“What a picture,” exclaims a writer in the London Art Journal,[69] “do these dark vaults display of the devotion, the zeal, the love of those early Christian converts whose baptism was in blood! I picture them to myself, stealing forth from the city in the gloomy twilight, out towards the lonely Campagna, and disappearing one by one through well-known apertures, threading their way through the dark sinuous galleries to some altar, where life and light and spiritual food, the soft chanting of the holy psalms and the greeting of faithful brethren, waking the echoes, awaited them. The sight of these early haunts of the persecuted and infant religion is inexpressibly affecting; and I pity those, be they Protestant or Catholic, who can visit these hallowed precincts without an overwhelming emotion. How many martyrs, their bodies torn and lacerated by the cruel beasts amid the infuriated roar of thousands shrieking forth the cry of _Christianos ad leonem!_ in the bloody games of the Flavian amphitheatre, breathing their last sigh, calling on the name of the Redeemer, have passed, borne by mourning friends or by compassionate widows or virgins to their last dark narrow home, along the very path I was now treading! How many glorified saints, now singing the praises of the Eternal around the great white throne in the seventh heaven of glory, may have been laid to rest in these very apertures, lighted by a flickering taper like that I held. But I must pause--this is an endless theme, endless as the glory of those who hover in eternal light and ecstatic radiance above; it is moreover a pæan I feel utterly unworthy to sing.” [Illustration: (Christian Ring and Impression)] We have received a drawing and impression of a ring which is in the British Museum; and our opinion is that it belonged to one of the early Christians. While the ΧΑΙΡΩ, _I rejoice_, upon it, favors the idea, the monogram (upon the signet part) confirms it. This is, evidently, the name of Jesus in its earliest monogrammatic form, made up of the letters Χ. and Ρ. As commonly found on monuments in the catacombs of Rome, it has a single cross with the Ρ. thus, ☧ while in our illustration the cross is multiplied; and this is the only difference. Surely such a memorial as this is more likely to have been the ring of the lowly-minded “fisherman,” than the one which is said to be framed with diamonds and worn by the Pope. In Dr. Kip’s very interesting work on the Catacombs of Rome, there is an illustration of a seal-ring, upon which a like monogram appears, although somewhat complicated.[70] Near Cork, in Ireland, a silver ring was discovered, the hoop whereof is composed of nine knobs or bosses, which may have served instead of beads and been used by the wearer in the Catholic counting of them. The antiquaries of Ireland have considered this ring as very ancient.[71] [Illustration: (Irish Diamond Ring Two Views)]