"This monument contains the heart of O'Connell, who dying at Genoa on his way to the Eternal City, bequeathed his soul to God, his body to Ireland, and his heart to Rome. He is represented at the bar of the British House of Commons in MDCCCXXIII., when he refused to take the anti-catholic declaration, in these remarkable words--'I at once reject this declaration; part of it I believe to be untrue, and the rest I know to be false.' He was born vi. Aug.

MDCCLXXVI., and died xv. May, MDCCCXLVIII. Erected by Charles Bianconi, the faithful friend of the immortal liberator, and of Ireland the land of his adoption."

At the end of the left aisle is a chapel, which Cardinal Antonelli (who has his palace near this) decorated, 1863, with frescoes and arabesques as a burial-place for his family. In the opposite chapel is a gilt figure of Sta. Agata carrying her breasts--showing the manner in which she suffered.

"Agatha was a maiden of Catania, in Sicily, whither Decius the emperor sent Quintianus as governor. He, inflamed by the beauty of Agatha, tempted her with rich gifts and promises, but she repulsed him with disdain. Then Quintianus ordered her to be bound and beaten with rods, and sent two of his slaves to tear her bosom with iron shears, and as her blood flowed forth, she said to him, 'O thou cruel tyrant! art thou not ashamed to treat me thus--hast thou not thyself been fed at thy mother's breasts?' Thus only did she murmur. And in the night a venerable man came to her, bearing a vase of ointment, and before him walked a youth bearing a torch. It was the holy apostle Peter, and the youth was an angel; but Agatha knew it not; though such a glorious light filled the prison, that the guards fled in terror.... Then St. Peter made himself known and ministered to her, restoring with heavenly balm her wounded breasts.

"Quintianus, infuriated, demanded who had healed her. She replied, 'He whom I confess and adore with heart and lips, he hath sent his apostle who hath healed me.' Then Quintianus caused her to be thrown bound upon a great fire, but instantly an earthquake arose, and the people in terror cried, 'This visitation is sent because of the sufferings of the maiden Agatha.' So he caused her to be taken from the fire, and carried back to prison, where she prayed aloud that having now proved her faith, she might be freed from pain and see the glory of God;--and her prayer was answered and her spirit instantly departed into eternal glory, Feb. 5, A.D. 251."--_From the "Legende delle SS. Vergini."_

Agatha (patroness of Catania) is one of the saints most reverenced by the Roman people. On the 5th of February her vespers are sung here, which contain the antiphons:--

"Who art thou that art come to heal my wounds?--I am an apostle of Christ, doubt not concerning me, my daughter.

"Medicine for the body have I never used; but I have the Lord Jesus Christ, who with his word alone restoreth all things.

"I render thanks to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for that thou hast been mindful of me, and hast sent thine apostle to heal my wounds.

"I bless thee, O Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, because through thine apostle thou hast restored my breasts to me.

"Him who hath vouchsafed to heal me of every wound, and to restore to me my breasts, him do I invoke, even the living God.

"Blessed Agatha, standing in her prison, stretched forth her hands and prayed unto the Lord, saying, 'O Lord Jesus Christ, my good master, I thank thee because thou hast given me strength to overcome the tortures of the executioners; and now, Lord, speak the word, that I may depart hence to thy glory which fadeth not away."

The tomb of John Lascaris (a refugee from Constantinople when taken by the Turks) has--in Greek--the inscription:--

"Lascaris lies here in a foreign grave; but, stranger, that does not disturb him, rather does he rejoice; yet he is not without sorrow, as a Grecian, that his fatherland will not bestow upon him the freedom of a grave."

Passing the great Convent of S. Bernardino Senensis, we reach the Via dei Serpenti, interesting as occupying the supposed site of the Vallis Quirinalis, where Julius Proculus, returning from Alba Longa, encountered the ghost of Romulus:

"Sed Proculus Longa veniebat Julius Alba; Lunaque fulgebat; nec facis usus erat: Cum subito motu nubes crepuere sinistrae: Retulit ille gradus, horrueruntque comae.

Pulcher, et humano major, trabeaque decorus, Romulus in media visus adesse via."

_Ovid, Fast._ ii. 498.

Turning to the right down the Via dei Serpenti, we reach the Piazza Sta.

Maria in Monti, containing a fountain, and a church dedicated to SS.

Sergius and Bacchus, two martyrs who suffered under Maximian at Rasapha in Syria.

