about eight feet high and three to five feet wide, with roof either horizontal or slightly vaulted, and walls or sides perforated for sepulchral chambers or cells. These cells or chambers are usually arranged in tiers one above another, and are capable of receiving sometimes only a single corpse, in other cases two or three. Some chambers are larger, with an arched roof over the grave; some are still larger, as if for family vaults, with smaller chambers or cells in their sides; and some are large enough for places of worship, and were used for this purpose during the times of persecution. About 60 of these catacombs have been enumerated outside the ancient city-walls, most of them having an inconsiderable lateral extent, and seldom communicating with one another. Father Marchi has estimated that each catacomb may contain 100,000 dead, and so the whole 60 would at this rate contain 6,000,000 dead; but this is little more than conjecture. It has generally been asserted that only Christians were buried in the catacombs ; but as Horace speaks of the caverns or abandoned quarries under the Esquiline hill as used for a common sepulchre by plebeians, there can be little doubt that pagan Romans were also buried in the catacombs. In later times oratories and churches were erected over the entrances of the principal catacombs, with more convenient means of access in the form of stairs. Thus St. Peter's was erected over the cemetery of the Vatican; St. Paul's over that of Santa Lucina; the church of St. Sebastian (two miles south of the gate of that name) over that of St. Calixtus, which is supposed to have an extension of six miles, and to contain the bodies of 14 popes and 170,000 martyrs; and the basilica of St. Agnes beyond the walls is built over the catacomb in which that virgin martyr was interred, and which is remarkable for its good preservation, its many paintings, its places of worship, and its connection with an extensive sandpit or excavated bed of pozzolana which covers part of its extent. The Columbaria are pigeon-house-like subterranean sepulchres with niches for the urns or jars in which the ashes of the dead were deposited after the bodies were burned. They are numerous, and some of them very capacious. The Cloaca Maxima or great sewer of Rome, built, according to tradition, by the elder Tarquin, to drain the marshy ground between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, empties into the Tiber below the Ponte Rotto, and is still firm and useful after the lapse of nearly 2500 years. It is most solidly constructed, and bids fair to stand for ages yet to come. The archway where it enters the Tiber is at least 12 feet high, and is composed of three concentric courses of large blocks of the volcanic rock called peperino, put together without cement. Rome has lived, in great measure, on the past; its chief industry is connected with curiosities of antiquity or of art. It has some trade and a few manufactures, as of strings for musical instruments, mosaics, jewelry, parchment, hats, gloves, silk and woolen fabrics, &c. Its population, which in the time of the emperor Vespasian, amounted to several millions (some say 2,000,000; other 3,000,000, or more), afterwards greatly diminished, until, at about the end of the 8th century, it is said to have been only about 13,000; but, after this extreme depression, it again increased. Its population was given at 117,900 in 1813, at 180,200 in 1846, and at 215,573 in 1867. The number of priests and friars in Rome is about 4500; that of nuns about 1900; that of Jews nearly 4200. The Jews were, even under Pius IX., compelled to live mainly in the Ghetto, or Jewish quarter, which is the lowest and filthiest region in Rome, separated by a wall from the rest of the city, and situated on the east bank of the Tiber, opposite the north end of the island. The city is divided into 14 districts or wards called rioni, 12 of which are on the east side of the river, several of them, besides the Rione Campo Marzo at the N. end of the city, being included principally or wholly within the ancient Campus Martius (= field of Mars). The two rioni on the west side are, the Borgo or Leonine city, which lies on the north and includes the Vatican; and the Trastevere (= over the Tiber), which embraces all between the hospital of Santo Spirito and the city wall on the S., and is separated from the Borgo by a high wall, in which is the gate of Santo Spirito. In the middle ages the rioni had their captains, their councils, and their trained bands; but though they have their banners still, and carry them in the great processions, their municipal jurisdiction is merged in the presidents of the rioni, who are magistrates and members of the tribunal of the Capitol, the civil and police court over which the senator presides. ease. Rome under the popes was characterized by an intelligent American traveler, as "the worst governed and filthiest city in the world;" but the last 20 years have wrought some changes even in the eternal city. The streets are better paved now; some of them may be styled clean, though those remote from the Corso are still unswept and unwashed, except by the rains and the overflow of the Tiber; the beggars, under the influence of stringent regulations, are less numerous and more modest; a few new bookshops have been opened; gas and railroads have