The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858

On other graves beside those of the martyrs there are often found some little signs by which they could be easily recognized by the friends who might wish to visit them again. Sometimes there is the impression of a seal upon the mortar; sometimes a ring or coin is left fastened into it; often a terra-cotta lamp is set in the cement at the head of the grave. Touching, tender memorials of love and piety! Few are left now in the opened catacombs, but here and there one may be seen in its original place,—the visible sign of the sorrow and the faith of those who seventeen or eighteen centuries ago rested upon that support on which we rest to-day, and found it, in hardest trial, unfailing.

But the galleries of the catacombs are not wholly occupied with graves. Now and then they open on either side into chambers (cubicula) of small dimension and of various form, scooped out of the rock, and furnished with graves around their sides,—the burial-place arranged beforehand for some large family, or for certain persons buried with special honor. Other openings in the rock are designed for chapels, in which the burial and other services of the Church were performed. These, too, are of various sizes and forms; the largest of them would hold but a small number of persons;6 but not unfrequently two stand opposite each other on the passage-way, as if one were for the men and the other for the women who should be present at the services. Entering the chapel through a narrow door whose threshold is on a level with the path, we see at the opposite side a recess sunk in the rock, often semicircular, like the apsis of a church, and in this recess an arcosolium,—which served at the same time as the grave of a martyr and as the altar of the little chapel. It seems, indeed, as if in many cases the chapel had been formed not so much for the general purpose of holding religious service within the catacombs, as for that of celebrating worship over the remains of the martyr whose body had been transferred from its original grave to this new tomb. It was thus that the custom, still prevalent in the Roman Church, of requiring that some relics shall be contained within an altar before it is held to be consecrated, probably began. Perhaps it was with some reference to that portion of the Apocalypse in which St. John says, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled."7 At any rate, these words must have dwelt in the memories of the Christians who came to worship God in the presence of the dead by whom they were surrounded in the catacombs. But they knelt before the altar-tombs, not as before altars consecrated with relics of saints, but as before altars dedicated to God and connected with the memory of their own honored and beloved dead, whom he had called from them into his holy presence.

It is impossible to ascertain the date at which these chapels were first made; probably some time about the middle of the second century they became common. In many of the catacombs they are very numerous, and it is in them that the chief ornaments and decorations, and the paintings which give to the catacombs an especial value and importance in the history of Art, and which are among the most interesting illustrations of the state of religious feeling and belief in the early centuries, are found. Some of the chapels are known to be of comparatively late date, of the fourth and perhaps of the fifth century. In several even of earlier construction is found, in addition to the altar, a niche cut out in the rock, or a ledge projecting from it, which seems to have been intended to serve the place of the credence table, for holding the articles used in the service of the altar, and at a later period for receiving the elements before they were handed to the priest for consecration. The earliest services in the catacombs were undoubtedly those connected with the communion of the Lord's Supper. The mystery of the mass and the puzzles of transubstantiation had not yet been introduced among the believers; but all who had received baptism as followers of Christ, all save those who had fallen away into open and manifest sin, were admitted to partake of the Lord's Supper. Possibly upon some occasions these chapels may have been filled with the sounds of exhortation and lamentation. In the legends of the Roman Church we read of large numbers of Christians being buried alive, in time of persecution, in these underground chambers where they had assembled for worship and for counsel. But we are not aware of any proof of the truth of these stories having been discovered in recent times. This, and many other questionable points in the history and in the uses of the catacombs, may be solved by the investigations which are now proceeding; and it is fortunate for the interests, not only of truth, but of religion, that so learned and so honest-minded a man as the Cavaliere de Rossi should have the direction of these explorations.