One side of this piazza is occupied by the _Church of Sta. Maria in Monti_, in which is deposited a figure of the beggar Labre (canonized by Pius IX. in 1860), dressed in the gown of a mendicant-pilgrim, which he wore when living. Over the altar is a picture of him in the Coliseum, distributing to his fellow-beggars the alms which he had obtained. His fete is observed here on April 16. (At No. 3 Via dei Serpenti, one may visit the chamber in which Labre died--and in the Via dei Crociferi, near the fountain of Trevi, a chapel containing many of his relics,--the bed on which he died, the crucifix which he wore in his bosom, &c.)

"Benoit Joseph Labre naquit en 1748 dans le diocese de Boulogne (France) de parents chretiens et jouissant d'une modeste aisance.

D'une piete vive et tendre, il voulut d'abord se faire religieux; mais sa sante ne put resister, ni aux regles des Chartreux, ni a celles des Trappistes, chez lesquels il entra successivement. _Il fut alors sollicite interieurement_, est il dit dans la notice sur sa vie, _de mener une vie de penitence et de charite au milieu du siecle_. Pendant sept annees, il parcourut en pelerin-mendiant, les sanctuaires de la Vierge les plus veneres de toute l'Europe; on a calcule qu'il fit, a pied, plus de cinq mille lieues, pendant ces sept annees.

"En 1777, il revint en Italie, pour ne plus en sortir. Il habitait Rome, faisant seulement une fois chaque annee, le pelerinage de Lorete. Il passait une grande partie de ses journees dans les eglises, mendiait, et faisait des uvres de charite. Il couchait quelquefois sous le portique des eglises, et le plus souvent au Colysee derriere la petite chapelle de la cinquieme station du chemin de la croix. L'eglise qu'il frequentait le plus, etait celle de Ste. Marie des Monts; le 16 Avril, 1783, apres y avoir prie fort longtemps, en sortant, il tomba, comme evanoui, sur les marches du peristyle de l'eglise. On le transporta dans une maison voisine, ou il mourut le soir."--_Une Annee a Rome._

Almost opposite this church, a narrow alley, which appears to be a _cul-de-sac_ ending in a picture of the Crucifixion, is in reality the approach to the carefully concealed _Convent of the Farnesiani Nuns_, generally known as the _Sepolte Vive_. The only means of communicating with them is by rapping on a barrel which projects from a wall on a platform above the roofs of the houses,--when a muffled voice is heard from the interior,--and if your references are satisfactory, the barrel turns round and eventually discloses a key by which the initiated can admit themselves to a small chamber in the interior of the convent. Over its door is an inscription, bidding those who enter that chamber to leave all worldly thoughts behind them. Round the walls are inscribed,--"Qui non diligit, manet in morti."--"Militia est vita hominis super terram."--"Alter alterius onera portate"; and, on the other side, opposite the door,

"Vi esorto a rimirar La vita del mondo Nella guisa che la mira Un moribondo."

In one of the walls is an opening with a double grille, beyond which is a metal plate, pierced with holes like the rose of a watering-pot. It is beyond this grille and behind this plate, that the abbess of the Sepolte Vive receives her visitors, but she is even then veiled from head to foot in heavy folds of thick bure. Gregory XVI., who of course could penetrate within the convent and who wished to try her, said, "Sorella mia, levate il velo." "No, mio padre," she replied, "E vietato dalla nostra regola."

The nuns of the Sepolte Vive are never seen again after they once assume the black veil, though they are allowed double the ordinary noviciate.

They never hear anything of the outer world, even of the deaths of their nearest relations. Daily, they are said to dig their own graves and lie down in them, and their remaining hours are occupied in perpetual and monotonous adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Returning as far as the Via Pane e Perna (a continuation of the Via Maganaopoli) we ascend the slope of the _Viminal Hill_, now with difficulty to be distinguished from the Quirinal. It derives its name from _vimina_, osiers, and was once probably covered with woods, since a temple of Sylvanus or Pan was one of several which adorned its principal street--the Vicus Longus--the site of which is now marked by the countrified lane called Via S. Vitale. This end of the hill is crowned by the _Church of S. Lorenzo Pane e Perna_, built on the site of the martyrdom of the deacon St. Laurence, who suffered under Claudius II., in A.D. 264, for refusing to give up the goods of the Church. Over the altar is a huge fresco, representing the saint extended upon a red-hot gridiron, and below--entered from the exterior of the church--a crypt is shown as the scene of his cruel sufferings.[236]

"Blessed Laurentius, as he lay stretched and burning on the gridiron, said to the impious tyrant, 'The meat is done, make haste hither and eat. As for the treasures of the Church which you seek, the hands of the poor have carried them to a heavenly treasury.'"--_Antiphon of St. Laurence._

The funeral of St. Bridget of Sweden took place in this church, July 1373, but after resting here for a year, her body was removed by her son to the monastery of Wastein in Sweden.

