coming out from the dark passages of the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, in the clear twilight of a winter's evening, one sees rising against the red glow of the sky the broken masses of the ancient tombs. One city of the dead lies beneath the feet, another stretches before the eyes far out of sight. The crowded history of Rome is condensed into one mighty spectacle. The ambitions, the hates, the valor, the passions, the religions, the life and death of a thousand years are there; and, in the dimness of the dusky evening, troops of the dead rise before the imagination and advance in slow procession by opposite ways along the silent road.

[To be continued]* * * * *

THE PURE PEARL OF DIVER'S BAY

[Concluded.]

V

Did she talk of flesh and blood, when she said that she would find him?—The summer passed away; and when autumn came, it could not be said that search for the bodies of these fishermen was quite abandoned. But no fragment of boat, nor body of father or son, ever came, by rumor or otherwise, to the knowledge of the people of the Bay.

The voyage was long to Clarice. Marvellous strength and acuteness of vision come to the eyes of those who watch. Keen grow the ears that listen. The soldier's wife in the land of Nena Sahib inspires despairing ranks: "Dinna ye hear the pibroch? Hark! 'The Campbells are coming!'"—and at length, when the hope she lighted has gone out in sullen darkness, and they bitterly resent the joy she gave them,—lo, the bagpipes, banners, regiment! The pibroch sounds, "The Campbells are coming!" The Highlanders are in sight!—But, oh, the voyage was long,—and Clarice could see no sail, could hear no oar!

Clarice ceased to say that she must find the voyagers. She ceased to talk of them. She lived in these days a life so silent, and, as it seemed, so remote from other lives, that it quite passed the understanding of those who witnessed it. Tears seldom fell from her eyes, complaints never;—but her interest was aroused by no temporal matter; she seemed, in her thoughts and her desires, as far removed as a spirit from the influences of the external world.

This state of being no person who lives by bread alone could have understood, or endured patiently, in one with whom in the affairs of daily life he was associated.

The Revelator was an exile in Patmos.

Dame Briton was convinced that Clarice was losing her wits. Bondo Emmins yielded to the force of some inexplicable law, and found her fairer day by day. To his view, she was like a vision moving through a dream, rather than like any actual woman; and though the drift of the vision seemed not towards him, he was more anxious to compel it than to accomplish any other purpose ever entertained. The actual nearness, the apparent unattainableness, of that he coveted, excited in him such desires of conquest and possession as he would seek to appease in one way alone. To win her would have been to the mind of any other inhabitant of Diver's Bay a feat as impracticable as the capture of the noble ghost of Hamlet's father, as he stands exorcized by Mrs. Kemble.

And yet, while her sorrow made her the pity and the wonder of the people, it did not keep her sacred from the reach of gossip. Observing the frequency with which Bondo Emmins visited Old Briton's cabin, it was profanely said by some that the pale girl would ere long avert her eyes from the dead and fix them on the living.

Emmins had frequent opportunities for making manifest his good-will towards the family of Briton. The old man fell on the ice one day and broke his thigh, and was constrained to lie in bed for many a day, and to walk with the help of crutches when he rose again. Then was the young man's time to serve him like a son. He brought a surgeon from the Port,—and the inefficiency of the man was not his fault, surely. Through tedious days and nights Emmins sat by the old man's bedside, soothing pain, enlivening weariness, endeavoring to banish the gloomy elements that combined to make the cabin the abode of darkness. He would have his own way, and no one could prevent him. When Old Briton's money failed, his supplies did not. Even Clarice was compelled to accept his service thankfully, and to acknowledge that she knew not how they could have managed without him in this strait.

The accident, unfortunate as it might be deemed, nevertheless exercised a most favorable influence over the poor girl's life. It brought her soul back to her body, and spoke to her of wants and their supply,—of debts, of creditors,—of fish, and sea-weed, and the market,—of bread, and doctor's bills,—of her poor old father, and of her mother. She came back to earth. Now, henceforth, the support of the household was with her. Bondo Emmins might serve her father,—she had no desire to prevent what was so welcome to the wretched old man,—but for herself, her mother, the house, no favor from him!

And thus Clarice rose up to rival Bondo in her ready courage. When her father, at last careful, at last anxious, thoughtful of the future, began to express his fear, he met the ready assurance of his daughter that she should be able to provide all they should ever want; let him not be troubled; when the spring came, she would show him.

The spring came, and Clarice set to work as never in her industrious life before. Day after day she gathered sea-weed, dried it, and carried it to town. She went out with her mother in the fishing-boat, and the two women were equal in strength and courage to almost any two men of the Bay. She filled the empty fish-barrels,—and promised to double the usual number. She dried wagon-loads of finny treasure, and she made good bargains with the traders. No one was so active, no one bade fair to turn the summer to such profit as Clarice. She had come back to flesh and blood.—John came back from Patmos.