Few of the chapels that are to be seen now in the catacombs are in their original condition. As time went on, and Christianity became a corrupt and imperial religion, the simple truths which had sufficed for the first Christians were succeeded by doctrines less plain, but more adapted to touch cold and materialized imaginations, and to inflame dull hearts. The worship of saints began, and was promoted by the heads of the Church, who soon saw how it might be diverted to the purposes of personal and ecclesiastical aggrandizement. Consequently the martyrs were made into a hierarchy of saintly protectors of the strayed flock of Christ, and round their graves in the catacombs sprang up a harvest of tales, of visions, of miracles, and of superstitions. As the Church sank lower and lower, as the need of a heavenly advocate with God was more and more impressed upon the minds of the Christians of those days, the idea seems to have arisen that neighborhood of burial to the grave of some martyr might be an effectual way to secure the felicity of the soul. Consequently we find in these chapels that the later Christians, those perhaps of the fifth and sixth centuries, disregarding the original arrangements, and having lost all respect for the Art, and all reverence for the memorial pictures which made the walls precious, were often accustomed to cut out graves in the walls above and around the martyr's tomb, and as near as possible to it. The instances are numerous in which pictures of the highest interest have been thus ruthlessly defaced. No sacredness of subject could resist the force of the superstition; and we remember one instance where, in a picture of which the part that remains is of peculiar interest, the body of the Good Shepherd has been cut through for the grave of a child,—so that only the feet and a part of the head of the figure remain.

There is little reason for supposing, as has frequently been done, that the catacombs, even in times of persecution, afforded shelter to any large body of the faithful. Single, specially obnoxious, or timid individuals, undoubtedly, from time to time, took refuge in them, and may have remained within them for a considerable period. Such at least is the story, which we see no reason to question, in regard to several of the early Popes. But no large number of persons could have existed within them. The closeness of the air would very soon have rendered life insupportable; and supposing any considerable number had collected near the outlet, where a supply of fresh air could have reached them, the difficulty of obtaining food and of concealing their place of retreat would have been in most instances insurmountable. The catacombs were always places for the few, not for the many; for the few who followed a body to the grave; for the few who dug the narrow, dark passages in which not many could work; for the few who came to supply the needs of some hunted and hidden friend; for the few who in better times assembled to join in the service commemorating the last supper of their Lord.

It is difficult, as we have said before, to clear away the obscuring fictions of the Roman Church from the entrance of the catacombs; but doing this so far as with our present knowledge may be done, we find ourselves entering upon paths that bring us into near connection and neighborhood with the first followers of the founders of our faith at Rome. The reality which is given to the lives of the Christians of the first centuries by acquaintance with the memorials that they have left of themselves here quickens our feeling for them into one almost of personal sympathy. "Your obedience is come abroad unto all men," wrote St. Paul to the first Christians of Rome. The record of that obedience is in the catacombs. And in the vast labyrinth of obscure galleries one beholds and enters into the spirit of the first followers of the Apostle to the Gentiles.

[To be continued.]

THE NEST

MAY

  When oaken woods with buds are pink,    And new-come birds each morning sing,—  When fickle May on Summer's brink    Pauses, and knows not which to fling,  Whether fresh bud and bloom again,  Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,—  Then from the honeysuckle gray    The oriole with experienced quest  Twitches the fibrous bark away,    The cordage of his hammock-nest,—  Cheering his labor with a note  Rich as the orange of his throat.  High o'er the loud and dusty road    The soft gray cup in safety swings,  To brim ere August with its load    Of downy breasts and throbbing wings,  O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves  An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.  Below, the noisy World drags by    In the old way, because it must,—  The bride with trouble in her eye,    The mourner following hated dust:  Thy duty, winged flame of Spring,  Is but to love and fly and sing.  Oh, happy life, to soar and sway    Above the life by mortals led,  Singing the merry months away,    Master, not slave of daily bread,  And, when the Autumn comes, to flee  Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

PALINODE.—DECEMBER

  Like some lorn abbey now, the wood    Stands roofless in the bitter air;  In ruins on its floor is strewed    The carven foliage quaint and rare,  And homeless winds complain along  The columned choir once thrilled with song.  And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise    The thankful oriole used to pour,  Swing'st empty while the north winds chase    Their snowy swarms from Labrador:  But, loyal to the happy past,  I love thee still for what thou wast.  Ah, when the Summer graces flee    From other nests more dear than thou,  And, where June crowded once, I see    Only bare trunk and disleaved bough,  When springs of life that gleamed and gushed  Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed,—  I'll think, that, like the birds of Spring,    Our good goes not without repair,  But only flies to soar and sing    Far off in some diviner air,  Where we shall find it in the calms  Of that fair garden 'neath the palms.* * * * *

EBEN JACKSON

  Fear no more the heat o' the sun,  Nor the furious winter's rages;  Thou thine earthly task hast done.

