Constantine’s first thought was now to honour God by some splendid testimony of his gratitude, and, under the direction of Sylvester, he built the Basilica of the Holy Saviour, called also St. John’s before the Latin Gate. It was here that the evangelist suffered martyrdom in intention, was cruelly scourged, and plunged in boiling oil. God saved his life in order that he might write his sublime last book in the solitude of the Isle of Patmos, whither the persecutors exiled him after their attempts to slay him had failed; and to him, the beloved Virgin disciple, Constantine dedicated this, his first thank-offering, called ever since “the Mother of all the Churches in the World.” After that came Constantine’s own mother, Saint Helena, to Rome, having, to her eternal glory, discovered the Saviour’s Cross in Jerusalem and desiring to bring a part of that sacred Tree to the centre of Christendom. Standing on the green terrace at the southern end of Constantine’s Basilica, she saw a great empty space, beyond which, at the other end of the long decline that sinks away from it towards the southeast, there stood a half-ruined villa; there she resolved to raise the trophy of her own gratitude and to provide a fitting shrine for the inestimable treasure she had brought. But the Cross was still to rest on the soil that Jesus had trod. She caused a shipload of earth to be brought from Jerusalem, and on this the foundations of the Basilica of the Holy Cross were laid, contiguous to a palace which was her chosen dwelling during her sojourn in Rome. The Basilica, so frequently rebuilt and restored that probably no part of the exterior would now be recognised by the pious Empress, is dark and bare, but symmetrical in outline and possessing a severe dignity of its own. It presents a marked contrast to the florid yet noble southern portico of St. John Lateran, and the long green avenue, shaded by double rows of mulberry trees, which used to connect the two, seemed to lead the spirit by fitting degrees from the splendid stability of Catholic worship to-day to the sterner conditions of that long-vanished past.