their ears already dinned by a greater noise another way; nor did they attend to the signal he made with his right hand, as still some of them were distracted with fighting, and others with passion. But as for the legions that came running thither, neither any persuasions nor any threatenings could restrain their violence, but each one's own passion was his commander at the time; and as they were crowding into the temple together, many of them were trampled on by one another, while a great number fell among the ruins of the cloisters, which were still hot and smoking, and were destroyed in the same miserable way with those whom they had conquered; and when they had come near the holy house, they made as if they did not so much as hear Cæsar's orders to the contrary; but they encouraged those that were before them to set it on fire.

5. As for the seditious, they were in too great distress already to afford their assistance toward quenching the fire; they were everywhere slain, and everywhere beaten; and as for a great part of the people, they were weak and without arms, and had their throats cut whenever they were caught. Now, round about the altar lay dead bodies heaped one upon another; as at the steps going up to it ran a great quantity of their blood, whither also the dead bodies that were slain above, on the altar, fell down.

6. And now, since Cæsar was no way able to restrain the enthusiastic fury of the soldiers, and the fire proceeded on more and more, he went into the holy place of the temple, with his commanders, and saw it, with what was in it, which he found to be far superior to what the relations of foreigners contained, and not inferior to what we ourselves boasted of and believed about it; but as the flame had not as yet reached to its inward parts, but was still consuming the rooms that were about the holy house, and Titus supposing what the fact was, that the house itself might yet be saved, came in haste and endeavored to persuade the soldiers to quench the fire, and gave orders to Liberalius the centurion, and one of those spearmen that were about him, to beat the soldiers that were refractory with their staves, and to restrain them.

7. Yet were their passions too hard for the regard they had for Cæsar, and the dread they had for him who forbade them was not as great as their hatred of the Jews, and a certain vehement inclination which they had to fight them. Moreover, the hope of plunder induced many to go on, as having this opinion, that all the places within were full of money, and as seeing that all round about it was made of gold; and besides, one of those that went into the place prevented Cæsar, when he ran so hastily out to restrain the soldiers, and threw the fire upon the hinges of the gate, in the dark; whereby the flame burst out from within the house itself immediately, when the commanders retired, and Cæsar with them; and then nobody any longer forbade those that were without to set fire to it, and thus was the holy house burnt down without Cæsar's approbation.

8. Now, although any one would justly lament the destruction of such a work as this was, since it was the most admirable of all the works that we have seen or heard of, both for its curious structure and its magnitude, and also for the vast wealth bestowed upon it, as well as for the glorious reputation it had for its holiness; yet might such a one comfort himself with this thought, that it was fate that decreed it so to be, which is inevitable, both as to living creatures and as to works and piaces also.

9. However, one cannot but wonder at the accuracy of this period thereto relating; for the same month and day were now observed, wherein the holy house was burnt formerly by the Babylonians. Now the number of years that passed from its first foundation, which was laid by King Solomon, till this its destruction, which happened in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, are collected to be one thousand one hundred and thirty, besides seven months and fifteen days; and from the second building of it, which was done by Hag'ga-i, in the second year of Cyrus the king, till its destruction under Vespasian. these were six hundred and thirty-nine years and fortyfive days.

Nearly three centuries afterward, the attempt was made by the Emperor Julian to

rebuild the Temple; and the Jewish population entered zealously into the project. The men forgot their avarice and the women their delicacy; spades and pickaxes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and the rubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. Every purse was opened in liberal contributions, every hand claimed a share in the pions labor."* Their efforts were, however, frustrated. One historian of the time says, "Whilst Alypius, assisted by the governor of the province, urged, with vigor and diligence, the execution of the work, horrible balls of fire breaking out near the foundation, with frequent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place, from time to time inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen; and the victorious element continuing in this manner obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the undertaking was abandoned."+]

Titus before Jerusalem.-Milman.

[From a dramatic poem entitled the "Fall of Jerusalem," by Rev. H. H. Milman.]

Titus. It must be

And yet it moves me, Romans! It confounds

The counsel of my firm philsophy,

That Ruin's merciless ploughshare must pass o'er,

And barren salt be sown on yon proud city.

