mysticism, (a not uncommon mingling,) which passes under the name of
her Revelations, in the solitude of these streets of the dead. Here St.
Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, the wise and liberal founder of the
Oratorians, the still beloved saint of the Romans, was accustomed
to spend whole nights in prayer and meditation. Demons, say his
biographers, and evil spirits assailed him on his way, trying to terrify
him and turn him back; but he overcame them all. Year after year he kept
up this practice, and gained strength, in the solitude and darkness, and
in the presence of the dead, to resist fiercer demons than any that had
power to attack him from without. And it is related, that, when St.
Charles Borromeo, his friend, the narrow, but pure-minded reformer of
the Church, came to Rome, from time to time, he, too, used to go at
night to this cemetery, and watch through the long hours in penitence
and prayer. Such associations as these give interest to the cemetery of
St. Sebastian's Church.

The preëminence which the Appian Way, _regina viarum_, held among the
great streets leading from Rome,--not only as the road to the South and
to the fairest provinces, but also because it was bordered along its
course by the monumental tombs of the greatest Roman families,--was
retained by it, as we have seen, as the street on which lay the chief
Christian cemeteries. The tombs of the Horatii, the Metelli, the
Scipios, were succeeded by the graves of a new, less famous, but not
less noble race of heroes. On the edge of the height that rises just
beyond the Church of St. Sebastian stand the familiar and beautiful
ruins of the tomb of Cecilia Metella. Of her who was buried in this
splendid mausoleum nothing is known but what the three lines of the
inscription still remaining on it tell us,--

CAECILIAE Q. CRETICI F. METELLAE CRASSI.