should be with each a time of serious thought, at the close of the natural, and opening of the ecclesiastical year, as well as of preparation for the festival of Christmas. There are fervent and pious hearts of each denomination now in Rome, and yet how will they misjudge and condemn each other! The Protestants will forget, or will give no proof that they remember, this to be a season of penitential retrospect and sedulous preparation. On Christmas-eve, it is true, they will think of the morrow with grateful happy feelings, as the festival which, excepting that of the Resurrection, they feel to be the most joyous of the year; but previously to this all will have gone on as usual, and they will never be able to understand the tribute which Catholics pay to the holiday of Sunday, by relaxing from the austerities of the week, by a little social, though private, intercourse in the evening, after the morning devotions have been equal to the entire Sunday of any Protestant, however pious."

"Catholics," said the General, " do not drag about their sleepy devotion after the time appointed by the church, and therefore they are not acting a part they do not feel.”

"And yet," said Geraldine, "a Protestant might say that much of the Catholic during these week days in Advent, which, though not so mournful as in Lent, are very solemn."

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They are solemn," said the General," the Church intends they should be so, and therefore, as you have seen, all the decorations of the altar are covered with the mourning garb of purple, and her children are directed to think of their sins, to repent of them, confess and make satisfaction for them; all which gives them occupation in exact keeping with the penitential season-while on the holy-days or Sundays, the commemoration being joyful, and the nature of joy being social, they are called on by the

Church to rejoice in her own Catholic and social spirit. If the divine founder of our faith had not intended that our joys should be social, and our penitential hours silent and abstracted, why did he instance feasting, music, and dancing, on occasions of joy, and bid the spiritual mourner enter into his chamber and be still."

"I have experienced," said Geraldine, "the inconsistency, and, to a scrupulous conscience, the misery of being taught, that religious joy is anti-social-for the heart contradicts that opinion."

"Let Protestants go through all the austerities and humiliations to which the Catholic Church obliges her children," said the General, "before they attack her Sunday. Let them keep all her fasts before they quarrel with her feasts; and let them explain why the Church has had authority to change the Sabbath of the old law, with no warrant whatever for it from Scripture, and yet has no authority to regulate the hours of the day, and permit the rest from mental as well as manual labour after the devotions of the morning.""

"The meeting of relations on the evening of Sunday is relaxation sufficient, I should think," said Geraldine; "I shall never like to see cards or dancing on the Sunday evening."

"And yet," said the General, "you actually clapped your hands for joy, when on the sudden turn of the road on our journey, just before entering the little town of Tavernello, we beheld the peasants dancing on the other side of the bridge, and a couple of old ecclesiastics looking on, although a little apart."

"It was a beautiful picture," said Geraldine, " and more than that, it made me happy to see others happy, and so it ever will."

"Then your objection to dancing on the Sunday," said the General," is, I conclude, more from your

dread of the previous desecration that would take place, from the preparations thought essential to the entertainments of the great."

"I think you are right, Padrino," said Geraldine; "for although I might like to dance and make mer. ry on the Sunday evening, I could never be reconciled to inducing servants to break the Sabbath by manual labour, which Catholics deprecate as much as Protestants. I have no scruple, however, about these little reunions' at the Contessa's, where is neither feasting nor dancing, but a great deal of interesting conversation."

It was on one of these Sunday evenings, in Advent, that Geraldine met for the first time, her celebrated countryman, the Rev. Dr. Wharton, and esteemed herself happy in being a listener to his varied and ever instructive conversation; and, at length, in being invited to speak freely to him on the subject of her own impressions of ancient and modern Rome. Geraldine, as she listened to his profound observations, both as a theologian and an antiquary, almost regretted that her usual shadow, Mr. Ellis, was not present, to have started his objections, in presence of an authority to which he must have yielded at least deference. A little reflection, however, made her esteem herself happy to be freed from controversy, and in the peaceful enjoyment of instruction given in all the playful ease of recreation.

On Dr. Wharton's mentioning the excavations beneath the city, Geraldine could not but express her regret that she had not been permitted to visit the Catacombs, and asked him whether he supposed them to have been originally destined for places of religious interment.

"The excavations beneath the city," replied Dr. Wharton, "were probably formed by supplying sand and other materials for the buildings above,

and then put to no farther use by the Pagans, who did not bury, but burnt, their dead, until the reign of Constantine; from which date the Christian mode became so popular, that in the time of Theodosius the younger, there was not a body burned in Rome." "But how is it ascertained," said Geraldine, "that the Christians alone deposited their dead within these caverns, and that from the time when the Pagans imitated their decent interment of the dead, the Catacombs did not receive the bodies of Pagans as well as Christians, so that we may be led into venerating as relicks of Christian martyrs the remains of idolaters ?"

"The Christian crypts," replied Dr. Wharton, "which are dug in the earth to a great extent, are known by the emblems and inscriptions found on the door of entrance, and also by the testimony of ancient Christian writers: among the rest, Saint Jerome relates, that when a boy and a student at Rome, he was accustomed on Sundays to go into these crypts, which were lined on each side with the bodies of the Christian dead, and to make the round of the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs. The Christian emblems and inscriptions placed in the Catacombs are frequently the monogram of Christ's name in a cross, a carved or painted figure of a lamb, often having a cross on its head,-the shepherd carrying the lost sheep,-the stag thirsting after the fountains of water, and others; for instance, the olive or palm branch, the dove, the vine, the anchor. The first I have mentioned are the only symbols which are received as undoubtedly Christian, for these latter, although denoting certain virtues, are no proof of Christian martyrdom, or sanctity, and when discovered are decently re-interred without further honour from the faithful. Those relics," continued Dr. Wharton, "which bear on the coffin the name of the martyr, hold the first

rank; next to these are esteemed the relics to which are affixed the symbols of martyrdom, together with the Christian emblems."

Just as Dr. Wharton finished speaking, Geraldine distinguished the voice of Mr. Ellis engaged in a laughing dialogue with an old Italian priest, who spoke admirable English, and who was generally to be found amongst the English Catholics in their private reunions.'

"But, my dear good Abate," said Mr. Ellis, at length able to articulate, after a fit of continued laughter, "how can you give me a satisfactory account of the two heads of Saint John Baptist, and the-I know not how many thumbs of Saint John the Evangelist, all and each performing miracles? Now, the false head and the false thumbs have no right to work miracles, yet their feats are quite equal to those of the true relicks; so that we require, as in the judgement of Solomon, to be decided by nature, and see the baptist and evangelist claim their own property, before we can believe in either the relicks, or the miracles. Perhaps," added he, "you are not aware that English Protestants, in their tours round the Catholic Continent, are shown these duplicates and triplicates of holy relicks!"

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"Yes," said the Abate," I have before heard of these two heads of saints, but from Protestant travellers only, each supposed by its respective possessors to be the head of Saint John the baptist. Of course, supposing the account correct, one cannot be, and neither may be, the relick of that saint. But it is certain, that to whatever saints these relicks belong, God has given power, through the intercession of Saint John the baptist, to cure diseases, and work other miracles, by means of these relicks. The miraculous cures are certain. What matters then the uncertainty as to which, if either, of the heads belonged to Saint John the baptist, since both are