Shortly after the death of Pasteur it was well said that two of the greatest medical scientists of the nineteenth century have given to the physicians of France a magnificent, encouraging and comforting example. Almost needless to say these two were Laennec and Pasteur, and their example is not for France alone, but for the whole medical world. They were living nineteenth century answers to the advocates of free thought who would say that religious belief and especially Catholic faith make men sterile in the realm of scientific thought.

No better ending to this sketch of Laennec's life seems possible than the conclusion of Dr. Austin Flint's address to his students in New Orleans, already so often quoted from. It has about it the ring of the true metal of sincere Christian manhood and unselfish devotion to a humanitarian profession.

"The career of the distinguished man whose biography has been our theme on this occasion, is preeminently worthy of admiration. In his character were beautifully blended the finest intellectual and moral qualities of our nature. With mental powers of the highest order were combined simplicity, modesty, purity and disinterestedness in such measure that we feel he was a man to be loved not less than admired. His zeal and industry in scientific pursuits were based on the love of truth for its own sake and a desire to be useful to his fellow men. To these motives to exertion much of his success is to be attributed. Mere intellectual ability and acquirements do not qualify either to make or to appreciate important scientific discoveries. The mind must rise above the obstructions of self-love, jealousy and selfish aims. Hence it is that most of those who have attained to true eminence in the various paths of scientific research have been distinguished for excellencies of the heart as well as of the head. The example of Laennec is worthy of our imitation. His superior natural gifts we can only admire, but we can imitate the industry without which his genius would have been fruitless. Let us show our reverence to the memory of Laënnec by endeavoring to follow humbly in his footsteps." Quod faustum vertat!

JAMES J. WALSH, Ph.D., LL.D., M.D.

PILGRIM-WALKS IN ROME.

IV. TO THE COLISEUM AND PALATINE.

(Continued.)

I. VIA DEI SERPENTI.-ST. BENEDICT JOSEPH LABRE.

ST. JOHN BERCHMANS.

FROM the Quirinal there is a direct road to the Coliseum by the Via della Consulta and Via dei Serpenti, crossing the Via Nazionale. In a small house in the Via dei Serpenti (No. 3) died St. Benedict Joseph Labre, the holy mendicant, on April 16, 1783. His favorite church was the neighboring one of S. Maria in Monti, and there, as he knelt before the Blessed Sacrament on the day above mentioned, he felt that his end was near. Rising, he staggered to the church door, and, unable to proceed further, sat down on the door-steps, where his agony began. A kind friend, who happened to be passing, took compassion on him and carried him to his own house near the church, where the saint breathed forth his pure soul to God that same evening at the early age of thirty-three years.

He was born in the diocese of Boulogne, France, in 1748, of parents pious and in easy circumstances. A saint from his childhood, his one desire was to consecrate himself to God in some austere religious order, and he became a novice first of the Carthusians, then of the Trappists, but in both cases was compelled to leave because of his frail constitution. In the world he resolved to lead a life of absolute poverty and severe penance; so, renouncing his home and the comforts of life, he wandered through Europe as a mendicant pilgrim from sanctuary to sanctuary, living on the scraps of food that were given him as alms, and sleeping on the bare ground. In 1777 he came to Rome, never to leave it up to the time of his death, except for an annual pilgrimage to Loretto. His time was spent in prayer in the different churches of the Holy City (chiefly in the Gesù and S. Maria in Monti) and in works of charity to the poor, for whom he begged alms, whose children he catechized, and whom he taught by his holy example to bear with resignation their hard lot. At night he retired for a short rest to some church porch, but more frequently to the Coliseum, where he was favored with heavenly visions. He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1881, and his shrine is in his favorite

church of S. Maria in Monti. The room where he died, at No. 3, Via dei Serpenti, may be visited.

On the steps of S. Maria in Monti, where St. Benedict Joseph Labre fell into his agony, St. John Berchmans, the young Jesuit scholastic, preached a sermon to the people, under circumstances described by Father Goldie in his life of the saint, page 179. The church stands in a thickly populated and poor quarter of the city. The young saint, accompanied by another scholastic, placed a table on or near the church steps to serve as a pulpit; but some rough men of the street, who were playing at ball, seized hold of the table, telling them they would have none of their preaching, as they wanted to continue their game. St. John did not answer a word, but entered the church, threw himself on his knees, and after a short prayer, came out again resolved to begin his discourse. His companion was timid and warned him that there would be a disturbance. "Do not be afraid," answered the saint, "I have confidence in our Lady, and the moment I begin they will leave off their game and come and listen to me." He got on the table, and while he was saying the Hail Mary as the opening prayer, the players left their game and all gathered round to hear. When the sermon was over, the audience, deeply impressed, escorted the two young religious back to the Roman College.

In the house adjoining S. Maria in Monti lived St. Alphonsus Liguori during his stay in Rome in the time of Clement XIII. Had we met him in the street, without knowing him to be a saint, we should have been impressed at the sight of the holy man, as Tannoja, his biographer, describes him, "clad in an old mantle patched all over, with a cassock in the same condition. Such poverty was itself a sermon, for all knew his noble birth and were confounded to see him thus clothed like a beggar."

