Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/102

112 leads to him; of the resurrection of the dead, and of life everlasting.” From all the nations whom Rome subjected by her arms,—Jews, Greeks, Barbarians,—a people is here collected who, together with men and women of the eternal city, are baptized amidst the night of the Catacombs, to a people of brethren, to one faith, one love, one hope, one name!—thou, my R——, hast already named it. And hast thou at any time seen a slender shoot, a seed forgotten in the soil, make its way through the stone-wall of the Colosseum, or any other wall, and by degrees rift it, so that its stones become loosened and fall, whilst the young tree grows and spreads forth its branches to the light? then hast thou seen the image of that which took place in the depths of the Catacombs. There was rooted the slender shoot, which thenceforth would grow to a world's tree, overshadow the eternal city, and bear, for all the people of the earth, fruit to life eternal!

Again, in our quiet home on the Corso, and in the tranquillity of evening, Jenny read aloud the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, from the twelfth to the sixteenth Chapter. The most beautiful commentary on the Catacombs.

December 23rd.—One of the sights, with which one becomes only slowly familiar, but which belongs to the characteristic features of Rome, is the many studios or work-places of art, certainly many hundreds, from which a number of statues and pictures proceed to beautify the world. Every artist, who deserves the name, has his peculiar genre, as well as his peculiar talent, and this genre, and this talent, take a specific coloring from the nation to which the artist belongs; and here are now