We trust our readers will be induced to get this valuable work and to study it for themselves; the text may be procured either in French or in Italian, so that it is readily accessible to all. At the same time we would take the opportunity of introducing to them another work by the same indefatigable author, which is also published both in French and in Italian. At least, such is the announcement of a prospectus now lying before us, which states that the French translation is published by Vives, in Paris. We have ourselves only seen the original Italian. It is a short monthly periodical, illustrations, Bollettino di Archeologia Cristiana, and is addressed not merely to savans, Fellows of Royal Societies, and the like, but rather to all educated men who care for the history of their religion and are capable of appreciating its evidences. De Rossi claims for the recent discoveries in the Roman catacombs the very highest place among the scientific events of the day which have an important religious bearing, and we think that the justice of his plea must be admitted. Unfortunately, however, the vastness of the subject, the multiplied engagements of the author, and (not least) the political vicissitudes of the times, have hitherto prevented the publication of these discoveries in a complete and extended form. We are happy to know that the work is satisfactorily progressing; but meanwhile he has been persuaded by the suggestions of many friends, and by the convenience of the thing itself, to publish this monthly periodical, which will keep us au courant with the most important additions that are being made from time to time to our knowledge of those precious memorials of primitive Christianity, and also supply much interesting information on other archaeological matters. In these pages the reader is allowed to accompany, as it were, the author himself in his subterranean researches, to assist at his discoveries, to trace the happy but doubtful conjecture of a moment through all its gradual stages, until it reaches the moral certainty of a conclusion which can no longer be called in question; e.g., the author gives us a portion of a lecture which he delivered on July 3, 1852, to the Roman Pontifical Academy of Archaeology. In this lecture he maintained, in opposition to the usual nomenclature of the catacombs, and entirely on the strength of certain topographical observations, that a particular cemetery, into which a very partial opening had been made in 1848, was that anciently called by the name of Pretextatus, and in which were buried St. Januarius, the eldest of the seven sons of St. Felicitas, Felicissimus and Agapitus, deacons of St. Sixtus, Pope Urban, Quirinus, and other famous martyrs. Five years passed away, and this opinion had been neither confirmed nor refuted; but in 1857, excavations undertaken for another purpose introduced our author into a crypt of this cemetery, of unusual size and richness of ornament, where one of the loculi bore an inscription on the mortar which had secured the grave-stone, invoking the assistance of "Januarius, Agatopus (for Agapitus), and Felicissimus, martyrs!" This, of course, was a strong confirmation of the conjecture which had been published so long before; but this was all which he could produce in the first number of his Bollettino in January, 1863. In the second number he could add that, as he was going to press (February 21), small fragments of an inscription on marble had been disinterred from the same place, of which only single letters had yet been found, but which, he did not hesitate to say, had been written by Pope Damasus and contained his name, as well as the name of [{132}] St. Januarius. In March he published the twelve or fourteen letters which had been discovered, arranging them in the place he supposed them to have occupied in the inscription, which he conjecturally restored, and which consisted altogether of more than forty letters. In April he was able still further to add, that they had now recovered other portions; amongst the rest, a whole word, or rather the contraction of a word (episcop. for episcopus), exactly in accordance with his conjecture, though, at the time he made the conjecture, only half of one of the letters had yet come to light.
We need not pursue the subject further. Enough has been said to satisfy those of our readers who have any acquaintance with the catacombs, both as to the kind and the degree of interest and importance which belong to this publication. Its intelligence, however, is by no means confined to the catacombs. The basilica of San Clemente; the recent excavations at San Lorenzo, fuori le mura; the postscript of St. Pamphilus the Martyr at the end of one of his manuscript copies of the Bible, reproduced in the Codex Sinaiticus lately published by Tischendorf; the arch of Constantine; ancient scribblings on the wall (graffiti) of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, etc., etc., are subjects of able and learned articles in the several numbers we have received. With reference to the graffiti, one singular circumstance mentioned by De Rossi is worth repeating here. Most of our readers are probably acquainted with the graffiti from this place, published by P. Garrucci, in which one Alessamenus is ridiculed for worshipping as his God the figure of a man, but with the head of an ass, nailed to a cross. P. Garrucci had very reasonably conjectured that this was intended as a blasphemous caricature of the Christian worship; and recently other graffiti in the very same place have been discovered with the title Episcopus, apparently given in ridicule to some Christian youth; for that the room on whose walls these scribblings appear was used for educational purposes is abundantly proved by the numerous inscriptions announcing that such or such a one exit de paedagogio. We seem, therefore, in deciphering these rude scrawls, to assist, as it were, at one of the minor scenes of that great struggle between paganism and Christianity, whereof the sufferings of the early martyrs, the apologies of Justin Martyr, etc., were only another but more public and historical phase. History tells us that Caracalla, when a boy, saw one of his companions beaten because he professed the Christian faith. These graffiti seem to teach us that there were many others of the same tender age, de domo Caesaris, who suffered more or less of persecution for the same cause. Other interesting details of the same struggle have been brought together by De Rossi, carefully gleaned from the patrician names which appear on some of the ancient grave-stones, sometimes as belonging to young virgins or widows who had dedicated themselves to the service of Christ under the discipline of a religious community. That such a community was to be found early in the fifth century, in the immediate neighborhood of S. Lorenzo fuori le mura, or, at least, that the members of such a community were always buried about that time in that cemetery, is one of the circumstances which may be said to be clearly proved by the recent discoveries. The proofs are too numerous and minute for abridgment, but the student will be interested in examining them as they appear in the Bollettino.
