outlay of labour that these long, apparently endless, yet elaborately
designed galleries, were increasing so rapidly, with their layers of
beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side the path-way,
in the porous tufa, through which all the moisture filters downwards,
leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were carefully
closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command; some with
simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by
fair inscriptions: marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan
tombs--the inscription sometimes a palimpsest, the new epitaph being
woven into the faded letters of an earlier one.

As in an ordinary Roman cemetery, an abundance of utensils for the
worship or commemoration of the departed was disposed around--
incense, lights, flowers, their flame or their freshness being
relieved to the utmost by contrast with the coal-like blackness of
the soil itself, a volcanic sandstone, cinder of burnt-out fires.
Would they ever kindle again?--possess, transform, the place?--
Turning to an [100] ashen pallor where, at regular intervals, an air-
hole or luminare let in a hard beam of clear but sunless light, with
the heavy sleepers, row upon row within, leaving a passage so narrow
that only one visitor at a time could move along, cheek to cheek with
them, the high walls seemed to shut one in into the great company of
the dead. Only the long straight pathway lay before him; opening,
however, here and there, into a small chamber, around a broad, table-
like coffin or "altar-tomb," adorned even more profusely than the
rest as if for some anniversary observance. Clearly, these people,
concurring in this with the special sympathies of Marius himself, had
adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling of hope
they entertained concerning the body; a feeling which, in no
irreverent curiosity, he would fain have penetrated. The complete