Opposite the church of S. Maria in Monti was the convent of Farnesian nuns, known as Sepolte vive, "buried alive," who lived entirely cut off from all communication with the outer world, spending their time in prayer, works of penance, and perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Their convent home has been razed to the ground by the Italian government since 1870, to make way for modern tenement houses, and the good religious have been sent adrift.

Near the same church is a piazza with a fountain, and on one side of the square will be noticed the new Ruthenian College, founded by the present Emperor of Austria, and placed under the care of the Jesuit Fathers.

II. THE COLISEUM, OR FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE.

If every part of the soil of Rome is sacred, because reddened with the blood of the Martyrs, that of the Coliseum is especially holy, and so to prevent this battlefield of the first soldiers of Christ, saturated with their blood, from being trodden under the feet of the tourist and the curious, the Popes caused the arena to be covered with fifteen feet of sand. The present masters of Rome, who have no respect for holy ground, have defaced the Stations of the Cross that once stood here, and grubbed up the arena in search of ancient substructures and passages, looking also for pagan relics, interested, says Father Anderdon, if they can find the jaw bone of some defunct hyena.

The colossal pile before us, "which for magnitude can only be compared to the pyramids of Egypt, and which is perhaps the most striking monument at once of the material and the moral degradation of Rome under the empire," was commenced by the Emperor Vespasian in A. D. 72, and finished by his son, Titus, in A. D. 80. The captive Jews, led in chains to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem, (1) were employed on its construction, amid terrible hardships, the Coliseum being thus a monument of their sufferings and tears, as Jerusalem, levelled to the ground, is a symbol of their rejection.

The outline of the building is elliptic, the exterior length being 607 feet, and its breadth 512 feet: it is pierced with 80 vaulted openings or "vomitories" in the ground story, over which are superimposed on the exterior face three other stories, the whole rising perpendicularly to a height of 159 feet. The arena is 253 by 153 feet and covers extensive substructures provided for the needs and machinery of gladiatorial displays. A system of awnings was provided for shading the entire interior. It is estimated that the Coliseum provided seats for 87,000 spectators. The exterior of the building is faced with blocks. of travertine: the interior is built of brick and was covered with marble.

The dedication lasted a hundred days; several thousand gladiators were killed, "butchered to make a Roman holiday ";-five thousand wild beasts were destroyed, and a naval battle was fought in the amphitheatre, which, by means of inundation, was converted into a lake. The unhappy gladiators were chiefly captives or slaves from northern barbarous races, condemned to fight to the death to amuse the Emperor and the Roman people.

"We, who wander among the ruined arches of the Coliseum," says

(1) Josephus says over one million Jews perished in the siege, and 97,000 were sold as slaves or reserved for the amphitheatre.

Father Anderdon, S. J., "find a difficulty in picturing to the imagination what it was in the days of its splendor. The rough massy blocks of travertine, now crumbling and exposed, were overlaid, within and without the building, with white marble. The external walls were adorned with numerous marble statues that stood beneath the arches. Within, the benches went circling round tier after tier till they reached a height that was only less imposing than the lateral extent. Nothing met the eye that was not gorgeous, gay, artistic, costly and luxurious. The Emperor is there seated on the cushioned marble under a silken canopy; one of the most prominent portions of the magnificent oval sweep is allotted to the Vestals, who sit there in their spotless white robes, complacent or excited spectators of the bloodshed; the stately Senate is there, and the company of the Roman knights; matrons in rich attire; all that Rome holds of honored in society, eminent in literature and art, valorous in war.” (Evenings with the Saints, p. 18). In the upper tiers were the Roman people.

Cardinal Wiseman's description of the Coliseum may be read in Fabiola, p. 273 and p. 276.

In the arena, where we are standing, Christian martyrs have knelt with their eyes fixed on the ground, while some 90,000 spectators awaited with impatience the shedding of their blood, and yelled in maddening excitement "The Christians to the lions." Tender Virgins have stood there, young men, too, and boys of noble aspect, with their eyes fixed on heaven, fearless in the midst of that sea of human passions, undismayed by the roars of the savage beasts that were pacing their dens close by.

"What a spectacle it was, liant sun inundated the vast statues-all were resplendent.

peror.

savage and sublime! The rays of a briledifice with its light; marbles, columns, The awning with its graceful undulations cooled the scorching rays of the sun and tempered its brilliancy. A sacrifice to Jupiter is first offered in presence of the EmThen the signal is given for another sacrifice. It is not Cæsar, but a young girl, one of the Vestal virgins, who stands and gives the sign. At once the dens encircling the arena are opened, and with bounds, as if of joy at regaining their liberty, the savage beasts, not yet heeding their victims, traverse the whole space again and again. One tiger stands; its attention is arrested. Suddenly all are motionless. They advance stealthily at first as if in fear A bound! and the martyr's soul is in the embrace of his God." (Irish Monthly, 1899, p. 375).