come into use; and the population have now a more civilized look than formerly. "The Rome of 1851," says Dr. Wylie," was a dunghill of filth, and a lazar-house of disWhat is worse, it was a dungeon of terror-stricken, cowering beings, about 30,000 of whom were imprisoned in the jails, and the rest within the city walls, which they dared not quit. A great scandal arose. Travelers were not slow on their return to their own country to proclaim the abominations, physical and moral, which they had found in the city of the popes. The cardinals saw that the fame of Rome was filling Europe. Bishops too, from Paris and other cities, where ordinary attention is paid to health and cleanliness, found Rome, doubtless, a very holy city, but its effluvia was somewhat too strong to be quite agreeable, and hinted the necessity of doing something to abate it. The cardinals submitted, as we have said, to have the streets swept; but nothing could induce them to have the jails opened. But while we accord due praise to the cardinals, ... we must not be unjust to the French. Their presence in Rome has had a good deal to do with the improved sanitary condition and embellishment of the eternal city. No people in the world have a finer eye for effect than the French; and in a variety of particulars one can trace at Rome the influence of that artistic taste which has made their own capital of Paris, in this respect, the marvel and the model of continental Europe." "The peace of the pontifical city," continues Dr. Wylie, writing in 1866, "is maintained by some 5000 police and 16000 French soldiers. This is, as near as may be, a man-at-arms for each family. The police are divided into open and secret. The former wear uniform, and patrol the streets at all hours of the day and night. There is besides a numerous body of French soldiers constantly on duty. . . . . The cardinal-vicar has in his service a body of secret police amounting, it is said, to between 5000 and 6000. They wear no uniform, and are in no way distinguishable from ordinary citizens. They are paid from 5 to 6 pauls [= 50 to 60 cents] a day-a large sum in Rome. Most of these men, before entering this corps, have made their acquaintance with the prisons in another capacity. In fact, they have been taken from the galleys to serve the government. Their former chief was the notorious Nardoni, a worthy head of a worthy band. . . . They can enter any house at any hour. They are not required to tell who sent them, or to show warrant from any one. They may apprehend whomsoever they please. Rome may be said to be entirely in their hands; and thus there are large numbers of innocent persons in prison. But no one ever sees a prisoner led through the streets. . . . . There is no city in Europe where all that ought not to be seen is more studiously kept out of view. . . . . The city, moreover, is full of spies. .. Every family has been given in charge to some one who duly reports at head-quarters all that is said and done in it. . . . . The espionage on books and papers is even more rigid. . . . . At the custom-house at Ceprano, coming from Naples, the papal functionaries carefully fished out of my carpet-bag every thing in the shape of print, all pam .... .... .... phlets, and old Neapolitan newspapers, and, tying them up in a bundle, they sent them on before me to the police-office in Rome, where doubtless they were duly burned. It is but just to the papal government, however, that I should state, and it may be useful to other travelers to know, that my Italian New Testament was not detained. . . . . Not a line can be published without passing through the censorship. This holds good not of books or newspapers only, but also of the placards in the streets. . . . . The people. . . . are wretchedly poor. . . . . But wonderful, and at the same time deplorable, is it to think of the sums which are wrung out of the people by the minute and searching tyranny of a government which is itself poor to a by-word. . . . . One of the main engines of fleecing the people is the government lottery; the church taking advantage of the passion for gambling, so deplorably prevalent among the Romans, to draw a few pitiful scudi [= dollars] into her coffers." The 66 Rome," said Dr. J. G. Holland in 1869, " is nothing but a show. Its antiquities are a show. The pope and the various pageantries in which he takes a part are a show. The public museums do not assume to be any thing but a show. churches are a show, and are visited ten times as much in consequence of their character as show-places as they are for the purposes of worship. The private palaces and villas are a show. Almost the entire income of Rome is drawn from the pockets of those who come to Rome to see its shows. The Rome of to-day is indeed nothing but a great museum of curiosities, papal and pagan, living and dead. The lovers of light and liberty are pining in her political prisons; her multitudinous beggars are licensed like porters and go around the streets with brass tickets hung to their necks. The Jews are still confined mainly to their dirty quarters, by him who assumes to represent the love of God in the Jew Jesus. There is no such thing as liberty in Rome-civil or religious. The people groan under a despotism more intensely hated than those who are unacquainted with its spirit and operations can possibly conceive." |