During the days of persecution these meetings were not infrequent and were held secretly in crypts, catacombs, private houses and at martyrs' tombs.

I decided to bury them in the catacombs.

Having securely fastened up the box, I concealed it in my clothing and then made my way to the catacombs.

"It was a dark and rainy evening, and as the entrances to the catacombs were not guarded in those days, it was not difficult for me to make my way unseen into their interior.

So it happened that, for one cause or another, I did not go back to Rome until early in the nineteenth century, and I need not assure you that almost the first place I visited was the catacombs.

It was not now a wide opening through which a man might walk; it was a little hole scarcely big enough for a fox to crawl through; in fact, I do not believe there would have been any opening there at all if it had not been for the small animals living in the catacombs, which had maintained this opening for the purpose of going in and out.

But I found my box, and, after hours and hours of wandering, I got out of the catacombs.

"I don't suppose you can understand it," he said, "for you are only a boy in such things yet" (those old fellows call everything under fifty a boy); "but I tell you it is a wonderful thing to know what a love is that can come out of the catacombs, so to speak, and be all itself again," and he said this as jauntily as if I, being so young, couldn't know anything about the proper article, as far as sentiment was concerned.

They swung along, with the huge tombs looming up through the darkness upon each side of them, until they had come as far as the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, and saw against a rising moon the great circular bastion of Cecilia Metella in front of them.

It was apparent to him, even in those hurried, passing glances, that this was the earliest and finest of the catacombs, containing such a storehouse of Roman remains as had never before come at one time under the observation of the student.

It alludes to the story of a French gentleman, who, going into the catacombs, not far from Cairo, with some Arab guides, was there robbed by them, and left; a huge stone being placed over the entrance.

Any light stuff: no natural, history or useful learning, such as Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, Adventures in Southern Africa, &c. &c. With our joint compliments, yours, C. LAMB.

A visit made subsequently to the catacombs tended still further to give a grave and sombre direction to the thoughts of the party.

"It's like being lost in a cave, or a mine, or the catacombs," Angela reflected aloud, "with your only candle burnt out.

Before I quitted Kentucky, I made a point of visiting the celebrated and immense nitre caverns or catacombs of the limestone region.

Vast libraries are the vaulted catacombs of modern times, in which the dead past is laid away, and the living present takes refuge.

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.

On the night of her marriage, she succeeded in so far prevailing upon her husband as to induce him to visit the pope, Urban, who was lying concealed from his persecutors in the catacombs which were called after and still bear the name of his predecessor, Callixtus,[B] on the Appian Way, about two miles from the present walls of the city.

The newly imperialized religion must have its imperial temples, and the little dark chapels of the catacombs were exchanged for the vast and ornamental spaces of the new basilicas.

The worship of the saints began to take form, at first, in simple, natural, and pious ways, in the fourth century; and as it grew stronger and stronger with the continually increasing predominance of the material element in the Roman Church, so the catacombs, the burial-places of the saints, were more and more visited by those who desired the protection or the intercession of their occupants.

By the middle of the fifth century the extension of the catacombs had ceased, and nearly about the same time the assemblies in them fell off.

When the Goths descended upon Italy, ravaging the country as they passed over it, and sat down before Rome, not content with stripping the land, they forced their way into the catacombs, searching for treasure, and seeking also, it seems likely, for the bodies of the martyrs, whom their imperfect creed did not prevent them from honoring.

But although the memory of those who had been buried within them was thus preserved, the catacombs themselves and the churches at their entrances were falling more and more into decay.

Not far from the place where the broken inscription was found was an accidental entrance into catacombs which had been supposed to have been originally connected with those of St. Sebastian, but were believed by De Rossi to be a portion of the veritable Catacombs of St. Callixtus, and quite separate from the former.

Not far from the place where the broken inscription was found was an accidental entrance into catacombs which had been supposed to have been originally connected with those of St. Sebastian, but were believed by De Rossi to be a portion of the veritable Catacombs of St. Callixtus, and quite separate from the former.