I wish I could express adequately the emotions which filled my breast while wandering through these Catacombs. Save for the feeble glimmer of my own and the guide's lamp, I was in total darkness,--a darkness that might be felt. Not a sound broke the awful silence except the echo of our footsteps in the hollow passages. Not a trace or a recollection of life recalled me from the thought of absolute impenetrable death around. Each passage seemed so like the other, and the ramifications were so endless and bewildering, that but for the presence of my guide I should inevitably have lost myself. Horrible stories of persons who had gone astray in the inextricable maze, and wandering about in the empty gloom till they perished of exhaustion and starvation, recurred to my mind; and my imagination, intensified by the silence and darkness, vividly realised their sufferings. There is indeed no chill or damp in these labyrinths, and the atmosphere is mild and pleasant, but still the gloom was most oppressive. And yet a deep gratitude fills the soul; for the light there shone in darkness, and it was this very darkness that preserved our religion, when it ran the risk of being extinguished. These fearful subterranean passages were the furrows in which were planted the first germs of the Christian religion,--in which they were long guarded in persecution as the seed-corn under the frost-bound earth in winter, to spring up afterwards when summer smiled upon the world, and yield a glorious harvest to all nations.