Her face grew brown with tan; it was not lovely as a fair ghost's, any longer; it was ruddy,—and her limbs grew strong. Bondo Emmins marked these symptoms, and took courage. People generally said, "She is well over her grief, and has set her heart on getting rich. There is that much of her mother in her." Others considered that Emmins was in the secret, and at the bottom of her serenity and diligence.

Dame Briton and her spouse were not one whit wiser than their neighbors. They could not see that any half-work was impossible with Clarice,—that, if she had resolved, for their sake, to live as people must, who have bodies to respect and God-originated wants to supply, she must live by a ceaseless activity. Because she had ascended far beyond tears, lamentation, helplessness, they thought she had forgotten.

Yes, they came to this conclusion, though now and then, not often, generally on some pleasant Sunday, when all her work was done, Clarice would go down to the Point and take her Sabbath rest there. No danger of disturbance there!—of all bleak and desert places known to the people of Diver's Bay, that point was bleakest and most deserted.

The place was hers, then. In this solitude she could follow her thoughts, and be led by them down to the ocean, or away to heavenly depths. It was good for her to go there in quietness,—to rest in recollection. Strength comes ever to the strong. This pure heart had nothing to fear of sorrow. Sorrow can only give the best it has to such as she. Grief may weaken the selfish and the weak; it may make children of the foolish and drivellers; by grief the inefficient may come to the fulness of their inefficiency;—but out of the bitter cup the strong take strength, though it may be with shuddering.

One Sunday morning Clarice lingered longer about the house than usual, and Emmins, who had resolved, that, if she went that day to the Point, he would follow her, found her with her father and mother, talking merely for their pleasure,—if the languid tones of her voice and the absent look of her eyes were to be trusted.

Emmins thought that this moment was favorable to him. He was sure of Dame Briton and the old man, and he almost believed that he was sure of Clarice. Finding her now with her father and mother at home on this bright Sunday morning, one glance at her face surprised him and, almost before he was aware, he had spoken what he had hitherto so patiently refrained from speaking.

But the answer of Clarice still more surprised him. With her eyes gazing out on the sea, she stood, the image of silence, while Bondo warily set forth his hopes. Old Briton and the dame looked on and deemed the symptoms favorable. But Clarice said,—

"Heart and hand I gave to him. I am the wife of Luke;—how can I marry another?"

Bondo seemed eager to answer that question, for he hastily waved his hand toward Dame Briton, who began to speak.

"Luke will never come back," said he, gently expostulating.

"But I shall go to him," was the quiet reply.

Then the old people, whose hearts were in the wooing, broke out together,—and by their voices, if one should argue with them, strife was not far off. Clarice staid one moment, as if to take in the burden of each eager voice; then she shook her head:—

"I am married already," she said; "I gave him my heart and my hand. You would not rob Luke Merlyn?"

When she had so spoken, calmly, firmly, as if it were impossible that she should be moved or agitated by such speech as this she had heard, Clarice walked away to the beach, unmoored her father's boat, and rowed out into the Bay.

Bondo Emmins stood with the old people and gazed after her.

"Odd fish!" he muttered.

"Never mind," said Old Briton, hobbling up and down the sand; "it's the first time she's been spoke to. She'll come round. I know Clarice."

"You know Clarice?" broke in Dame Briton. "You don't know her! She isn't Clarice,—she's somebody else. Who, I don't know."

"Hush!" said Bondo, who had no desire that the couple should fall into a quarrel. "I know who she is. Don't plague her. It will all come out right yet. I'll wait. But don't say anything to her about it. Let me speak when the time comes.—Where's my pipe, Dame Briton?"

Emmins spent a good part of the day with the old people, and did not allow the conversation once to turn upon himself and Clarice. But he talked of the improvements he should like to make in the old cabin, and they discussed the market, and entertained each other with recollections of past times, and with strange stories made up of odd imaginations and still more uncouth facts. Supernatural influences were dwelt upon, and many a belief in superstitions belonging to childhood was confessed in peaceful unconsciousness of the fact that it was Clarice who had turned all their thoughts to-day from the great prosaic highway where plain facts have their endless procession.

VI

Clarice went out alone in her fishing-boat, as during all the past week she had purposed to do when this day came, if it should prove favorable. She wished to approach the Point thus,—and her purpose in so doing was such as no mortal could have suspected. And yet, as in the fulfilment of this purpose she went, hastened from her delaying by the address of Bondo Emmins, it seemed to her as if her secret must be read by the three upon the beach.

She wore upon her neck, as she had worn since the days of her betrothal to Luke, the cord to which the pearl ring was attached. The ring had never been removed; but now, as Clarice came near to the Point, she laid the oars aside, and with trembling hands untied the black cord and disengaged the ring, and drew it on her finger, that trembled like a leaf. She was doing now what Luke had bidden her do,—and for his sake. Until now she had always looked upon it as a ring of betrothal; henceforth it was her wedding-ring,—the evidence of her true marriage with Luke Merlyn.

O unseen husband, didst thou see her as anew she gave herself to love, to constancy, to duty?