Italian hermit had not been witness in a vision to his damnation, when his soul was plunged, by the ministers of divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths of the infernal world.'— Gibbon.

About 3 miles beyond the Porta Nuova, at the other end of the Corso Garibaldi, is the wonderful Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe. The country will recall that near Yarmouth to English travellers, and, partly for the same reason, being reclaimed from the sea.

'There is little enough in the country to delight the eye. The fields in the immediate neighbourhood of the city are cultivated and not devoid of trees. But the cheerfulness thence arising does not last long. Very soon the trees cease, and there are no more hedgerows. Large flat fields, imperfectly covered with coarse rank grass, and divided by the numerous branches of streams, all more or less dyked to save the land from complete inundation, succeed. The road is a causeway raised above the level of the surrounding district; and presently a huge lofty bank is seen traversing the desolate scene for miles, and stretching away towards the shore of the neighbouring Adriatic. This is the dyke which contains the sulkily torpid but yet dangerous Montone.

worse.

'Gradually, as the traveller proceeds, the scene grows worse and Soon the only kind of cultivation to be seen from the road consists of rice-grounds, looking like—what in truth they are— -poisonous swamps. Then come swamps pure and simple, too bad perhaps to be turned into rice-grounds-or rather simply swamps impure; for a stench at most times of the year comes from them, like a warning of their pestilential nature, and their unfitness for the sojourn of man. A few, shaggy, wild-looking cattle may be seen wandering over the flat waste, muddy to the shoulders from wading in the soft swamps. A scene of more utter desolation it is hardly possible to meet with in such close neighbourhood to a living city.

'The raised causeway, however, keeps on its course amid the lowlying marshes on either side of it; and presently the peculiar form of outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the mountain-pine is distinguishable on the horizon to the left. The road quickly draws nearer to it; and the large heavy, velvet-like masses of dark verdure become visible. In a forest such as the famous Pineta, the lines, especially when seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees. And the effect produced by the continuity of spreading umbrella-like tops is peculiar.

'Then, soon after the forest has become visible, the road brings the wayfarer within sight of a vast lonely structure, bearing its huge long back against the low horizon, like some monster antediluvian saurian, the fit denizen of this marsh world. It is the venerable Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe.'-T. Adolphus Trollope.

The Cross, which we pass about mile from the city, surmounting a little marble column, and called La Crocetta, marks the site of the great Basilica of S. Lorenzo in Cesarea, built A.D. 396, by Lauritius, Chamberlain of the Emperor Honorius, and destroyed by the barbarism of 1553. This church was the last relic of the ancient city of Cesarea, though the whole soil is full of marbles, and scarcely a sod is turned up without what in other places would be considered a precious fragment being discovered.

The grand Basilica of S. Apollinare was begun in 534 by 'Julianus Argentarius,' and consecrated in 549 by Archbishop Maximianus. It is supposed to occupy the site of a temple of Apollo, and to have been built on the spot where S. Apollinaris suffered martyrdom 455 years before.

'It is related of Apollinaris that he accompanied the Apostle Peter from Antioch, and was for some time his companion and assistant at Rome; but, after a while, S. Peter sent him to preach the Gospel on the eastern coast of Italy, having first laid his hands on him and communicated to him those gifts of the Holy Spirit which were vouchsafed to the apostles.

'Apollinaris, therefore, came to the city of Ravenna, where he preached the faith of Christ with so much success that he collected around him a large congregation, and performed miracles, silencing, wherever he came, the voice of the false oracles, and overcoming the demons; but the heathens, being filled with rage, threw him into prison, whence escaping by the favour of his jailer, he fled from the city (July 23, 79) by the gate which leads to Rimini. His enemies pursued him, and having overtaken him about three miles from the gate, they fell upon him and beat him, and pierced him with many wounds, so that when his disciples found him soon afterwards he died in their arms, and his spirit fled to heaven.'---Jameson's 'Sacred Art,

The vast church rises, like S. Paolo fuori le Mura, in the solemn silence of the Campagna, and its utter desolation gives it an indescribable interest, which is enhanced by its

ancient associations, combined with the truth conveyed in its own inscription-'Sanguis martyris semen fidei.'

'Between the Bosco, as the people of Ravenna call the pine-wood, and the city, the marsh stretches for a distance of about three miles. It is a plain intersected by dykes and ditches, and mapped out into innumerable rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies under water, and during the other months exhales a pestilential vapour, which renders it as uninhabitable as the Roman Campagna; yet in spring time this dreary flat is even beautiful. The young blades of the rice shoot up above the water, delicately green and tender. The ditches are lined with flowering rush and golden flags, while white and yellow lilies sleep in myriads upon the silent pools. Tamarisks wave their pink and silver tresses by the road, and wherever a plot of mossy earth emerges from the marsh, it gleams with purple orchises and flaming marigolds; but the soil beneath is so treacherous and spongy, that these splendid blossoms grow like flowers in dreams or fairy-stories. You try in vain to pick them; they elude your grasp, and flourish in security beyond the reach of arm or stick.

