The Basilica to which the Vicars Apostolic of Benedict XIV went in state was not the one which pilgrims visit now; in the early days it was the centre of a thriving little town outside the town, the suburb of Joannopolis, so called from Pope John VII, who founded and fortified it as a stronghold for the defence of Rome on the side towards the sea. Built in the time of Constantine, added to through the centuries, ever more beautified and never defaced, those who saw it tell us that it was a perfect specimen of the Byzantine Basilica, nobly severe, making the impression of vast undisturbed spaces for worship, yet in reality a treasure-house of riches and art. Its mysterious destruction by fire, scarcely to be accounted for in an erection all of marble and stone, took place on the 15th of July, 1823, on the last night of the life of Pius VII, the Pontiff upon whom Napoleon had laid sacrilegious hands and kept in captivity over five years—a captivity that in years, months, and days was precise in duration with his own after-imprisonment at Saint Helena. Dates are curious things! While Pius VII lay on his deathbed on that night of the 15th of July (the anniversary of his signing of the Concordat, twenty-two years earlier), he was greatly distressed by a dream which roused him again and again from torpor to enquire of his attendants whether some great calamity had not fallen on Rome. With the dawn came the news of the burning of the Basilica, but it was kept from him, and he passed away that day, without learning the truth of that which the clairvoyance of approaching dissolution had cloudily revealed to him. Some fragments were saved and incorporated in the new Church which at once rose to replace the ancient one, of which the Sovereigns of England were, until the Reformation, proud to call themselves the titular protectors. The minute description of the original Basilica, left us by Cardinal Wiseman and others who had seen it, shows how, in all respects save one, the new one falls short of the earlier beauty and majesty; but the tomb of St. Paul, the heart of the whole, remains to us intact, far below the level where fire or storm can rend it, and the very emptiness and bareness of the great Church above seem to enhance the awe inspired by that great sarcophagus in the crypt—raised high from the ground of the deep vault, as on an altar throne, so as to be above the depredations of the Tiber even in the river’s most uncontrollable outbreaks.