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In our first article on the Roman Catacombs we expressed the belief that "a year was now hardly likely to pass without the discovery" of new burial-places of the early Christians, the fresh interest in Christian archaeology leading to fresh explorations in the hollow soil of the Campagna. A letter to us from Rome, of the 2lst of April, confirms the justness of this expectation.
They rage furiously against and they flog those who wear "wizards' mats," against magic cords fastened round young children as amulets, and against the teeth and bones of animals, and cloth made from the rind of certain trees carried as preservatives from disease and supernatural influences: even banners in burial-places are "superstitious and blamable."
There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead.
In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them? As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London.
Above its pale tombs and crowded burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life."
Even the poorest people have their own burying-places, that is, spots of ground in the church-yards where they say that their ancestors have been buried ever since the wars of Ireland; and if these burial-places are ten miles from the place where a man dies, his friends and neighbours take care to carry his corpse thither.
The best known of these dying or burial-places are on the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gallegos rivers, where the river valleys are covered with dense primeval thickets of bushes and trees of stunted growth; there the ground is covered with the bones of countless dead generations. "The animals," says Darwin, "in most cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and among the bushes."
Proclamation ordering the declaration of gold taken from the burial-places of the Indians; May 16, 1565. Letters to Felipe II of Spain; May 27 and 29, and June 1, 1565. Letter to the royal Audiencia at Mexico; May 28, 1565 Legazpi's relation of the voyage to the Philippines; 1565. Copia de vna carta venida de Seuilla a Miguel Saluador de Valencia; 1566.
The best of the islanders withdrew disillusioned, sad, sullen, resentful over the violation of their sacred burial-places. Only the riff-raff of the natives forgathered with the riotous crew. When the ships at length set sail with a crew sore-headed from dissipation, by way of a climax to the debauch, a number of women and children were carried along. Retribution came swift as sword-stroke.
Helena, the tombs of the three shepherds, upon whom the heavenly light shone at the birth of our Saviour, the burial-places of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that of Rachel, and he visited the oak of Mamre, under which Abraham received the visit of the angels.
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