A narrow doorway, cut somewhat irregularly through the rock in the corner of the Papal Crypt, introduces us into another chamber. As we pass through this doorway we observe that the sides were once covered with slabs of marble, and the arch over our heads adorned with mosaics. The chamber itself is much larger than that which we have left behind us. It is nearly 20 feet square (the other had been only 14 by 11); it is irregular in shape; it has a wide _luminare_ over it, completely flooding it with light, and at the other end of it is a large portico, supported by arches of brick. Yet we see no altar-tomb, no contemporary epitaphs of popes or martyrs, nor indeed anything else which at once engages our attention and promises to give us valuable information. Nevertheless, a more careful examination will soon detect paintings and scribblings on the walls not inferior in interest to any that are to be seen elsewhere. We shall hardly appreciate them, however, as they deserve, unless we first briefly call to mind the history of the relics of St. Cecilia, before whose tomb we are. We shall take it for granted that our readers are familiar with the history of the Saint’s martyrdom and pass on to the first discovery of her relics in the ninth century. Pope Paschal I. succeeded to the see of Peter in January A.D. 817, and in the following July he translated into different churches within the city the relics of 2300 martyrs, collected from the various suburban cemeteries, which, as we have seen, were lying at that time in a deplorable state of ruin. Amongst the relics thus removed were those of the popes from the Papal Crypt we have just visited. His cotemporary biographer, writing in the _Liber Pontificalis_ tells us that Paschal had wished to remove at the same time the body of St. Cecilia, which the Acts of her martyrdom assured him had been buried by Pope Urban “near to his own colleagues;” but he could not find it; so at length he reluctantly acquiesced in the report that it had been carried off by Astulfus, the Lombard king, by whom Rome had been besieged, and the cemeteries plundered. Some four years afterwards, however, St. Cecilia appeared to him in a dream or vision, as he was assisting at matins in the Vatican Basilica, and told him that when he was translating the bodies of the popes she was so close to him that they might have conversed together. In consequence of this vision he returned to the search, and found the body where he had been told. It was fresh and perfect as when it was first laid in the tomb, and clad in rich garments wrought with gold, lying in a cypress coffin, with linen cloths stained with blood rolled up at her feet.