The Baths of Caracalla--The Catacombs--Evidence thence arising against Romanism--The Scala Santa, or Pilate's Stairs--Peasants from Rimini climbing them--Irreverence of Devotees--Unequal Terms on which the Pope offers Heaven--Church of Ara Caeli--The Santissimo Bambino--Conversation with the Monks who exhibit it--The Ghetto, or Jew's Quarter--Efforts to Convert them to Romanism--Tyrannical Restrictions still imposed upon them--Their Ineradicable Characteristics of Race--The Vatican--The Apollo Belvedere--Pio Nono--His Dress and Person--St Peter's--Its Grandeur and Uselessness--Motto on Egyptian Obelisk--Gate of San Pancrazio--Graves of the French--The Convents--Exhibition of Nuns--Collegio Romano and Father Perrone--An American Student--The English Protestant Chapel--Preaching there--American Chaplain--Collection in Rome for Building a Cathedral in London--Sermon on Immaculate Conception in Church of Gesu--Ave Maria--Family Worship in Hotel--Early Christians of Rome--Paul. I have already mentioned my arrival at midnight, and how thankful I was to find an open door and an empty bed at the Hotel d'Angleterre. The reader may guess my surprise and joy at discovering next morning that I had slept in a chamber adjoining that of my friend Mr Bonar, from whom I had parted, several weeks before, at Turin. After breakfast, we sallied out to see the Catacombs. I had found Rome in cloud and darkness on the previous night; and now, after a deceitful morning gleam, the storm returned with greater violence than ever. Torrents swept the streets; the lightning was flashing on the old monuments; fearful peals of thunder were rolling above the city; and we were compelled oftener than once during our ride to seek the shelter of an arched way from the deluge of rain that poured down upon us. Skirting the base of the Palatine, and emerging on the Via Appia, we arrived at the Baths of Caracalla, which we had resolved to visit on our way to the Catacombs. No words can describe the ghastly grandeur of this stupendous ruin, which, next to the Coliseum, is the greatest in Rome. Besides its saloons, theatre, and libraries, it contained, it is said, sixteen hundred chairs for bathers. As was its pristine splendour, so now is its overthrow. Its cyclopean walls, and its vast chambers, the floors of which are covered to the depth of some twelve or twenty feet with fallen masses of the mosaic ceiling, like immense boulders which have rolled down from some mountain's top, are spread over an area of about a mile in circuit. The ruins, here capped with sward and young trees, there rising in naked jagged turrets like Alpine peaks, had a romantic effect, which was not a little heightened by the alternate darkness of the thunder-cloud that hung above them, and the incessant play of the lightning among their worn pinnacles.