will astonish the whole world." At seventeen he received the habit of S. Domenico at Naples. His mother, the Countess Teodora, tried to prevent his taking the final vows, and he fled from her towards Paris. At Acquapendente he was intercepted by his brothers Landolfo and Rinaldo, who tore off his habit, and carried him to his father's castle of Rocca-Secca. Here his mother met him, and finding her entreaties vain, shut him up, and allowed him to see no one but his two sisters, whose exhortations she hoped would bend him to her will. On the contrary, he converted his sisters, and, after two years' imprisonment, one of them let him down from a window, and he was received by some Dominicans, and pronounced the final vows.

Gradually S. Thomas Aquinas became the greatest theological teacher and writer of his time. When he refused a bishopric, the Pope made him always attend his person, and thus his lectures were chiefly given in the different towns of Papal residence Rome, Viterbo, Orvieto, Fondi, and Perugia. Clement IV. tried hard to make him an archbishop, but he refused all preferment, and died at Fossanuova in 1274.

S. Thomas composed the office for the festival of Corpus Domini. His crowning work was the Summa Theologia, which may be called, "The Christian religion thrown into scientific form, and the orderly exposition of what man should be."

"The whole movement of the Summa Theologia is towards the Beatific Vision of God, which will be the occupation of man's eternity; and to tend towards it is the permanent duty and the one supreme interest of man on earth."-Roger Bede Vaughan.

But to ordinary readers S. Thomas is perhaps less known

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by his philosophy than by his hymns, of which the most celebrated are "O Sacrum Convivium," " Pange Lingua," "Tantum Ergo," "O Salutaris," and "Lauda Sion." His character is well summed up in an inscription beneath an old portrait of the saint in a church at Naples :

"O sapientiæ cœlestis optatissimum auspicium!

O integerrimæ vitæ jucundissimum exemplum !
Salve Thoma sanctissime custos,

Salve sapientissime magister,

Salve benevolentissime pater,

Macte gloria; macte laudibus; macte virtutibus."

'C'est surtout depuis sa mort, que Dieu a glorifié Saint Thomas, et qu'il l'a rendu un docteur universel. . . . . Vous dirai-je que l'oracle du monde chrétien, Rome même a vu souvent ses pontifes descendre du tribunal sacré, et y faire monter les écrits de notre saint pour prononcer sur les différends qui troubloient l'Eglise ; que les conciles eux-mêmes, ces juges vénérables da la doctrine, ont formé leurs décrets eur ses décisions; que les partisans de l'erreur n'ont jamais eu de plus redoutable ennemi, et que comme les Philistins, ils ont désesperé de pouvoir exterminer l'armée de Dieu vivant, tandis que cette arche résiderait au milieu d'elle Tolle Thomam, et dissipabo Ecclesiam Dei.”—Massillon, Ser

mons.

Not far from Aquino is the mountain castle of Loreto, which belonged to the parents of S. Thomas. It was while they were staying here, that he, a boy, stole all the contents of the family larder to distribute to the poor. His father intercepted him and sternly commanded him to give up what his cloak contained-when a shower of roses is said to have fallen from it upon the ground.

Three miles beyond Aquino, the road which passes under the Arco S. Lorenzo leads to Pontecorvo, which was once an independent state like Monaco, a sort of little kingdom of its own. In the middle ages it belonged alternately to the

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great family of Tomacelli, and to the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Napoleon gave it as a Duchy to Bernadotte.

Pontecorvo has a beautiful position on a plateau backed by soft swelling hills. It is approached by a triumphal arch surmounted by a figure of Pius IX. in the act of benediction. Some of the ancient walls remain. The streets are uninteresting. At the end of the town, overhanging the bridge over the Garigliano, is the Cathedral, standing on the substructions of an ancient temple and approached by a wide flight of steps. The magnificence of the costumes here, especially the scarlet draperies which are let down behind, make a blaze of colour during the church services.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE PONTINE MARSHES.

(This curious district may easily be visited from Velletri. A diligence leaves Velletri for Terracina on the arrival of the quick train from Rome at II A. M. Carriages may be engaged at Velletri for the whole excursion, going the first day to Terracina, with a divergence of some hours to Ninfa ; the second day remaining at Terracina and visiting S. Felice and the Monte Circello; the third day diverging to Piperno and Fossanuova and returning to Velletri or Rome; or, it may be better to sleep the third day at Piperno, when Sonnino may be visited.)

I

T is a dull descent from Velletri towards the levels. The road runs through low woods of oaks, once much frequented by brigands,-even indeed from classical times:

"Interdum et ferro subitus grassator agit rem,
Armato quoties tutæ custode tenentur

Et Pomptina palus et Gallinaria pinus."

Juvenal, Sat. iii. 305.

During the later years of the Papal dominion, no danger was ever to be apprehended, but as the present Government have opened the prisons and set loose the savage gang of Gasparoni, long secured at Civita Castellana, "casualties" are now possible, though they occur at very rare intervals: and those who are content to go without any ostentation and very simply dressed, may travel without any risk.

About nine miles from Velletri we reach Cisterna, the Cisterna Neronis of the Middle Ages, and the Three Taverns (Tres Tabernæ) of the New Testament.

"And so we went towards Rome. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum and the Three Taverns; whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage."-Acts xxviii. 15.

The Three Taverns, probably three Osterias for travellers on the Via Appia, are frequently mentioned by Cicero and other classical authors. But St. Gregory the Great in one of his letters (to John, Bishop of Velletri), says that no remains existed in his time of Appii Forum, or that if any such did exist, the Pontine Marshes made them inaccessible; he adds that the Three Taverns were identical with the place then known as Cisterna. The antiquarian Ricchi * proves that this must be the place where the Christian martyrs Abondio and Abondantio were buried by the matron Teodora in her own vineyard.

The town of Cisterna clusters around the vast, gloomy, decaying Palace of the Gaetani, built at intervals, and without any regularity of design, around their old machicolated tower. The whole of this district still belongs to the Gaetani, whose Countships, Duchies, and Principalities, with the cities, lands, and castles belonging to them, would at one time have made a very considerable kingdom. Their name is supposed to have been assumed when the absolute sovereignty of Gaieta was conferred upon them by the Greek Emperor Basil.

sides Gaieta their southern Signories included Itri, Teano, Sessa,

Regia de' Volsci.