Chandlery, Peter Joseph; Gerard, John: Pilgrim-walks in Rome: a guide to the holy places in the city and its vicinity (New York: Fordham University Press, 1908)

PREFACE.
All roads—as we know—lead to Rome, and there are
attractions there for every diversity of taste. The
historian who would philosophize on the rise and fall
of empires, or trace the evolution of modern Christen-
dom in the ferment of mediaeval politics, the antiquarian,
the artist, the man of letters—each here finds himself on
sacred ground, where the very stones have tongues, where
every spot is haunted, and where the ruins of a bygone
world eclipse the majesty of other cities in the heyday of
their prosperity.
But to no others can Rome be what she is to those
who come as pilgrims in the strict sense of the term,
who follow in the footsteps of those who for nigh two
thousand years have been drawn there by an attraction,
which was in all its vigour when others now potent were
unknown, and for whom the hallowed memories of the
past serve but to enhance the glories of the living present.
For Catholics, Rome is the citadel of God’s Kingdom
upon earth. They come to do homage to the Vicar of
Christ, to the heir of the Fisherman, whose dynasty
began when imperial Rome was in the zenith of her
splendour, and which numbers to-day amongst its
subjects the denizens of continents, which were still
undiscovered, when States that rose upon Rome’s ruins
had passed into the mists of ancient history.
They come likewise for the sake of the hallowed
associations which cluster around a spot of earth chosen
by God in so singular a manner for His own ; and very
specially—starting with the tombs of the two Apostles,
from whom the Church in Rome derives her origin—tc
venerate the memory of the Saints, in whom her divine