The large tropical moon rose in full majesty over the Gulf of Mexico, that beneath it rolled a weltering surge of silver, which broke upon the level sand of the beach with a low, sullen roar, prophetic of storms to come. To-night a south wind was heavily blowing over Gulf and prairie, laden with salt odors of weed and grass, now and then crossed by a strain of such perfume as only tropic breezes know,—a breath of heavy, passionate sweetness from orange-groves and rose gardens, mixed with the miasmatic sighs of rank forests, and mile on mile of tangled cane-brake, where jewel-tinted snakes glitter and emit their own sickly-sweet odor, and the deep blue bells of luxuriant vines wave from their dusky censers steams of poisonous incense.

I endured the influence of all this as long as I dared, and then turned my pony's head from the beach, and, loitering through the city's hot streets, touched him into a gallop as the prairie opened before us, and followed the preternatural, colossal shadow of horse and man east by the moon across the dry dull grass and bitter yellow chamomile growth of the sand, till I stopped at the office door of the Hospital, when, consigning my horse to a servant, I commenced my nightly round of the wards.

There were but few patients just now, for the fever had not yet made its appearance, and until within a week the unwontedly clear and cool atmosphere had done the work of the physician. Most of the sick were doing well enough without me; some few needed and received attention; and these disposed of, I betook myself to the last bed in one of the long wards, quite apart from the others, which was occupied by a sailor, a man originally from New England, whose hard life and continual exposure to all climates and weathers had at length resulted in slow tubercular consumption.

It was one of the rare cases of this disease not supervening upon an original strumous diathesis, and, had it been properly cared for in the beginning, might have been cured. Now there was no hope; but the case being a peculiar and interesting one, I kept a faithful record of its symptoms and progress for publication. Besides, I liked the man; rugged and hardy by nature, it was curious to see what strange effects a long, wasting, and painful disease produced upon him. At first he could not be persuaded to be quiet; the muscular energies were still unaffected, and, with continual hemorrhage from the lungs, he could not understand that work or exercise could hurt him. But as the disease gained ground, its characteristic languor unstrung his force; the hard and sinewy limbs became attenuated and relaxed; his breath labored; a hectic fever burnt in his veins like light flame every afternoon, and subsided into chilly languor toward morning; profuse night-sweats increased the weakness; and as he grew feebler, offering of course less resistance to the febrile symptoms, they were exacerbated, till at times a slight delirium showed itself; and so, without haste or delay, he "made for port," as he said.

His name was Eben Jackson, and the homely appellation was no way belied by his aspect. He never could have been handsome, and now fifteen years of rough-and-tumble life had left their stains and scars on his weather-beaten visage, whose only notable features were the deep-set eyes retreating under shaggy brows, that looked one through and through with the keen glance of honest instinct; while a light tattooing of red and blue on either cheek-bone added an element of the grotesque to his homeliness. He was a natural and simple man, with whom conventionalities and the world's scale went for nothing,—without vanity as without guile.—But it is best to let him speak for himself. I found him that night very feverish, yet not wild at all.

"Hullo, Doctor!" said he, "I'm all afire! I've ben thinkin' about my old mother's humstead up to Simsbury, and the great big well to the back door; how I used to tilt that 'are sweep up, of a hot day, till the bucket went 'way down to the bottom and come up drippin' over,—such cold, clear water! I swear, I'd give all Madagascar for a drink on't!"

I called the nurse to bring me a small basket of oranges I had sent out in the morning, expressly for this patient, and squeezing the juice from one of them on a little bit of ice, I held it to his lips, and he drank eagerly.

"That's better for you than water, Jackson," said I.

