Sophronia! thou _mayest_ live?--Thou _shalt_ live!" How eloquently did
that rough, faded scrawl, over a long-forgotten grave, speak of the
human fear that perhaps his wife was lost to him for ever--"Thou
mayest live?" and of the noble faith that triumphed over it--"Thou
_shalt_ live!" Nothing affects and astonishes one more in these
inscriptions than this calm, assured confidence that death was but a
profound sleep,--a rest unspeakably grateful after such a weary life
of awful suffering,--and that they should see their beloved ones
again. It was a literal realisation of the words of the Epistle to the
Hebrews: "And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that
they might obtain a better resurrection." They surrendered all that
life holds dear, and life itself, from loyalty to the God of truth,
knowing whom they had believed, and persuaded that He would keep that
which they had committed to Him against the great day. They made their
family ties so loyal and sacred, that their human love, in the higher
love of Christ Jesus, endured for evermore. In many of the crypts, the
emblems of martyrdom are roughly denoted by a sword, an axe, or by
faggots and fire. What sorrowful scenes must have taken place in
these dreary passages, as the mangled forms of parent, child, brother,
or friend were stealthily brought in from the bloody games in the
Flavian amphitheatre, or from the cruel tortures of the prison-house,
to their last dark, narrow home along the very path I was now
treading!

A number of rude paintings ornament the walls of the chapels, which
repeat over and over again the simple symbols of the Christian faith,
and the touching stories of the Bible. The ark of Noah; Daniel in the
lions' den; the miracle of Cana; the raising of Lazarus--are among the
most common of these frescoes. And they are deeply interesting, as
showing that down in these dim and dreary vaults, which presented such