We have not left ourselves space to speak at length of the miracles of changing water into wine, or the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, as other figures of the Holy Eucharist often to be seen in the Catacombs. That they were painted there in this sense we cannot doubt, when we consider how they were connected with that sacrament in the sermons and catechetical instructions of the early church. In the first miracle the substance of water was changed into the substance of wine; in the second a limited substance was, by Christ’s power, so multiplied as to be made present in a thousand places at once, capable of feeding a thousand persons, whereas a minute before it had been only present in one place and was sufficient only to satisfy the appetite of one. The analogy is obvious; but these miracles do not seem to have entered so early into the system of decoration of the Catacombs (except in a very fragmentary and indirect manner), neither do they anywhere enter into so long and beautiful a series of mystical figures, as those others which we have been just now examining. Those form a series of rare and very special interest. They are repeated, as we have already said, in several successive chambers, whose date can be determined, by a number of concurrent indications, as not later than the first quarter of the third century. In these chambers the same histories and the same symbols are repeated in the same style, freely changed in their arrangement and in some accessories of the composition, yet constant in their hidden meaning and theological sense; and that sense is briefly this: the idea of a new life imparted to the Christian soul by baptism, fed by the Holy Eucharist, and continued uninterruptedly throughout eternity. TWO MAY CAROLS. BY AUBREY DE VERE. DARKNESS. The authentic Thought of God at last Wanes, dimly seen, through Error’s mist: Upon that mist, man’s image cast Becomes the new God-Mechanist. The vast _Idea_ shrivels up: Truth narrows with the narrowing soul: Men sip it from the acorn’s cup: Their fathers drained the golden bowl. Shrink, spelled and dwarfed, their earth, their skies; Shrinks in their hand their measuring-rod; With dim, yet microscopic eyes They chase a daily-dwindling God. His temple thus to crypt reduced, For ancient faith is space no more, Or her, its Queen.[32] To hearts abused By sense, prime truths are true no more. Footnote 32: Father Newman has, I think, remarked that in the Protestant scheme there is _not room_ for Mary. LIGHT. The spirit intricately wise That bends above his ciphered scroll Only to probe, and analyze, The self-involved and sunless soul,