—that is to say, he supposes that, Damasus having died, his successor Siricius completed the work that had been begun, and, furthermore, strengthened the wall which enclosed the tomb of St. Cornelius with this very thick slab of marble—a work which may have been rendered necessary by the alterations already made by Damasus. Of course, these restorations of the mutilated inscriptions must always remain more or less doubtful, for we fear there is no chance of any other fragments of the original ever coming to light. We publish them under the same reserve with which he himself proposes them, as at least approximations to the truth. He says that, without daring to affirm their literal correctness, there are certainly strong reasons for believing that they exactly reproduce the sense of the original. This same tomb of St. Cornelius will supply us with an example of De Rossi’s power of happy conjecture, confirmed with absolute certainty by subsequent discoveries. He had often publicly expressed his confident expectation of finding at this tomb of St. Cornelius some memorial of his cotemporary, St. Cyprian. These two saints were martyred on the same day, though in different years; and their feasts were, therefore, always celebrated together, just as they are now, on the 16th of September, all the liturgical prayers for the day being common to both. Now, De Rossi had found in one of the old Itineraries, to whose accuracy of detail he had been greatly indebted, an extraordinary misstatement, viz., that the bodies of both these saints rested together in the same catacomb, whereas everybody knows that St. Cyprian was buried in Africa. He conjectured, therefore, that the pilgrim had been led into this blunder by something he had seen at the tomb of St. Cornelius. On its rediscovery, the cause of the error stands at once revealed. Immediately on the right hand side of the grave are two large figures of bishops painted on the wall, with a legend by the side of each, declaring them to be St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian. On the other side of the tomb is another painting, executed in the same style, on the wall at the end of the gallery: two figures of bishops, again designated by their proper names and titles. Only one of these can now be deciphered, S̅C̅S̅ XUSTUS P̅P̅ R̅O̅M̅, _i.e._, Pope Sixtus II., of whose connection with this cemetery we have already heard so often. The other name began with an O, and was probably St. Optatus, an African bishop and martyr, whose body had been brought to Rome and buried in this cemetery.