and lofty. On each side of the chancel a flight of steps leads down into the crypt, and on the sides of these stairways several Christian monuments of the Roman period have been built into the walls. The crypt contains the stone tombs of St. Eucharius and St. Valerius, which lie almost directly under the high altar, and near them are the pillars visibly containing relics of the Roman period, and said to date from the first-century church of the Villa Albana. At the eastern end of the crypt is a kind of altar with carvings representing the coming of the early missionaries. The churchyard, badly kept and neglected, possesses two small crypts containing old graves of the Roman period, and in the west wall near the entrance is a curious old tablet with an inscription in Latin and German. This refers to the statue of a heathen deity which formerly was kept in the churchyard and which has been removed to the Trier Museum. The inscription, which is of interest not only as referring to the mission of St. Maternus, but also as fixing the reputed or traditional date of the mission (A.D. 50), runs as follows: "Wolt ihr wissen was ich bin Ich was geehret als ein Gott In Jahre 50 nach Christi geburt "Me pridem Treviris coluit error. A post Christum natû Roma missi a S. Petro 50 Treveros venerunt Euch. Val. Mat." Dear Saints of Christ the Lord, who passed through grievous trial, Here, where to-day I stand, your holy feet have trod; Here you chose pain and death, rather than base denial, And passed rejoicing through the awful flames to God. Dear Saints, to whom the very name of Jesus Christ Was breath of healing and the kindling of a fire, Whose service was a passion that alone sufficed For every need and craving, every heart's desire. Look down on us in pity for our groundless fears, Whose Christian faith and courage have grown old and dim, The feeble, spell-bound creatures of decadent years, Who in the name of Christ have heaped reproach on Him. You wholly trusted Him and in His service wrought Wonders and signs at which the worldly-wise were dumb; We live for pleasure as if this were all we sought, Heedless of death, and judgment, and the life to come. Clear-brained and always ready, patient, strong, and sane, Such vision and such gladness might be ours to-day Dear Saints, arouse in us the spirit of your vow, Pray for us, us who love you, that our starless night May flush with traces of the Dawn, and even now Our dead may wake from sleep and Christ may give us light." J. W. T. APPENDIX A A.D. 84. "SPEECH OF GALGACUS, THE NORTH-BRITISH OR CALEDONIAN LEADER, BEFORE THE BATTLE WITH AGRICOLA, AS REPORTED BY TACITUS IN HIS LIFE OF AGRICOLA." W 999 HEN I reflect on the causes of the war, and the circumstances of our situation, I feel a strong persuasion that our united efforts on the present day will prove the beginning of universal liberty to Britain. none of us are hitherto debased by slavery; and there is no land behind us, nor is even the sea secure, while the Roman fleet hovers around. "Thus the use of arms, which is at all times honourable to the brave, now offers the only safety even to cowards. All the battles which have yet been fought with varying success against the Romans, had their resources of hope and aid in our hands; for we, the noblest inhabitants of Britain, and therefore stationed in its deepest recesses-far from the view of servile shores-have preserved even our eyes unpolluted by the contact of subjection. We-at the farthest limits both of land and liberty-have been defended to this day by the remoteness of our situation and our fame. The extremity of Britain is now disclosed; and whatever is unknown becomes an object of importance. There is no nation beyond us; nothing but waves and rocks, and the still more hostile Romans, whose arrogance we cannot escape by obsequiousness and submission. "These plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West; the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call Empire; and where they make a desert, they call it 'peace.' "Our children and relations are, by the appointment of Nature, rendered the dearest of all things to us. These are torn away by levies to serve in foreign lands. Our wives and sisters, though they should escape the violation of hostile force, are polluted under names of friendship and hospitality. Our estates and possessions are consumed in tributes; our grain in contributions. Even our bodies are worn down amid stripes and insults in clearing woods and draining marshes. Wretches born to slavery are once bought and afterwards maintained by their masters: Britain every day buys, every day feeds her own servitude. And as among domestic slaves every new-comer serves for the scorn and derision of his fellows, so, in this ancient corner of the world, we, as the newest and vilest, are sought out to destruction. For we have neither cultivated lands, nor mines, nor harbours which can induce them to preserve us for our labours. The valour, too, and unsubmitting spirit of subjects only renders them more obnoxious to their masters; while remoteness and secrecy of situation itself, in proportion as it conduces to security, tends to inspire suspicion. "Since then all hopes of forgiveness are vain, let those at length assume courage to whom safety as well as to whom glory is dear. "The Trinobantes, even under a female leader, had force enough to burn a colony, to storm camps, and, if success had not induced negligence and inactivity, would have been able entirely to throw off the yoke: and shall not we, untouched, unsubdued, and struggling not for the acquisition but the continuance of liberty, show at the very first onset what men Caledonia has reserved for her defence? Can you imagine that the Romans are as brave in war as they are licentious T in peace? Acquiring renown from our discords and dissensions, they convert the errors of their enemies to the glory of their own army-an army compounded of the most different nations which, as success alone has kept together, misfortune will certainly dissipate. "Unless, indeed, you can suppose that Gauls and Germans and (I blush to say it) even Britons, who, though they lavish their blood to establish a foreign dominion, have been longer its foes than its subjects, will be retained by loyalty and affection! "Terror and dread alone are their weak bonds of attachment: these once broken, they who cease to fear will begin to hate. Every incitement to victory is on our side. The Romans have no wives to animate them, no parents to upbraid their flight. Most of them have either no home or a distant one. Few in number, ignorant of the country, looking round in silent horror at woods, seas, and a heaven itself unknown to them, they are delivered by the gods, as it were imprisoned and bound, into our hands. Be not terrified with an idle show and the glitter of silver and gold which can neither protect nor wound. In the very ranks of the enemy we will find our own bands. The Britons will acknowledge their own cause. The Gauls will recollect their former liberty. The rest of the Germans will desert them as the Usipii have lately done. Nor is there anything formidable behind them-ungarrisoned forts, colonies of old men, municipal towns distempered and distracted between unjust masters and ill-obeying subjects. "Here is a general: here an army. There, tributes, mines, and all the train of punishments inflicted on slaves, which, whether to bear eternally or instantly to revenge, this field must determine. March then to battle and think of your ancestors and your posterity." (From the "Life of Agricola," written by his son-in-law, C. Cornelius Tacitus, in the year of Rome 850, in that of Christ 97; during the third Consulate of the Emperor Nerva, and the third of Virginius Rufus.— Aitkin's translation.) |