joining together their own hands exactly as we have seen them with their hands joined together under the water flowing from the rock, as if to seek and receive the benefit of her prayers; and she, instead of holding the palms of her hands in the simple attitude of prayer, such as is seen in numberless other paintings and sculptures, that is, either horizontally or vertically, inclines them downwards a little, as if to let something run from them into the joined hands held below. It is a painting in fact equivalent in sense to those first words of the Church in the Litany, "Sub tuum præsidium confugimus, sancta Dei Genetrix;" and it could hardly have been misunderstood, as it has been, both by Bosio himself and by others who have followed him, had he not overlooked and neglected in the Cemetery of S. Callistus the central painting of Composition A, in which the two men hold their hands in precisely the same manner under the water flowing from the rock. So close, indeed, is the resemblance, that one may well think the two paintings, A 1 and B 2, to have been painted by the same person. On one side in each the two hands are held a little apart, as if in the act of joining, on the other they are already joined. It is true, indeed, that this same attitude of joining the hands to catch water occurs very frequently, as often as Moses or Peter is represented striking the rock, so that it ought to have been understood even without the help of the painting A 1, in the Cemetery of S. Callistus. But Bosio having missed, from whatever cause, the sense of the attitude, imagined this painting B 2 to represent some female Saint, perhaps S. Cyriaca herself from whom the Cemetery was named, in the act of prayer, while two men (whoever they were) were holding up her hands as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses.

It is singular that he should have had recourse to an explanation so plainly erroneous, when that very attitude which he sought to discover here occurred plainly enough in another crypt in the same Cemetery of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, whence it is given in vol. II. pl. cxxvi. of Rom. Sott. It was the discovery that Bosio and others after him had fallen into this error that suggested to the author the idea of grouping together the three paintings B 1, B 2, and B 3, into a Composition, exhibiting the different attitudes in which the two men appear with the woman in prayer. And with regard to the sense of the attitude in B 2, if any one catches at the fact that Bosio (who was certainly in his time an honest and diligent explorer of the Cemeteries) did not identify the woman with the Blessed Virgin, nor the two men with the Apostles, it may be remarked that it matters nothing to the sense who they are, so long as the attitude of the hands be acknowledged. For suppose the central figure to be really S. Cyriaca, or any other Saint, and the two men to be only, as M. Perret calls them, "two venerable elders,” if they or if any Christians seek the benefit of the prayers of S. Cyriaca or any other, then certainly in the same way and in a much higher degree do they and all other Christians seek the prayers of the Blessed Virgin, the mother of Christ; so that by implication and indirectly the Blessed Virgin would be contained in the painting even then, just as under Mary the sister of Martha, who chose the good part, the Church sees also Mary the mother of Jesus, and reads that Gospel as equally applicable to her. The original of B 2 being no longer extant, the colouring has been added by the artist from the analogy of other similar paintings.

In B3 we have the attitude already alluded to with

which Bosio improperly identified that of B 2. The central figure of the woman in prayer has again the two men on either side of her, as in the two preceding paintings; but the men now have each one arm wrapped in the folds of their clothing, while with the other hand they hold up on either side the arms of the central figure at the elbows. The woman, therefore, here is really represented as answering to Moses; and the two men answer to Aaron and Hur, who held up the hands of Moses: and when once this is perceived, it is also plain to what persons of the New Testament the history is transferred.

The attitudes of B 2 and B 3 exhibit two sides of one and the same doctrine, and when they are combined, the one serves to correct certain misapprehensions which may be raised in the minds of Protestants by the other. For one bred up in Protestant ideas, on being shown the painting B 2, might object that this, in the sense attached to it, is even an exaggeration of Popery. If the two men are the Church, and the woman praying is the Virgin, to whom the Church prays, then she seems to be a separate mediatress between God and man, individual souls, and even the Church, doing nothing for themselves, but seeking and obtaining all through her. The other painting, B 2, gives the explanation and correction. “Quite true,” it enables us to reply, “her prayers are in a manner all-powerful and indispensable. They are in the New Testament what the prayers of Moses were in the Old. When she prays, Israel prevails; when she ceases to pray, Amalek prevails. But she cannot pray alone; she is not to be thought of as an independent mediatress or goddess parallel with Christ, or even opposed to Christ. She needs Peter and Paul, that is, all the congregation of

the new Israel, whom they represent, to pray with her, to support her arms, and help her to pray. She is not to be disjoined even from the least or lowest of the members of Christ, but needs them all; that all together, and she only with all, and at the head of all, may prevail over the enemy in and through her Son."

III. COMPOSITION C.Of the Rod.

THE Rod, signifying Divine power, appears in the hand of three persons, and three only, namely, Moses, Christ, and Peter and these three are reducible to one, that is, to Christ. "The Lord," it is said in the Psalm, "shall send the rod of thy power out of Sion." The rod of Moses is the power of Christ, delegated to his servant; the rock struck by Moses is Christ himself; and what Moses did in the wilderness for the old Israel, Peter does for the New; so that in the Christian paintings and sculptures Moses striking the rock commonly represents Peter.

In C 1, at the top, a (Rom. Sott. vol. II. pl. lxvi. and compare pl. cxiii.), we see Christ with the rod in his hand touching the baskets of natural bread to change it to spiritual; for though no eighth basket is here added, the spiritual application of the miracle was of itself well known and familiar. This painting is from the Cemetery of SS. Nereus and Achilles.

On either side are the bottoms of two glass calices or pateræ, the upper parts of which, being brittle, have been broken away. Many such have been found in the Catacombs, often encrusted in the plaster at some tomb. They seem to have been made for the charitable dis

tributions called agape, and besides other Christian representations, they often bear upon them allusions to this use. The representations are made by placing a leaf of gold cut in the form designed between two thin plates of glass, which were afterwards welded together. The manufacture seems to have been introduced at Rome during the second century, one glass showing a heap of coins with the effigy of Heliogabalus; and it is said that no fragments of any such glasses have been discovered elsewhere than in the Christian cemeteries. At the same time some of those that have been found certainly bear upon them representations (such as Hercules, Achilles, &c.) which suggest heathen rather than Christian associations, though perhaps hinting some Christian sense. That they were sometimes used also as chalices for the consecration or distribution of the Eucharist, has been supposed, but without any sufficient proof. Still less does it follow from the fact that the use of glass chalices in the Eucharist was forbidden at a certain date in the third century, because they were found to be too fragile, that therefore all the glasses found in the Catacombs (none of them with the form of Eucharistic chalices), are older than the date referred to. On the contrary, some of those found belong plainly to the fourth century. For the two used in this Composition the Author is indebted to P. Garucci, who has since published in one volume, with notes and explanations, a complete collection of all that have been found.

On the glass b, to our right,-(for all glasses the reader is referred to the collection recently published by P. Garucci,)—around the busts of a man and his wife, the givers of the agape, we have a series of five representations: first, there is the Fall, much as in the painting