Much inquiry has arisen as to where Paul lived during his captivity in Rome. A local tradition affirms that in a subterranean church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which you pass going down the Corso, you have the very “hired house,” where for two years the Apostle lived. In the crypt-like place, there is nothing which looks like a human dwelling; and the tradition itself, in a city where such traditions abound, is of little if any value. A house in the Ghetto, extremely ancient, was pointed out to me by Dr. Philip, a Jewish missionary, as the probable spot; but his idea seems to have had nothing to rest upon, except that this old building is in the Jews’ quarter. What is fatal to the identification of the “hired house” in either of these spots is that the New Testament indicates it as connected with lodgings occupied by the Pretorian guard. The “soldier that kept him” would not be far away from comrades; and soldiers in general would be accommodated in the Pretorian camp, of which traces exist near the Porta Pia—a long distance from the Corso and the Ghetto.
My third visit to Rome was the close of my foreign travels. A word more in reference to them. Most frequently on my way to other countries, I passed through France to Paris, either by Calais and Amiens, or by Havre and Rouen. Let me refer for a moment to the cathedral at Amiens, one of the wonders of the world—the largest place of worship I know, except Cologne Cathedral, St. Peter’s at Rome, and St. Sophia at Constantinople. It takes away one’s breath to look up at its rich clerestory, and its roof, 140 feet high, half as high again as that of Westminster Abbey. Rouen has architectural beauty, and an historical interest beyond other French cities. The Church of St. Ouen surpasses the cathedral, and the Palais de Justice is a beautiful specimen of Civic Gothic. But associations of what happened in that city, during the fifteenth century, surpass its material monuments. Poor Joan of Arc—most touching example of self-delusion and self-sacrifice the world ever saw—how she absorbs interest as one stands in the Place de Pucelle, where she was burnt, the victim of French ingratitude and English revenge! Paris is so well known by everybody that no notice need be taken of it here.