During our stay in Rome, we visited the Catacombs. There are about 60 in all, which extend in various directions, outside the walls of the city. "They consist of subterranean excavations, which served as places of refuge and worship to the earliest followers of the Christian faith, during the persecutions they had to suffer under the predecessors of Constantine, and where, after death, many thousands were interred, from the earliest period of Christianity to the sixth century of the present era." We visited St. Peter's also, the Vatican, drove along the Via Appia, by which the Apostle Paul entered Rome, and saw the Arch of Titus. The Coliseum (which originally accommodated 87,000 spectators) is likewise a remarkable ruin. "The caverns in which the wild beasts were confined are still in existence, and the gladiatorial spectacles, of which for nearly 400 years it was the scene, are matters of history. In the reign of Trajan, Ignatius was brought there from Antioch, on purpose to be torn in pieces by wild beasts; and great numbers of martyrs perished on its arena." The Basilica of the Lateran--which we visited also--was long regarded as the first of Christian Churches, and styled by an inscription at the entrance, "The Mother and Head of all the Churches in the world!" One of the sights of Rome, too, is the Scala Santa, where eleven penitents were ascending a long flight of 28 marble steps upon their knees. This Scala Santa is the celebrated staircase up which Luther, before his conversion, was once working his weary way, when these words, "The just shall live by faith," seemed to reach him like a voice from heaven. Before our departure from Rome, we visited the Basilica of San Paolo likewise, a vast marble Cathedral, erected on the spot where--according to tradition--the Apostles Peter and Paul embraced each other before they were led away to execution--the former to be crucified with his head downwards, the latter to be beheaded. The Church and Monastery of the three Fountains, the Baths of Caracalla, the Columbaria--remarkable ancient burying places for the remains of the dead, after they had been burned to ashes--the Pantheon, the Column of Trajan, the Arch of Septimus Severus, some curious old aqueducts, the ruins of the palaces of the Cæsars, and other famous antiquities, we also saw; but the sights of Rome are so numerous and celebrated, that no minute description of them can be attempted, especially as our visits to those just mentioned were most brief and hasty, compared with the time usually devoted to them by strangers. The ruins of Rome--once proudly called the "Eternal City"--plainly show "that the fashion of this world passeth away, and the lust thereof." "He (and he _only_) who doeth the will of God, abideth for ever." What a blessed thing it is to have "_no_ abiding City" here, but to look for "the City which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."