Under the second altar on the right are shown the relics of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian, "two holy brothers, who departed from Rome with St.

Denis to preach the Gospel in France, where, after the example of St.

Paul, they laboured with their hands, being by trade shoemakers. And these good saints made shoes for the poor without fee or reward (for which the angels supplied them with leather), until, denounced as Christians, they suffered martyrdom at Soissons, being, after many tortures, beheaded by the sword (A.D. 300)."[237] The festival of St.

Crispin and St. Crispinian is held on October 25, the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt.

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered."

_Shakespeare, Henry V._

Throughout the middle ages the statues of Posidippus and Menander, now in the gallery of statues at the Vatican, were kissed and worshipped in this church under the impression that they represented saints (see Ch.

XV.). They were found on this site, which was once occupied by the baths of Olympias, daughter-in-law of Constantine.

The strange name of the church, Pane e Perna, is supposed to have had its origin in a dole of bread and ham once given at the door of the adjacent convent. In the garden belonging to the convent is a mediaeval house of _c._ 1200. The campanile is of 1450.

The small neighbouring _Church of S. Lorenzo in Fonte_ covers the site of the prison of St. Lawrence, and a fountain is shown there as that in which he baptized Vicus Patricius and his daughter Lucilla, whom he miraculously raised from the dead.

Descending the hill below the church--in the valley between the Esquiline and Viminal--we reach at the corner of the street a spot of preeminent historical interest, as that where Servius Tullius was killed, and where Tullia (B.C. 535) drove in her chariot over the dead body of her father. The Vicus Urbius by which the old king had reached the spot is now represented by the Via Urbana; the Vicus Cyprius, by which he was about to ascend to the palace on the hill Cispius, by the Via di Sta. Maria Maggiore.

"Servius-Tullius, apres avoir pris le chemin raccourci qui partait du pied de la Velia et allait du cote des Carines, atteignit le Vicus-Cyprius (Via Urbana).

"Parvenu a l'extremite du Vicus-Cyprius, le roi fut atteint et assassine par les gens de Tarquin aupres d'un temple de Diane.

"C'est arrives en cet endroit, au moment de tourner a droite et de gagner, en remontant le Vicus-Virbius, le Cispius, ou habitait son pere, que les chevaux s'arreterent; que Tullie, poussee par l'impatience fievreuse de l'ambition, et n'ayant plus que quelques pas a faire pour arriver au terme, avertie par le cocher que le cadavre de son pere etait la gisant, s'ecria: 'Eh bien, pousse le char en avant.'

"Le meurtre s'est accompli au pied du Viminal, a l'extremite du Vicus-Cyprius, la ou fut depuis le Vicus-Sceleratus, la rue Funeste.

"Le lieu ou la tradition placait cette tragique aventure ne peut etre sur l'Esquilin: mais necessairement au pied de cette colline et du Viminal, puisque, parvenu a l'extremite du Vicus-Cyprius, le cocher allait tourner a droite et remonter pour gravir l'Esquilin.

Il ne faut donc pas chercher, comme Nibby, la rue Scelerate sur une des pentes, ou, comme Canina et M. Dyer, sur le sommet de l'Esquilin, d'ou l'on ne pouvait monter sur l'Esquilin.

"Tullie n'allait pas sur l'Oppius (San-Pietro in Vincoli), dans la demeure de son mari, mais sur le Cispius, dans la demeure de son pere. C'etait de la demeure royale qu'elle allait prendre possession pour le nouveau roi.

"Je n'oublierai jamais le soir ou, apres avoir longtemps cherche le lieu qui vit la mort de Servius et le crime de Tullie, tout-a-coup je decouvris clairement que j'y etais arrive, et m'arretant plein d'horreur, comme le cocher de la parricide, plongeant dans l'ombre un regard qui, malgre moi, y cherchait le cadavre du vieux roi, je me dis: 'C'etait la!'"

_Ampere, Hist. Rom._ ii. 153.

Turning to the left, at the foot of the Esquiline, we find the interesting _Church of Sta. Pudenziana_, supposed to be the most ancient of all the Roman churches ("omnium ecclesiaram urbis vetustissima").