"'The triumphs of the Faith are not above-ground in our splendid churches,' said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every side. 'They are here! among the martyrs' graves!' He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how, perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken--how they would have quailed and drooped--if a foreknowledge of the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the great name for which they died, could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire."--_Dickens._ "Countless martyrs, they say, rest in these ancient sepulchres. In these dark depths the ancient Church took refuge from persecution; there she laid her martyrs, and there, over their tombs, she chaunted hymns of triumph, and held communion with Him for whom they died. In that church I spend hours. I have no wish to descend into those sacred sepulchres, and pry among the graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I like to think of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet there; of their spirits in Paradise; of their faith triumphant in the city that massacred them. "No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered why the wicked triumph, and sighed to God, 'How long, O Lord, how long?'"--_Schonberg Cotta Family._ "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."--_Rev._ vi. 9--11. In the valley beneath S. Sebastiano are the ruins of the _Circus of Maxentius_, near those of a villa of that emperor. The circus was 1482 feet long, 244 feet broad, and was capable of containing 15,000 spectators, yet it is a miniature compared with the Circus Maximus, though very interesting as retaining in tolerable preservation all the different parts which composed a circus. The circular ruin near it was a _Temple_ dedicated by Maxentius to his son Romulus.