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