As on our olive-crowned hill we stand,
Where Kedron at our feet its scanty waters
Distills from stone to stone with gentle motion,
As through a valley sacred to sweet peace,
How boldly doth it front us how majestically!
Like a tuxurious vineyard, the hill-side

Is hung with marble fabrics, line o'er line,

Terrace o'er terrace, nearer still, and nearer

To the blue heavens. There bright and sumptuous palaces,

With cool and verdant gardens interspersed ;

There towers of war that frown in massy strength;

While over all hangs the rich purple eve,

As conscious of its being her last farewel

Of light and glory to that fated city.

And, as our clouds of battle, dust and smoke,
Are melted into air, behold the temple,
In undisturbed and lone serenity,

Finding itself a solemn sanctuary

In the profound of heaven ! It stands before us
A mount of snow, fretted with golden pinnacles!
The very sun, as though he worshipped there,
Lingers upon the gilded cedar roofs;

Gibbon.

This singular phenomenon is thought to have been caused by the rccumulation of inflammable gases in the great excavations which lay under the city.

And down the long and branching porticoes,
On every flowery-sculptured capital,
Glitters the homage of his parting beams.
By Hercules! the sight might almost win
The offended majesty of Rome to mercy.

The Defeat of Attila.-Creasy.

[Of all the barbarous nations that contributed to the destruction of the Roman empire, the Huns, under their terrible leader, Attila, were the most ferocious. On the plains of Chalons their victorious progress was checked by Etius, called sometimes the "Last of the Romans." The following account of this battle is from "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World," by E. S. Creasy.]

1. THE pressure of the Huns upon Europe had first been felt in the fourth century of our era. They had long been formidable to the Chinese empire, but the ascendancy in arms which another nomadic tribe of Central Asia, the Sienpi, gained over them, drove the Huns from their Chinese conquest westward; and this movement once being communicated to the whole chain of barbaric nations that dwelt northward of the Black Sea and the Roman empire, tribe after tribe of savage warriors broke in upon the barriers of civilized Europe.

2. The Huns crossed the Tan a-is into Europe in 375 A.D., and rapidly reduced to subjection the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other tribes that were then dwelling along the course of the Danube. The armies of the Roman emperor that tried to check their progress were cut to pieces by them, and Pannonia and other provinces south of the Danube were speedily occupied by the victorious cavalry of these new invaders. Not merely the degenerate Romans, but the bold and hardy warriors of Germany and Scandinavia, were appalled at the number, the ferocity, the ghastly appearance, and the lightninglike rapidity of the Huns. Strange and loathsome legends were coined and credited, which attributed their origin to the union of

"Secret, black, and midnight hags,"

with the evil spirits of the wilderness.

3. Tribe after tribe, and city after city, fell before them. Then came a pause in their career of conquest in southwestern

Europe, caused, probably, by dissensions among their chiefs, an also by their arms being employed in attacks upon the Scandinavian nations. But when Attila (or Atzel, as he is called in the Hungarian language) became their ruler, the torrent of their arms was directed, with augmented terrors, upon the west and the south, and their myriads marched beeath the guidance of one master-mind to the overthrow both of the new and the old powers of the earth. . . .

4. Attila's fame has not come down to us through the partial and suspicious medium of chroniclers and poets of his own. race. It is not from Hunnish authorities that we learn the extent of his might; it is from his enemies, from the literature and the legends of the nations whom he afflicted with his arms that we draw the unquestionable evidence of his greatness. Besides the express narratives of Byzantine, Latin, and Gothic writers, we have the strongest proof of the stern reality of Attila's conquests in the extent to which he and his Huns have been the themes of the earliest German and Scandinavian lays.

5. Wild as many of those legends are, they bear concurrent and certain testimony to the awe with which the memory of Attila was regarded by the bold warriors who composed and delighted in them. Attila's exploits, and the wonders of his unearthly steed and magic sword, repeatedly occur in the Sagas of Norway and Iceland; and the celebrated Niebelungen Lied, the most ancient of Germanic poetry, is full of them. There Etsel, or Attila, is described as the wearer of twelve mighty crowns, and as promising to his bride the land of thirty kings, whom his irresistible sword had subdued. He is, in fact, the hero of the latter part of this remarkable poem; and it is at his capital city, Etselenburgh, which evidently corresponds to the modern Buda, that much of its action takes place.

6. When we turn from the legendary to the historic Attila, we see clearly that he was not one of the vulgar herd of bar baric conquerors. Consummate military skill may be traced in his campaigns; and he relied far less on the brute force of