Another feature in this archaeological publication is its convenience as a supplement to the volume of Christian Inscriptions published by the same author. That volume, as our readers are already aware, contains only such inscriptions of the first six centuries as bear a distinct chronological note by the names of the chief magistrates, or in some other way. Additional specimens of these are not unfrequently discovered in the excavations still [{133}] in progress on various sides of the city; and these De Rossi is careful to chronicle, and generally also to illustrate by notes, in the pages of his Bollettino. The chief value of these additions, perhaps, is to be found in the corroboration they uniformly give to the conclusions which De Rossi had already deduced, the canons of chronological distinction and distribution which he had established, from the larger collection of inscriptions in the work referred to—whether as to the style of writing or of diction and sentiments, etc.—canons, the full importance of which will only be recognized when he shall have published the second volume of the collection of epitaphs bearing upon questions of Christian doctrine and practice.
In the earlier numbers of the Bollettino for the present year there is a very interesting account of the recent discoveries in the Ambrosian basilica of Milan, where there seems no room to doubt but that they have brought to light the very sarcophagus in which the relics of the great St. Ambrose, as well as those of the martyrs Sts. Gervasius and Protasius, have rested for more than ten centuries. The history of the discovery is too long to be inserted here, and too interesting to be abridged. One circumstance, however, connected with it is too important to be omitted. The sarcophagus itself has not yet, we believe, been opened; but, from the two sepulchres below and on either side of it, where the bishop and the martyrs were originally deposited, and where they remained until their translation in the ninth century, many valuable relics have been gleaned. We will only mention one of them--viz., portions of an ampulla such as are found in the catacombs, and concerning which Dr. Biraghi, the librarian of the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana (to whose zeal we are indebted for the whole discovery, and for the account of it to his learning), assures us that it has been subjected to a chemical examination, and is shown to have contained blood. This, as De Rossi truly remarks, is the most notable instance which has yet come before us of this ampulla having been placed in the sepulchre of famous and historical martyrs, and it is of very special importance as throwing a flood of light on those words of St. Ambrose about these relics so often quoted in the controversy on this subject—Sanguine, tumulus madet; apparent cruoris triumphales notae; inviolatae reliquiae loco suo et ordine repertae. And it is certainly singular that this discovery should have been made at a moment when the validity of these ampullae, as sure signs of martyrdom, has been so much called in question. The Sacred Congregation of Rites had only recently reaffirmed their former sentence on this matter; and this fact now comes most opportunely from Milan to add further weight to their decision, by giving a historical basis to an opinion which before had been thought by some rather to rest upon theory and conjecture. It will go far, we should think, toward rehabilitating in the minds of Christian archaeologists the pious belief of former ages upon this subject, wherever it may have been shaken.
MISCELLANY.
SCIENCE.
The Mason-Spider of Corfu.—A correspondent of a London journal gives an interesting account of certain habits of this insect, which belongs to the mygalidae family. The mygales are chiefly found in hot climates, and include the largest specimens of spiders known. They are called mason-spiders, from the curious manner in which they build their houses. "The mygale nest," says the correspondent, "varies much in size, from one inch in length to three or four, and even six or seven inches. In the West Indies, where the spiders are crab-like, the insects measure six inches over. One nest, especially mentioned and minutely described by Mr. Oudouin, was three inches and a quarter long and eight-tenths of an inch wide. The nest, of cylindrical form, is made by boring into the earth; making his excavation, the next thing, having decided upon the dimensions of his habitation, is to furnish it, and most beautiful are his paper-hangings. The whole of the interior is lined with the softest possible silk, a tissue which the 'major domo' spins all over the apartment until it is padded to a sufficient thickness and made soft enough. Silk lining like this gives the idea of the mygale having a luxurious turn. This done, and the interior finished, the mygale shows his peculiarity by taking steps to keep out the
of intruders by making not only a door, and that self-closing, but a door with swinging hinge, and sometimes one at each end of his nest, which shows that he has a very good opinion of his own work within, and knows how to take care of it. Not having met with any case where any one had seen the positive operation of making the door of these nests, I thought the details would be interesting, the more so as they corroborated preconceived ideas of their construction, and were noticed by a friend quartered at Corfu, who brought home the nest with him. The following is the description he gave me: