The Argosy — page 64: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

** Ecco Roma!” 51 about seventy feet in diameter, dark with age, and built with amazing ‘strength. It stands at the end of a stream of lava which flowed from an eruption at the base of the Alban Hills. Above the frieze and cornice is supposed to have been a conical roof, such as is often seen in the cemeteries of the East and occasionally in those of the Jews. The chamber which held the sarcophagus, about fifteen feet in diameter, is now empty. The ashes of Cecilia Metella have been scattered to the winds. Her beautiful white marble tomb has been desecrated to secular uses, and is now a fountain in the court of the Farnese Palace. We remember the well-known lines in ** Childe Harold”: ‘ There is astern round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress with its fence of stone, Such as an army’s battled strength delays, Standing with half its battlements alone, And with two thousand years of ivy grown, The garland of eternity, where wave The green leaves over all by time o’erthrown ;— What is this tower of strength? Within its cave What treasure lay so lock’d, so hid >—A woman's grave,”’ But the casket that held the treasure was to remain long after the treasure had been stolen. The name of Cecilia Metella alone remains: a name in itself sufficiently beautiful and romantic tc suggest an idyl. As such it will go down to earth’s latest records and it may be that her tomb will last as long. ‘Time can scarcely destroy it; but what time would save, we see that the hand of man is frequently merciless to spare. In travelling down the Appian Way, there is a figure that is ever before us. It is that of St. Paul. That verse in the Acts seems to ring in our ears: ‘‘ 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.” One can imagine the meeting; and wonder who the brethren were, and how many in number. It was from the height above the Appian Way that Paul first saw Rome: a magnificent city of baths and temples, theatres, colonnades and palaces. It was on the Appian Way that he journeyed on one of the most memorable epochs of his life. Here that he passed under the arch of Drusus and through the Porta Capena and so within the great walls of the city, to the Forum itself. Here he arrived a prisoner from Jerusalem, having appealed from Agrippa unto Cesar. We know how he sailed from Adramyttium; all the perils and vicissitudes he went through ; how the angel appeared to him before the shipwreck assuring him that he must come before Cesar; how the barbarous people of Melita were kind to them all when they had escaped to land; how three months later they sailed in a ship of GOMIIGaoOo <S (SO) mn