seated in the center on a piece of rock, playing on the lyre his enchanting melodies to wild and tame animals- the lion, the wolf, the serpent, the horse, the ram at his feet and the birds in the trees. Around the central figure are several biblical scenes,- Moses smiting the rock, David aiming the sling at Goliath, Daniel among the lions, the raising of Lazarus. The heathen Orpheus- the reputed author of monotheistic hymns (the Orphica), the center of so many mysteries, the fabulous charmer of all creation appears here either as a symbol and type of Christ himself, or, like the heathen Sibyl, as an antitype and unconscious prophet of Christ, announc

ing and foreshadowing him as the conquer

RESTORATION OF SAME.

or of all the forces of nature, as the harmonizer of all discords, and as the ruler over life and death.

THE SACRAMENTS.

Two sacraments are represented, the Lord's Supper and Baptism. The Lord's Supper was first celebrated in connection with the Agapæ or Love-Feast, in imitation of the Jewish Passover. A picture in the Catacombs exhibits the Saviour in the midst of the disciples reclining around the table, instituting the Holy Communion.

Of baptism there are several pictures. The catechumen stands in water or rises out of the water, while the baptizer stands on the shore, completing the act or helping the baptized. River baptism, or, as the "Teaching of the Apostles" has it, baptism "in living (running) water, was the favorite mode in the first three centuries, in imitation of Christ's baptism in the Jordan. In the age of Constantine special baptisteries were built."

sinners; others interpret it as the mother church, or as both combined.

THE SCULPTURES.

THE works of sculpture are mostly found on sarcophagi. Many of them are collected in the Lateran Museum. Few of them date from the ante-Nicene age. They represent in relief the same subjects as the wall-pictures, so far as they could be worked in stone or marble, especially the resurrection of Lazarus, Daniel among the lions, Moses smiting the rock, and the sacrifice of Isaac.

Among the oldest Christian sarcophagi are those of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine (d. 328), and of Constantia, his daughter (d. 354), both of red porphyry, and preserved in the Vatican Museum. The sculpture on the former probably represents the triumphal entry of Constantine into Rome after his victory over Maxentius; the sculpture on the latter, the cultivation of the vine, probably has a symbolical meaning.

The richest and finest of all the Christian sarcophagi is that of Junius Bassus, Prefect of Rome A. D. 359, and five times consul, in the crypt of St. Peter's in the Vatican. It was found in the Vatican cemetery (1595). It is made of Parian marble in Corinthian style. The subjects represented in the upper part are the sacrifice of Abraham, the capture of St. Peter, Christ seated between Peter and Paul, the capture of Christ, and Pilate washing his

BAPTISM OF A BOY.
(CRYPT ATTRIBUTED TO POPE CALIXTUS.)

hands; in the lower part are the temptation of Adam and Eve, the suffering of Job, Christ's

EPITAPHS.

"Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope, and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos

Of the Here and the Hereafter."

To perpetuate, by means of sepulchral inscriptions, the memory of relatives and friends, and to record the sentiments of love and esteem, of grief and hope, in the face of death and eternity, is a custom common to all civilized ages and nations. These epitaphs are limited by space, and often provoke rather than satisfy curiosity, but contain, nevertheless, in poetry or prose, a vast amount of biographical and historical information. Many a graveyard is a broken record of the church to which it belongs.

The Catacombs abound in such monumental inscriptions, Greek and Latin, or strangely mixed (Latin words in Greek characters), often rudely written, badly spelt, mutilated, and almost illegible, with and without symbolical figures. The classical languages were then in process of decay, like classical eloquence and art, and the great majority of Christians were poor and illiterate people. One name only is given in the earlier epitaphs; sometimes the age, and the day of burial, but not the date of birth.

More than fifteen thousand epitaphs from the first six centuries in Rome alone have been collected, classified, and explained by De' Rossi, and their number is constantly increasing. Benedict XIV. founded, in 1750, a Christian museum, and devoted a hall in the Vatican to the collection of ancient sarcophagi. Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. patronized it. In this lapidarian gallery the costly pagan and the simple Christian inscriptions and sarcophagi confront each other on opposite walls, and present a striking contrast. Another important collection is in the Kircherian Museum, in the Roman College; another in the Christian Museum of the University of Berlin. The entire field of ancient epigraphy, heathen and Christian, in Italy and other countries, has been made accessible by the industry and learning of Gruter, Muratori, Marchi, De' Rossi, Le Blant, Böckh, Kirchhoff, Orelli, Mommsen, Henzen, Hübner, Waddington, and McCaul.

The most difficult part of this branch of archæology is the chronology (the oldest inscriptions being mostly undated). Their chief interest for the church historian is their religion, so far as it may be inferred from a few words.

The keynote of the Christian epitaphs, as

compared with the heathen, is struck by Paul in his words of comfort to the Thessalonians, that they should not sorrow like the heathen, who have no hope, but remember that, as Jesus rose from the dead, so God will raise them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus.

