[Continued.]

Vix fama nota est, abditis
Quam plena sancti Roma sit;
Quam dives urbanum solum
Sacris sepulchris floreat. 

          
                                        PRUDENTIUS.

Mille victoriose chiare palme. 
PETRARCH.

II.

The results of the investigations in the catacombs during the last three or four years have well rewarded the zeal of their explorers.  Since the great work of the French government was published, in 1851-55, very curious and important discoveries have been made, and many new minor facts brought to light.  The interest in the investigations has become more general, and no visit to Rome is now complete without a visit to one at least of the catacombs.  Strangely enough, however, the Romans themselves, for the most part, feel less concern in these new revelations of their underground city than the strangers who come from year to year to make their pilgrimages to Rome.  It is an old complaint, that the Romans care little for their city.  “Who are there to-day,” says Petrarch, in one of his letters, “more ignorant of Roman things than the Roman citizens?  And nowhere is Rome less known than in Rome itself.”  It is, however, to the Cavaliere de Rossi, himself a Roman, that the most important of these discoveries are due,—­the result of his marvellous learning and sagacity, and of his hard-working and unwearied energy.  The discovery of the ancient entrance to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, and of the chapel within, where St. Cecilia was originally buried, is a piece of the very romance of Archaeology.  The whole history of St. Cecilia, the glorious Virgin Martyr and the Saint of Music, as connected with the catacombs, is, indeed, one of the most curious to be found in the annals of the Church.  Legend and fact are strangely mingled in it, and over it hangs a perplexing mist of doubt, but not so dense as wholly to conceal all certainty.  It is a story of suffering, of piety, of enthusiasm, of superstition, and of science;—­it connects itself in many points with the progress of corruption in the Church, and it has been a favorite subject for Art in all ages.  The story is at last finished.  Begun sixteen hundred years ago, it has just reached its last chapter.  In order to understand it, we must go back almost to its introduction.

According to the legend of the Roman Church, as preserved in the “Acts of St. Cecilia,” this young and beautiful saint was martyred in the year of our Lord 230.[A] She had devoted herself to perpetual virginity, but her parents had insisted upon marrying her to a youthful and noble Roman, named Valerian.  On the night of her marriage, she succeeded in so far prevailing upon her husband as to induce him to visit the pope, Urban, who was lying concealed from his persecutors in the catacombs which were called after and still bear the name of his predecessor, Callixtus,[B]