It is to the sovereign Pontiffs that we are principally indebted for whatever fragments have been preserved from the general wreck. As early as the middle of the fifteenth century, Pope Nicholas V. seems to have entertained the idea of collecting all the lapidarian monuments of early Christianity which had at that time been discovered; and both Eugenius IV., his immediate predecessor, and Calixtus III. who succeeded him, forbade, under heavy penalties, the alienation or destruction of anything belonging to this class of monuments. When Leo X., too, appointed Raphael to superintend the works at the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, he gave him a special charge that the _res lapidaria_ should not be injured. In later times, these injunctions became more earnest and more frequent, in proportion to the increasing number and importance of the inscriptions that were brought to light. Still nothing practical appears to have been devised until the reign of Benedict XIV., who appointed the learned Francesco Bianchini to collect all the inscribed stones that could be found; and it was he who recommended the long narrow gallery leading to the Vatican Library and Museum as a convenient place for their preservation. Even then political and other difficulties interfered to prevent the execution of the design, so that it was not until the close of the last century that it was really carried out by Gaetano Marini, under the orders of Pope Pius VI. It is to be regretted that he took so little pains to make the most of such materials as he had. He merely inserted the monuments in the wall, without giving any indication of the places where they had been found, or making any attempts to classify them, beyond separating the few which contain the names of the consuls from those which are without this chronological note. A small selection has since been made, in our own day, by De Rossi, in obedience to the orders of Pope Pius IX., and placed in a gallery of the Lateran Palace, adjoining the Christian Museum. The arrangement of these specimens (few as they are, comparatively speaking) makes it a valuable guide to those who would study this part of our subject to any profit.