But it may be objected yet once more, that there is an inscription in the Catacomb under the Basilica of St. Sebastian, more than a quarter of a mile off, which states that St. Cecilia was buried there. Most true, but consider the date of the inscription. It was set up by William de Bois-Ratier, Archbishop of Bourges, in the year 1609; and there are other inscriptions hard by, of the same or of a later date, which claim for the same locality the tombs of several popes, as well as of thousands of martyrs. The inscriptions were set up precisely during that age in which the Catacombs were buried in the most profound darkness and oblivion. We have already explained (page 50) how it came to pass that whilst the other ancient cemeteries were inaccessible and unknown, this one under the Church of St. Sebastian still remained partially open; and we can heartily sympathise with the religious feelings which prompted the good Archbishop and others to make an appeal to the devotion of the faithful not to lose the memory of those glorious martyrs who had certainly been buried in a Catacomb on this road, and at no great distance, yet not in this particular spot. But whilst we admire their piety, we cannot bow to their authority upon a topographical question, which they had no means of deciding, and in respect to which recent discoveries, as well as the testimony of more ancient documents, prove to a demonstration that they were certainly wrong. Dismissing, then, all these objections, which it was quite right and reasonable to raise, but which, on critical examination, entirely disappear, we may rest assured that we have here certainly recovered the original resting-place of one of the most ancient and famous of Rome’s virgin saints. Let us take one more look round the crypt before we leave it. If we examine the picture of the saint more closely, we shall find it defaced by a number of _graffiti_, which may be divided into two classes; the one class quite irregular, both as to place and style of writing, consisting only of the names of pilgrims who had visited the shrine, several of whom were not Romans but foreigners. Thus, one is named Hildebrandus, another Lupo, another is a Bishop Ethelred, and two write themselves down Spaniards. But the other class of _graffiti_ is quite regular, arranged in four lines, and contains almost exclusively the names of priests; the only exceptions being that one woman appears amongst them, but it is added that she is the mother of the priest (Leo) who signs before her, and that the last signature of all is that of a _scriniarius_, or secretary. There is something about this arrangement of names which suggests the idea of an official act; neither can it be attributed to chance that several of the same names (including the unusual name of Mercurius, and written too in the same peculiar style, a mixture of square and of cursive letters) appear on the painting of St.