S. Apollinare in Classe.

'Such is the site of the old town of Classis. Not a vestige of the Roman city remains, not a dwelling or a ruined tower, nothing but the ancient church of St. Apollinare in Classe. Of all desolate buildings this is the most desolate. Not even the deserted grandeur of San Paolo beyond the walls of Rome can equal it. Its huge round campanile gazes at the sky, which here vaults only sea and plain-a perfect dome, star-spangled, like the roof of Galla Placidia's tomb. Ravenna lies low to west, the pine-wood, immeasurably the same, to east. There is nothing else to be seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away that the level rack of summer clouds seems more attainable and real. What sunsets and sunrises that tower must see; what glaring lurid after-glows in August, when the red light scowls upon the pestilential fen; what sheets of sullen vapour rolling over it in autumn; what

breathless heats and rain-clouds big with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts of winter winds! One old monk tends this deserted spot. He has the huge church with its echoing aisles, and marble columns, and giddy bell-tower, and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare intervals, priests from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at these cold altars; pious folks make vows to pray upon their mouldy steps, and kiss the relics which are shown on great occasions. But no one stays; they hurry, after muttering their prayers, from the fever-stricken spot, reserving their domestic pieties and customary devotions for the brighter and newer chapels of the fashionable churches in Ravenna. So the old monk is left alone to sweep the marsh water from his church floor and to keep the green moss from growing too thickly on the monuments. A clammy conserva covers everything except the mosaics upon tribune, roof, and clerestory, which defy the course of age. Christ on his throne sedet, eternumque sedebit, the saints around him glitter with their pitiless uncompromising eyes and wooden gestures, as if twelve centuries had not passed over them, and they were nightmares only dreamed last night, and rooted in a sick man's memory. For those gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of life or end of days. No fever touches them ; no dampness of the wind and rain loosens their firm cement. They stare with senseless faces in bitter mockery of men who live, and die, and moulder away beneath. Their poor old guardian told us it was a weary life. He has had the fever three times, and does not hope to survive many more Septembers. The very water that he drinks is brought to him from Ravenna, for the vast fen, though it pours its overflow upon the church floor and spreads like a lake around, is death to drink. The monk had a gentle woman's voice and mild brown eyes. What terrible crime had consigned him to this living tomb! For what past sorrow is he weary of his life? What anguish of remorse has driven him to such a solitude? Yet he looked placid and simple; his melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life were over for him, and he were waiting for death to come with a friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer night across the fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive fever-mist.'—J. A. Symonds.

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'The appearance of S. Apollinare di Fuori is injured by a large mass of modern workmanship added in front, but the interior is spacious and beautiful, and was still more so before the poverty of the chapter occasioned its being despoiled of the rich marbles which originally incased the walls. You will especially admire the broad and airy aisles, and their freedom from chapels or interruption of any sort, except the characteristic ornament of a line of (moveable) sarcophagi, containing the bones of the early archbishops. This church, like a rock deserted by the tide, is the solitary vestige of the suburb formerly

As far back as the 15th century.

designated "Classis," from the fleet that anchored under its walls; the spot is now four miles distant from the sea, and most dreary and desolate, and the tide of population ebbed for ever. But the church is not the less interesting, both on account of its architecture and its mosaics, and an hour's ride to the north of it will carry you into the depth of the Pineta, which supplied the ships that wafted Augustus to Actium, and the Crusaders to Palestine, and where, if you watch in vain for the spectre Theodore and the scornful Honoria, you may at least hear the birds singing as sweetly to the accompaniment of breeze and bough as they did in Dante's ear when he wrote those lovely lines in the Purgatorio, introductory of Matilda; the whole description indeed, and not one simile only, breathes of the Pineta.'-Lindsay's 'Christian Art.'

The Interior is 172 feet long by 93 wide. The nave is divided from its aisles by twenty-four columns of cippollino with Corinthian capitals-the columns probably taken from Pagan edifices. The roof is of wood. At the east end a flight of steps leads to the tribune, beneath which is the crypt containing the sarcophagus of S. Apollinaris. On either side the entrance are two huge sarcophagi richly sculptured with early Christian emblems, and four more stand in each of the aisles, containing the remains of Archbishops of the 7th and 8th centuries. In the left aisle is an inscription (modern) stating that the Emperor Otho III., having walked barefoot from Rome to Monte Gargano, passed forty days in penance of sackcloth and scourging in this church—'ob patrata crimina '-i.e. for the murder of Crescentius. At the end of this aisle, in the chapel of the Holy Cross, is a tabernacle of the 9th century, over the altar of S. Felicola. In the centre of the nave is a little altar.

'The little low altar, of an antiquity coeval with that of the church, which stands in the centre of the nave, is the sole exception to the entire and utter emptiness of the place. There are, indeed, ranged along the walls of the side aisles, several ancient marble coffins, curiously carved, and with semi-circular covers, which contain the bodies of the earliest Bishops of the See. But the little altar is the sole object that breaks the continuity of the open floor. The body of S. Apollinare was originally laid beneath it, but was in a subsequent age removed to a more specially honourable position under the high altar at the eastern end of the church. There is still, however, the