Hence, while the heathen epitaphs rarely express a belief in immortality, but often describe death as an eternal sleep, the grave as a final home, and are pervaded by a tone of sadness, the Christian epitaphs are hopeful and cheerful. The farewell on earth is followed by a welcome from heaven. Death is but a short sleep; the soul is with Christ and lives in God; the body waits for a joyful resurrection,- this is the sum and substance of the theology of Christian epitaphs. The symbol of Christ (Ichthys) is often placed at the beginning or end to show the ground of this hope. Again and again we find the brief but significant words: "In peace." "He [or "she"] sleeps in peace." "Live in God" for "in Christ"]. "Live forever." "He rests well." "God quicken thy spirit." "Weep not, my child; death is not eternal." "Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars, and his body rests in the tomb." "Here Gordian, the courier from Gaul, strangled for the faith, with his whole family, rests in peace. The maid servant, Theophila, erected this."

At the same time, stereotyped heathen epitaphs continued to be used (but of course not in a polytheistic sense), as, "Sacred to the funeral gods" [or "to the departed spirits "]. The laudatory epithets of heathen epitaphs are rare, but simple terms of natural affection very frequent, as, "My sweetest child"; "Innocent little lamb ";" My dearest husband";

66

My dearest wife"; "My innocent dove"; "My well-deserving father" [or "mother"]; A. and B. "lived together "[for 15, 20, 30, 50, or even 60 years] "without any complaint or quarrel, without taking or giving offense." Such commemoration of conjugal happiness, and commendations of female virtues, as modesty, chastity, prudence, diligence, frequently occur also on pagan monuments, and prove that there were many exceptions to the corruption of Roman society as painted by Juvenal and the satirists.

Some epitaphs contain a request to the dead in heaven to pray for the living on earth. At

amusing case of haunting fantasy in his own experience. His hearer had shown even more amusement than he, and had gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with himself. There had been one offsetting comfort—an unintentional implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the haunting fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair.

No, it was the name of a quite different place they spoke; a name that Claude's lips dared not speak, because, for lo! these months and months his heart had spoken it,-spoken it at first in so soft a whisper that for a long time he had not known it was his heart he heard. When something within uttered and reuttered the place's name, he would silently explain to himself, "It is because I am from home. It is this unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; I know that; for, in the first place, I was in love once, when I was fourteen, and it was not at all like this; and, in the second place, it would be hopeless presumption in me, muddybooted vagabond that I am; and, in the third place, a burnt child dreads fire. And so, it cannot be love. When papa and I are once more together, this unaccountable longing will cease."

But, instead of ceasing, it had grown. The name of the place was still the only word the heart would venture, but it meant always one pair of eyes, one young face, one form, one voice. Still it was not love-oh, no! Now and then the hospitality of some plantationhouse near the camp was offered to the engineers, and sometimes, just to prove that this thing was not love, he would accept such an invitation, and even meet a pretty maiden or two, and ask them for music and song - for which he had well-nigh a passion and talk enough to answer their questions and conjectures about a surveyor's life, etc.; but when he got back to camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than better.

He had then tried staying in camp, but without benefit; nothing cured, everything aggravated. Yet he knew so perfectly well that he was not in love, that, just to realize the knowledge, one evening when his father was a day's march ahead and he was having a pleasant chat with the "chief," no one else nigh, and they were dawdling away its closing hour with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like trifles, which Claude, of course, knew all VOL. XXXV.-49-50.

"All right," the angry youth had muttered, tossing on his iron couch, "let him think so!" And then he had tossed again and said below his breath, "It is not love; it is not. But I must never answer its call; if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! would that I could give my whole heart to thee as thou givest all to me!" God has written on every side of our nature— on the mind, on the soul, yes, and in our very flesh- the interdict forbidding love to have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed. This Claude vaguely felt; but, lacking the clear thought, he could only cry, "Oh, is it, is it selfishness for one's heart just to be hungry and thirsty?"

And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle between his knees, waiting for his son's choice and ready to make it his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son's heartif love were subject to arithmetic!-yielding it to one who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of her black hair- one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered, the father spoke.

as

"Claude, I tell you!" His face lighted up with courage and ambition. "We better goMervillionville!"

Claude's heart leaped; but he kept his countenance. "Vermillionville? No, papa; you will not like Vermillionville." "Yass! I will like him. 'T is good place! Bonaventure come from yondah. When I was leav' Gran' Point', Bonaventure, he cry, you know, like I tole you. He tell Sidonie hebringin' ed'cation at Gran' Point' to make Gran' Point' more better, but now ed'cation drive bes' men 'way from Gran' Point'. And den he say, 'St. Pierre, may be you go Mervillionville; dat make me glad,' he say; 'dat way,' he say,' what I rob Peter I pay John.' Where we go if dawn't go Mervillionville? St. Martinville, Opelousas, New Iberia? Too many Creole yondah for me. Can't go to city; city too big to live in. Why you dawn't like Mervillionville? You