It is all
so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and the dungeons below are
so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and naked; that this little
dark spot becomes a dream within a dream: and in the vision of
great churches which come rolling past me like a sea, it is a small
wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and does not flow on
with the rest.
It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are
entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the city. Many
churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which,
in the ancient time, were baths, and secret chambers of temples,
and what not: but I do not speak of them. Beneath the church of
St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a terrific range
of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said to have another outlet
underneath the Coliseum--tremendous darknesses of vast extent,
half-buried in the earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches,
flashed by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant
vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in a city of
the dead; and show the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip-
drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that lie here and
there, and never saw, or never will see, one ray of the sun.
Pages:
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250