"I dunno but 'tis, Doctor; I dunno but 'tis; but there a'n't nothin' goes to the spot like that Simsbury water. You ha'n't never v'yaged to them parts, have ye?"

"Bless you, yes, man! I was born and brought up in Hartford, just over the mountain, and I've been to Simsbury, fishing, many a time."

"Good Lord! You don't never desert a feller, ef the ship is a-goin' down!" fervently ejaculated Eben, looking up as he did sometimes in his brief delirium, when he said the Lord's Prayer, and thought his mother held his folded hands; but this was no delirious aspiration. He went on:—

"You see, Doctor, I've had somethin' in the hold a good spell't I wanted to break bulk on, but I didn't know as I ever was goin' to see a shipmet agin; and now you've jined convoy jist in time, for Davy Jones's a'n't fur off. Are you calculatin' to go North afore long?"

"Yes, I mean to go next spring," said I.

Jackson began to fumble with weak and trembling hands about his throat, to undo his shirt-collar,—he would not let me help him,—and presently, flushed and panting from the effort, he drew out a length of delicate Panama chain fastened rudely together by a link of copper wire, and suspended on it a little old-fashioned ring of reddish gold, twisted of two wires, and holding a very small dark garnet. Jackson looked at it as I have seen many a Catholic look at his reliquary in mortal sickness.

"Well," said he, "I've carried that 'are gimcrack nigh twenty long year round my old scrag, and when I'm sunk I want you to take it off, Doctor. Keep it safe till you go to Connecticut, and then some day take a tack over to Simsbury. Don't ye go through the Gap, but go 'long out on the turnpike over the mountain, and down t'other side to Avon, and so nor'ard till jist arter you git into Simsbury town you see an old red house 'longside o' the mountain, with a big ellum-tree afore the door, and a stone well to the side on't. Go 'long in and ask for Hetty Buel, and give her that 'are thing, and tell her where you got it, and that I ha'n't never forgot to wish her well allus, though I couldn't write to her."

There was Eben Jackson's romance! It piqued my curiosity. The poor fellow was wakeful and restless,—I knew he would not sleep, if I left him,—and I encouraged him to go on talking.

"I will, Jackson, I promise you. But wouldn't it be better for you to tell me something about where you have been all these long years? Your friends will like to know."

His eye brightened; he was like all the rest of us, pleased with any interest taken in him and his; he turned over on his pillow, and I lifted him into a half-sitting position.

"That's ship-shape, Doctor! I don't know but what I had oughter spin a yarn for you; I'm kinder on a watch to-night; and Hetty won't never know what I did do, if I don't send home the log 'long 'i' the cargo.

"Well, you see I was born in them parts, down to Canton, where father belonged; but mother was a Simsbury woman, and afore I was long-togged, father he moved onter the old humstead up to Simsbury, when gran'ther Peck died. Our farm was right 'longside o' Miss Buel's; you'll see't when you go there; but there a'n't nobody there now. Mother died afore I come away, and lies safe to the leeward o' Simsbury meetin'-house. Father he got a stroke a spell back, and he couldn't farm it; so he sold out and went West, to Parmely Larkum's, my sister's, to live. But I guess the house is there, and that old well.—How etarnal hot it's growin'! Doctor, give me a drink!

"Well, as I was tellin', I lived there next to Miss Buel's, and Hetty'n' I went to deestrict-school together, up to the cross-roads. We used to hev' ovens in the sand together, and roast apples an' ears of corn in 'em; and we used to build cubby-houses, and fix 'em out with broken chiny and posies. I swan 't makes me feel curus when I think what children du contrive to get pleased, and likewise riled about! One day I rec'lect Hetty'd stepped onto my biggest clam-shell and broke it, and I up and hit her a switch right across her pretty lips. Now you'd 'a' thought she would cry and run, for she wasn't bigger than a baby, much; but she jest come up and put her little fat arms round my neck, and says,—

"'I'm so sorry, Eben!'

