It is a brilliantly blue morning and the Chautauquans are in high spirits, for at 10 o’clock they are to start in open carriages, with Mr. Forbes as guide, for the Appian Way and the Catacombs. They first visit the baths of Caracalla, which even in ruins give one some conception of the magnificence of Rome under the Empire. These sunken mosaic pavements are still beautiful, the vacant niches suggest the fine works of art that once adorned them, and the grass-grown arches and walls, over which rooks and jackdaws now fly, speak of the gay life that once assembled here. It was a vast structure covering a mile square, and accommodating 1,600 bathers at once. Here were not only every conceivable kind of bath known to us moderns, but rooms for games, reading and conversation, each of these most elegantly fitted up, and on top of all were the gardens. It was a place of fashionable resort, where the pleasure-loving Romans could spend their days. Built by the emperor, it was then thrown open free to all, in order to curry favor with the people. The Appian Way is lined with temples, villas and tombs. As it was against the law to bury inside the walls, the ancient Romans were accustomed to place their dead on either side of the principal roads leading from the city. At the despoiled tomb of the Scipios we each of us took a lighted candle and went down into gloomy, subterranean passages, to see the niches which once held the sarcophagi of Scipio Barbatus, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and other distinguished members of the Scipio family.— “The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchers lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers.” The treasures of this tomb have been carried to the Vatican Museum. At the Columbaria we walked through blossoming hedges of pink roses to the great sepulchers for those whose bodies were burned as was customary during the first centuries of the Christian era, although even then the distinguished Patrician families followed the ancient mode of interment. This early cremation did not consume the body to powder as in our days, but the bones were left and gathered into an urn. These funeral vases were placed in little niches, resembling the nests in a modern pigeon-house, and therefore called Columbaria. Here were placed the remains of the officers of Cæsar’s household—we read one inscription to the barber of the mighty Julius, and other names are familiar from St. Paul’s letters. Tryphena, Tryphosa, Onesimus—are these the funeral urns of the persons mentioned by the apostle? So our learned guide was inclined to think, and we were well pleased to believe it possible.