splendour of Jerusalem from the slope of Olivet, St. Paul would look
down from that spot on the capital of the world, and see before him
the signs of a magnificence never before or since equalled; but alas!
as he knew well, a magnificence that was only the iridescence of
social and spiritual corruption, as the pomp of the sepulchres of the
Appian Way was but the shroud of death. Doubtless with a sad and
pitying heart, he would be led by the cohort of soldiers along the
street of tombs, then the most crowded approach to a city of nearly
two millions of souls; tombs whose massiveness and solidity were but a
vain craving for immortality, and whose epitaphs were the most deeply
touching of all epitaphs, on account of the profound despair with
which they bade their eternal farewell. Entering into Rome through the
Porta Capena; and winding through the valley between the Coelian and
Aventine hills, crowded with temples and palaces, he would be brought
to the Forum, then a scene of indescribable grandeur; and from thence
he would be finally transferred to the charge of Burrus, the prefect
of the imperial guards, at the prætorium of Nero's palace, on the
Palatine. And here he disappears from our view. We only know of a
certainty that for two whole years "he dwelt in his own hired house,
and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God,
and teaching those things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all
confidence, no man forbidding him."

Of all the splendid associations of the Appian Way, along which
history may be said to have marched exclusively for nigh six hundred
years, the most splendid by far is its connection with this
ever-memorable journey of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. We can
trace the influence of the scenes and objects along the route in all
his subsequent writings. He had a deeper yearning for the Gentiles,
because he thus beheld with his own eyes the places associated with