The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-12-30
TERMS
WASHINGTON, ID. c.
For the National Era.
COPYRIGHT SECURED ACCORDING TO LAw.l
,uvyNvoop LEAVES FROM OVER THE SEA.

GREENWOOD LEAVES FROM OVER THE SEA
No. %.
ROME Nouembsr II, 1882.
uv DEAR Ma. C: | have now beer
..arIv week in the Eternal City, and au
Sarn1ing 10 feel at home, and comparatively
- rest We are most pleasantly situated N
.So Corso near the Para del Popoio, sunny
"a o;,v nl,,cs which hes che seratation d
periect healthiness.
Ancient Rome as yet affects me with sun
oalar gloomy wonder. | gaze about me sadly
sstber than eagerly. | am too awe-struck to
hs curious. We spent one day among the
rnins and though the sunshine was brilliant
- that Of June. and the breath of wild roses
,ras aAoat on the soft air, that day was to me
wa If shadows and sadness. Could all the
s,nsbine that ever streamed out of heaven
make lestal brightness in the mighty circle Of
the Coliseum thronged, as it is, to the eye OF
,ba.suirit, with dark visions of fear and horror
Of fierce fight and deadly encounter, brutal
Sarocity and dabolical cruelty The blood OF
;nnumerable martyrs seems yet rising from
the once trampled and CORY arena, n cloud be-
tween us and the beautiful skies. What a
terrible power has place like this over the
imagination! there beheld not alone the half
siekening. Misunderstanding scenes Of ancient
e,ahstoral combat but, as stood near one OF
the ruined passages by which the wild beasts,
ages on ages ago, were driven, mad with rage
and hunger, from their black, subterranean
dens into the noon-tide blaze of the amphi.
theatre. | involuntarily listened to hear them
roaring and bounding beneath me. Iinvolunta-
rly looked to see them leaping into the arena,
with ewes a-hame and jaws a-gape. listened
+, hear the first shrek of the Christian vic
TINS, and the mad yells the applauding up
ROAR of the heather spectators. seemed to see
the tiger burying his claws deep in the white
bosom of the maiden, and the fierce leopard
plavng with the mangled child, ere devouring
i seemed to see the gray haired old man
and the dark-haired youth, after a vain,
brief struggle with their terrible foes, rent in
nieces: and more fearful and pitiable still, fair
patrician danes looking on through all, with
calm. unblenched faces, and young peasant
maldens clappng their brown hands while
the long thunders of reclamation rolled round
the vast amphitheatre.
Here, as at the prisons of the Inquisiton at
Avgnon, exulted over the ruin about me
with Joy unspeakable. Yet what melan-
choly lesson does this chance coupling of these
two places present The one is the scene of
the OPEN cruel, yet speedy martyrdom of the
earliest Christians under bloody pagan
power-the other the scene of the secret
slow, Internally ingenious torture of Chris
tians, by fellow Christians! Could the mar
tvrs who suffered here have foreseen these
things-have seen priests, in the place of beasts,
lrending and racking, and disemboweiling, to the
sound of pious chants, instead of fierce shouts,
and in the name of the merciful Jesus, instead
of that of relentless Jove--could they have
ioreseen those bitterer than heather mocker-
les, those bold blasphemies of the Most High
God written by priestly hands, in the blood OF
His children would they have met the mad
dened beasts of the arena with such superhu-
msa serenity such sublime faith, suffered with
such divine endurance, " triumphed DER death,
aud assembled to God"
We descended into the Catacombs by the
usual entrance at the church of San Sebas-
tan These subterranean refugees of the early
Christians are indeed most melancholy, dis
NAL awful places. We were conducted by a
dirty and miserable Franciscan friar, looking,
in the coarse brown dress Of his order, as
though he had burrowed for lifetime in
those low, dark passages
We each bore torch, yet never, assure
you ventured to dverge from the way taken
by our guide, or to fall more than yard or
two behind him. He led us through gloomy
and bewildering labyrinth, vault after vault,
passage opening on passage, chill chambers OF
death, intermnable halls of night, where our
torches seemed to struggle with the heavy air,
and 10 cast faint and fearful CLEANS into the
profound depths of that ancient darkness. He
showed us chapels and rude shrines and every.
where sepulchres, followed from the soft rock
AZ you know, the Catacombs once formed a
vast under ground cemetery; but since the
Chrlstanization of Rome, most of the bones
OF the martyrs who persisted here have been
removed TO less humble tombs in the churches
Many are kept in costly cabinets and shrines
as precious and holy relics. | shall never for.
get a group of graves, pointed out to me in
one OF the chapes. They were those of a ia.
ther, mother, and two children. invounta.
rny EXCLAIMED" Mercful Heaven what a
place for children ~ Poor lambs what won.
uer 'ha' they would not stay in this chill and
s sunless abode but soon sought the "green pas
lures ana the still waters of the Good
shepherd Perhaps when they we're first
brought here, they wondered and questioned
Sny 'he morning was so long in coming; per
nSPs when they were dying, they cried pite
ou'ly Tor the sunshine, the flowers, and the
pleasant grass. Perhaps they died in utter
psrKness, and the mother only knew when the
Sheruo soul had escaped from its double prison
uOae and assembled to the upper brightness
~ feeling the little body grow stiff and colo
against her desolate bosom
AS said before these graves have beer
ried and the bones of the faithful Christians
4oa the sacred vessels which held the blood Of
ASr'yrdom, and stood in little inches near these
ga haEo been borne away 10 cathedrals
aua inconsistencies while the names rudely carved
"a .he'e stones have been enrolled among the
"yleSt SAINTS of'the Church But who shall
ooueet and enshrine the bones lying in the
nyret dungeons and towers Of the Inquisition
"ha1 bold and pious hand could there have
SSlusht and treasured the blood which dripped
n e the wheel, or splashed against the walls
~ the oubliettesl When shall the saints, who
'uere suffered in secret and died in EXTREMIST
Nsu''h, receive their canonization
ls we drove past that proud tomb which has
eu Tue single name of woman, amid the
''hs oil centuries, above the destruction Of
~P'eS aud the commissions Of thousand
a. Little could Cecilia Metella have dream
| Na' the inscription on the tomb raised by
sg'T or pride" above her dust, would stand
mNXHear when the language in which it was
xrittci>l had been silenced over the whole face
| d the eafNh-that the tomb itself would re-
nain unleyeSed, almost unbroken, when Rome
had been long bQwed in ruin, when the smiling
country about her, had become wild waste
when her race had saoken away out Of all re-
nembrance Of the glory and power which once
tarzled and ruled the world.
We also drove al,ng the tomb-burdened
Appian Way where sme recent excavations
h, us down several Tee on to the very stones
Nu which the chariot Of Roman conquerors
once rolled, and the troos of the Empire and