"And that's Hetty Buel! I declare I was beat, and I hav'n't never got over bein' beat about that. So we growed up together, always out in the woods between schools, huntin' checker-berries, and young winter-greens, and prince's piney, and huckleberries, and saxifrax, and birch, and all them woodsy things that children hanker arter; and by-'n'-by we got to goin' to the 'Cademy; and when Hetty was seventeen she went in to Hartford to her Aunt Smith's for a spell, to do chores, and get a little Seminary larnin', and I went to work on the farm; and when she come home, two year arter, she was growed to be a young woman, and though I was five year older'n her, I was as sheepish a land-lubber as ever got stuck a-goin' to the mast-head, whenever I sighted her.

"She wasn't very much for looks neither; she had black eyes, and she was pretty behaved; but she wasn't no gret for beauty, anyhow, only I thought the world of her, and so did her old grandmother;—for her mother died when she wa'n't but two year old, and she lived to old Miss Buel's 'cause her father had married agin away down to Jersey.

"Arter a spell I got over bein' so mighty sheepish about Hetty; her ways was too kindly for me to keep on that tack. We took to goin' to singin'-school together; then I always come home from quiltin'-parties and conference-meetin's with her, because 'twas handy, bein' right next door; and so it come about that I begun to think of settlin' down for life, and that was the start of all my troubles. I couldn't take the home farm; for 'twas such poor land, father could only jest make a live out on't for him and me. Most of it was pastur', gravelly land, full of mullens and stones; the rest was principally woodsy,—not hickory, nor oak neither, but hemlock and white birches, that a'n't of no account for timber nor firing, 'longside of the other trees. There was a little strip of a medder-lot, and an orchard up on the mountain, where we used to make redstreak cider that beat the Dutch; but we hadn't pastur' land enough to keep more'n two cows, and altogether I knew 'twasn't any use to think of bringin' a family on to't. So I wrote to Parmely's husband, out West, to know about Government lands, and what I could do ef I was to move out there and take an allotment; and gettin' an answer every way favorable, I posted over to Miss Buel's one night arter milkin' to tell Hetty. She was settin' on the south door-step, braidin' palm-leaf; and her grandmother was knittin' in her old chair, a little back by the window. Sometimes, a-lyin' here on my back, with my head full o' sounds, and the hot wind and the salt sea-smell a-comin' in through the winders, and the poor fellers groanin' overhead, I get clear away back to that night, so cool and sweet; the air full of treely smells, dead leaves like, and white-blows in the ma'sh below; and wood-robins singin' clear fine whistles in the woods; and the big sweet-brier by the winder all a-flowered out; and the drippin' little beads of dew on the clover-heads; and the tinklin' sound of the mill-dam down to Squire Turner's mill.

"I set down by Hetty; and the old woman bein' as deaf as a post, it was as good as if I'd been there alone. So I mustered up my courage, that was sinkin' down to my boots, and told Hetty my plans, and asked her to go along. She never said nothin' for a minute; she flushed all up as red as a rose, and I see her little fingers was shakin', and her eye-winkers shiny and wet; but she spoke presently, and said,—

"'I can't, Eben!'

"I was shot betwixt wind and water then, I tell you, Doctor! 'Twa'n't much to be said, but I've allers noticed afloat that real dangersome squalls comes on still; there's a dumb kind of a time in the air, the storm seems to be waitin' and holdin' its breath, and then a little low whisper of wind,—a cat's paw we call't,—and then you get it real 'arnest. I'd rather she'd have taken on, and cried, and scolded, than have said so still, 'I can't, Eben.'

"'Why not, Hetty?' says I.

"'I ought not to leave grandmother,' said she.

"I declare, I hadn't thought o' that! Miss Buel was a real infirm woman without kith nor kin, exceptin' Hetty; for Jason Buel he'd died down to Jersey long before; and she hadn't means. Hetty nigh about kept 'em both since Miss Buel had grown too rheumatic to make cheese and see to the hens and cows, as she used to. They didn't keep any men-folks now, nor but one cow; Hetty milked her, and drove her to pastur', and fed the chickens, and braided hats, and did chores. The farm was all sold off; 'twas poor land, and didn't fetch much; but what there was went to keep 'em in vittles and firin'. I guess Hetty 'arnt most of what they lived on, arter all.