As the Catholic pilgrim

The fanaticism of these same priests and missionaries has its own reaction. As the Catholic pilgrim to-day prostrates himself on the spot where for eighteen centuries Christian pilgrims from all parts of the earth have prostrated themselves, the followers of Garibaldi and Mazzini glare on them with hatred and contempt; so that, but for soldiers and police, no priest in his robes would be safe in Rome. The death-struggle between Papacy and Free Thought was never more acute. Hundreds of churches are bare, deserted, without the semblance of a congregation. Of late years, one may visit famous churches, known throughout the Catholic world, and find one’s self, for hours together, absolutely alone; and sometimes we may notice how they serve as the resort of a pair of lovers, who choose the church as a place to meet undisturbed in perfect solitude. Vast monasteries, which for centuries have peopled Christendom with priests and teachers, are now empty, or converted to secular uses. The Pope is ‘the prisoner of the Vatican,’ and the Papal world has withdrawn from public view.

Nowhere else in the world are we brought so close face to face with the great battles of religion and politics, and with the destruction wrought by successive phases of human civilisation. This destruction is more visible in Rome, because fragments remain to witness to each phase; but the destruction is not so great as elsewhere, where the very ruins have been destroyed. At Paris, Lyons, London, York, Cologne, and Milan, the Roman city has been all but obliterated, and the mediaeval city also, and the Renascence city after that; so that, for the most part, in all these ancient centres of successive civilisations, we see little to-day but the monotony of modern convenience, and the triumphs of the speculative builder. But at Rome enough remains to remind us of the unbroken roll of some three thousand years mystical bulgaria tours.

At Rome we see the wreckage

At Rome we see the wreckage. At Paris and London it has been covered fathoms deep by the rising tide.

They are finding now the tombs, arms, ornaments, and structures of the primitive races who dwelt on the Seven Hills before history was. We may now see the walls which rose when the history of Rome began, the fortress of the early kings, and their vast subterranean works. We can still stand on the spot where Horatius defended the bridge, and where Virginius slew his daughter. We still see the tombs and temples, the treasure-house of the Republic.

We see the might and glory of Rome when she was the mistress of the world and the centre of the world. We see the walls which long defied the barbarians of the North; we see the tombs of the Christian martyrs, and trace the footsteps of the great Apostles; we see the rise, the growth, the culmination and the death-struggles of the Catholic Papacy. We see the Middle Ages piled up on the ruins of the ancient world, and the modern world piled on the ruins of the mediaeval world. At Rome we can see in ruins, fragments, or, it may be, merely in certain sites, spots, and subterranean vaults, that revolving picture of history, which elsewhere our modern life has blotted out from our view.

Take the Pantheon — in some ways the central, the most ancient, the most historic building in the world. For more than 1900 years it has been a temple — first of the gods of the old world, and since of the Christian God. It is the only great extant building of which that can now be said. It is certainly the oldest building in continuous use on earth, for it was a temple of the pagan deities one hundred years before the preaching of the Gospel at Rome; dedicated by the minister and son-in-law of Augustus in the first splendour of the Empire; converted after six centuries into a Christian church and burial- place, when it was filled with the bones of the martyrs removed from the catacombs. The festival of All Saints thereupon instituted is the one Christian festival which modern scepticism concurs in honouring.