"Not exactly, mother. William couldn't live at home as he lives now; that would be painful to us and impossible for him."
"True; I forgot that."
"It is difficult for me to put in a word," said Alfred, "because I've been a great expense to Bob, and he hasn't done with me yet; in fact I've no right to make a suggestion; but it is my full intention to reimburse him one of these days. I shouldn't have said so, only the chance of helping to bring William back—"
"You're a good fellow, Alfred; I believe you; and must confess that I have found you less trouble than I expected."
The result of the consultation was a letter to the vicar, signed by every one present, entreating him to return forthwith; a letter over which he cried like [{414}] a girl. It brought him back speedily, a wiser and not a sadder man. He said indeed that, though down among the dykes, he had never been so happy as since he made all square with his conscience.
To follow the affairs of Upfield and the Wickhams further would involve a series of stories. It must suffice to say that Robert's marriage turned out really well; and that from the day of her betrothal, the dearest wish of Polly's heart was gratified; for he, unasked, joined her and the other stragglers who—the laws notwithstanding—made their way on Sundays and holidays to a side-entrance in venerable old Edward's Hall, and were admitted to mass in the little well-loved chapel; Mr. Armand the librarian, identical with Father Armand the priest, thanking God devoutly for the addition to the fold.
From The Month.
A LOST CHAPTER OF CHURCH HISTORY RECOVERED.
BY JAMES SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D.
If we set before a skilful professor of comparative anatomy a few bones dug out of the bowels of the earth, he will re-construct for us the whole form of the animal to which they belonged; and it sometimes happens that these theoretical constructions are singularly justified by later discoveries. It is the province of an archaeologian to attempt something of the same kind. A historian transcribes for our use annals more or less fully composed and faithfully transmitted by his predecessors. He may have to gather his materials from various sources; he must distinguish the true from the false; and he gives shape, consistency, and life to the whole; but, for the most part at least, he has little to supply that is new from any resources of his own. The archaeologian, on the contrary, if he be really a man of learning and science, and not a mere collector of old curiosities, aims at discovering and restoring annals that are lost, by means of a careful and intelligent use of every fragment of most heterogeneous materials that happens to come across him. And there is certainly nobody in the present age whose talent and industry in this branch of learning, so far at least as Christian archaeology is concerned, can at all compare with that of Cavaliere G. B. de Rossi. For more than twenty years he has devoted himself to the study of the Roman catacombs, and at length we begin to enter upon the fruit of his labors. He has just published (by order of the Pope, and at the expense, we believe, of the Commission of Sacred Archaeology, instituted by his Holiness in 1851) the first volume of Roma Sotteranea; a magnificent volume, splendidly illustrated, and full of new and varied information. An abstract of its contents would hardly be suitable to our pages; but none, we think, can fail to be interested in what we may venture to call the first chapter of the History of the Catacombs—a chapter that had certainly never before been written, even if it had been attempted.
All earlier authors upon subterranean Rome, so far as our experience goes, whilst describing fully, and it may be illustrating with considerable learning, the catacombs as they now exist, and all the monuments they [{415}] contain, have been content to pass over with a few words of apology and conjecture the question of their origin and early history. They have told us that the Jewish residents in Rome had burial-places of a similar character; and they have shown how natural and probable it was that the first Roman Christians, unwilling to burn their dead in pagan fashion, should have imitated the practices of the ancient people of God. When pressed to explain how so gigantic a work, as the Roman catacombs undoubtedly are, could have been carried on by the Christians under the very feet of their bitter persecutors, yet without their knowledge, they have pointed to the rare instance of a cemetery entered by a staircase hidden within the recesses of a sand-pit; they have guessed that here or there some Christian patrician, some senator or his wife, may have given up a garden or a vineyard for use as a burial-ground; and then they have passed on to the much easier task of enumerating the subterranean chapels, tracing the intricacies of the galleries, or describing the paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions. The work of De Rossi is of a very different character. It begins ab ovo, and proceeds scientifically. It shows not only how these wonderful cemeteries may have been made, but also—as far as is practicable, and a great deal further than nine-tenths even of the most learned archaeologians ever supposed to be practicable—how and when each cemetery really was made. From the few scattered bones, so to speak, which lay buried, and for the most part broken, partly in the depths of the catacombs themselves, partly in the Acts of the Martyrs, the Liber Pontificalis, and a few other records of ecclesiastical history, he has reconstructed with consummate skill the complete skeleton, if we should not rather say has reproduced the whole body, and set it full of life and vigor before us. Not that he has indulged in hasty conjectures, or given unlimited scope to a lively imagination; far from it. On the contrary, we fear many of his less learned readers will be disposed to find fault with the slow and deliberate, almost ponderous, method of his progress, and to grow impatient under the mass of minute criticisms with which some of his pages are filled, and by which he insists upon justifying each step that he takes. Indeed, we have some scruple at presenting our readers with the sum and substance of his argument, divested of all these pièces justificatives, as our neighbors would call them, lest they should suspect us of inventing rather than describing. However, we think it is too precious a page of Church history to be lost, and we therefore proceed to publish it, only premising that nobody must pretend to judge of its truth merely from the naked abstract of it which we propose to give, but that all who are really interested in the study should examine for themselves in detail the whole mass of evidence by which, in De Rossi's pages, it is supported, most of which is new, and all newly applied.