Thrown back into the primitive ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the historian of the Christian catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which were hidden beneath the earth.[B] [Footnote A: Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill; and the impression made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully evinced in his "Childe Harold."-- ED.] [Footnote B: A large number of these important memorials have been since removed to the _Galleria Lapidaria_ of the Vatican, and arranged on the walls by Marini.

They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at Rome.

Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation.

The Rev.C.
Maitland's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly displaying their intrinsic historic value--ED.] The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with that creative imagination which has startled even men of science by its peculiar discoveries.

WERNER, the mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures, appears, by some accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised this faculty.