APPII FORUM, AND THREE TAVERNS.

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and despised country; and how little could they have anticipated the day when the religion he came to teach should fill the land, and that its stately shrines would stand triumphant, when the sca should wash over the tesselated relics of their luxurious villas, and splendid temples!

Leaving Puteoli, St. Paul and his companions directed their steps towards Rome, whence a band of disciples, who had received the joyful news of his arrival, were hastening to give him the meeting. Baia and Puteoli communicated with Rome by a branch road, which entered the Appian Way near Minturnæ. This famous highway, the Via Appia, called the queen of Roman roads, was constructed with large stones, so well prepared and fitted, that they adhered for ages without the aid of cement. It was well furnished with inns and post-houses, being the most frequented outlet from the capital. The modern road from Rome to Naples runs, for the most part, upon its foundations, and displays, in many places, the most enchanting scenery, especially at Mola, Fondi, and Terracina; but upon this our plan forbids us to dwell in detail. The road had not long been traversed in the opposite direction, by a very different sort of traveller-the poet Horace, who has given the facetious account of his adventures, so familiar to classical scholars, and so truthfully presented to the English reader by the gentle Cowper.

In what way the Apostle and his friends may have travelled, we are left very much to conjecture; but, across the Pontine Marshes, between Terracina and Torre Treponti, supposed to occupy the site of Appii Forum, ran a canal, along which Horace was conveyed during the night, and of which some vestiges are still to be traced. At Appii Forum Paul met the first detachment of his sympathising friends, and the remainder at Tres Tabernas, or the Three Taverns, the next station towards Rome, situated near the modern town of Cisterna. The sight of company after company, thus prepared beforehand to welcome him, must have been cheering indeed to the Apostle, after his long and arduous.

journey; and, to use the brief but expressive words of the sacred narrative, "he thanked God, and took courage.'

The whole party now proceeded together towards Rome, crossing the romantic hills of Aricia and Albano, till the wide expanse of the Campagna opened before them, terminated in the distance by the glittering buildings of the Eternal City. Far different from what it now is, was then the approach to Rome. The throng of chariots and horsemen must have pressed eagerly along the narrow causeway, lined with those splendid sepulchres, of which the ruins are now scattered over the dreary and deserted plain, where the solitary herdsman pastures his droves of buffaloes. But where shall we find the scene, such as it must then have been, so vividly portrayed as in the well-known lines of Milton?

"What conflux issuing forth, or entering in,—
Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings;
Or embassies from regions far remote,

In various habits, on the Appian road,

Or on th' Emilian; some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both ways falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and more to west,
The realm of Bacchus, to the Blackmoor sea;
From th' Asian kings and Parthian among these,
From India and the golden Cheronese,

And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,

Dusk faces, with white silken turbans wreath'd;
From Gallia, Gades, and the British West,
Germans and Scythians, and Sarmatians north
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.”

Paradise Regained, b. iv.

The modern road from Rome to Naples, diverging from the Via Appia, enters the city by the Porta S. Giovanni. Paul and his companions continued, of course, to follow the Appian Way, and leaving on the right the beautiful round sepulchre of

Cecilia Metella, entered the city through the gate of Drusus, the remains of which still bestride the original causeway.

Arrived at the metropolis of the world, Paul appears to have been, although nominally a prisoner, yet admitted to bail, and allowed to live for two years in his own hired house. Here he largely increased the number of the Christian converts, which it would seem was already so considerable as to have excited the hostility of the Jews; thus giving rise to dissensions which had caused both parties to be banished for a while from the city. It was not long after his arrival that Paul was called upon to appear before the tribunal of Nero, on which occasion he was deserted by most of those whom he had expected to stand by him. For the present, however, he escaped the cruelty of the tyrant. After his first sojourn at Rome, he set out again on his missionary travels, probably going as far as Spain, and revisiting also the churches in Greece and Asia Minor, generally accompanied by

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Luke, and sometimes by other of his friends. "The indefatigable activity of this one man," to use the words of Milman, "had planted Christian colonies, each of which became the centre of a new moral civilization, from the borders of Syria as far as Spain, and to the city of Rome."

During this absence of the Apostle occurred that terrible fire which laid Rome in ashes, and for which the unoffending Christians were punished by the infliction of the most unheard-of tortures, being enveloped in wax cloths, and set up for torches in the public gardens. This circumstance seems to prove that they could be no longer an obscure insignificant body, but must have become sufficiently numerous to attract the notice, and to fix the suspicions of the government. Paul at length went back to Rome, but only to obtain the crown of martyrdom. His Second Epistle to Timothy, written shortly after his return, alludes to his recent journey into Asia Minor and Greece, and declares that he "was now ready to be offered, and that the time of his departure was at hand."

Whether St. Peter was ever at Rome, and after being a fellowlabourer with St. Paul, suffered martyrdom about the same time, is a question warmly disputed to the present day; suffice it to say, that such appears to have been the general belief of the early Fathers. According to this belief, St. Peter was crucified upon the Vatican Mount, at the spot whereon Constantine afterwards erected that chapel, which became the nucleus of the most magnificent church in the world. Whatever may be the genuineness of this tradition, there can be little or no doubt that St. Paul, after being some time confined in prison, was led out to execution at the Aqua Salviæ, three miles from the city, where, as crucifixion was too infamous for a Roman citizen, he was put to death by beheading, and afterwards buried in the Via Ostiensis. The church raised over this spot by Constantine, was one of the most splendid of Christian basilicas.

To give the history of Rome from the time of St. Paul to the