Ed.
[97] The catacombs were subterranean chambers and passages, usually cut out of the solid rock, and used as places of burial, or of refuge. The early Christians made use of the catacombs in the Appian Way for worship, as well as for sepulture.—Ed.
[98] The Carcer Mamertinus,—one of the most ancient Roman structures,—overhung the Forum, as Livy tells us, “imminens foro,” underneath the Capitoline hill. It still exists, and is entered from the sacristy of the church of S. Giuseppe de Falagnami, to the left of the arch of Severus. It was originally a well (the Tullianum of Livy), and afterwards a prison, in which Jugurtha was starved to death, and Catiline’s accomplices perished. There are two chambers in the prison, one beneath the other; the lower-most containing, in its rock floor, a spring, which rises nearly to the surface. For the legend connected with it see the next note.—Ed.
[99] According to the legend, St. Peter, who was imprisoned in the Carcer Mamertinus under Nero, caused this spring to flow miraculously in order to baptize his jailors. Hence the building is called S. Pietro in Carcere.—Ed.
[100] Compare “Despondency Corrected,” The Excursion, book iv. l. 1058—
Within the soul a faculty abides, etc.
Ed.
[101] See the Fenwick note.—Ed.
[102] It would be ungenerous not to advert to the religious movement that, since the composition of these verses in 1837, has made itself felt, more or less strongly, throughout the English Church;—a movement that takes, for its first principle, a devout deference to the voice of Christian antiquity. It is not my office to pass judgment on questions of theological detail; but my own repugnance to the spirit and system of Romanism has been so repeatedly and, I trust, feelingly expressed, that I shall not be suspected of a leaning that way, if I do not join in the grave charge, thrown out, perhaps in the heat of controversy, against the learned and pious men to whose labours I allude. I speak apart from controversy; but, with strong faith in the moral temper which would elevate the present by doing reverence to the past, I would draw cheerful auguries for the English Church from this movement, as likely to restore among us a tone of piety more earnest and real than that produced by the mere formalities of the understanding, refusing, in a degree, which I cannot but lament, that its own temper and judgment shall be controlled by those of antiquity.—W.W. 1842.