Certain writers, called fathers of the Church--Gregory of Nazianzen, and Theodoret--thought it incumbent on them to calumniate him, because he had abandoned the Christian religion. They did not consider that it was the triumph of that religion to prevail over so great a man, and even over a sage, after having resisted tyrants. One of them says that he took a barbarous vengeance on Antioch and filled it with blood. How could a fact so public and atrocious escape the knowledge of all other historians? It is perfectly known that he shed no blood at Antioch but that of the victims sacrificed in the regular services of religion. Another ventures to assert that before his death he threw some of his own blood towards heaven, and exclaimed, "Galilean, thou hast conquered." How could a tale so insipid and so improbable, even for a moment obtain credit? Was it against the Christians that he was then combating? and is such an act, are such expressions, in the slightest degree characteristic of the man? Minds of a somewhat superior order to those of Julian's detractors may perhaps inquire, how it could occur that a statesman like him, a man of so much intellect, a genuine philosopher, could quit the Christian religion, in which he was educated, for Paganism, of which, it is almost impossible not to suppose, he must have felt the folly and ridicule. It might be inferred that if Julian yielded too much to the suggestions of his reason against the mysteries of the Christian religion, he ought, at least in all consistency, to have yielded more readily to the dictates of the same reason, when more correctly and decidedly condemning the fables of Paganism. Perhaps, by attending a little to the progress of his life, and the nature of his character, we may discover what it was that inspired him with so strong an aversion to Christianity. The emperor Constantine, his great-uncle, who had placed the new religion on the throne, was stained by the murder of his wife, his son, his brother-in­law, his nephew, and his father-in-law. The three children of Constantine began their bloody and baleful reign, with murdering their uncle and their cousins. From that time followed a series of civil wars and murders. The father, the brother, and all the relations of Julian, and even Julian himself, were marked down for destruction by Constantius, his uncle. He escaped this general massacre, but the first years of his life were passed in exile, and he at last owed the preservation of his life, his fortune, and the title of Cæsar, only to Eusebia, the wife of his uncle Constantius, who, after having had the cruelty to proscribe his infancy, had the imprudence to appoint him Cæsar, and the still further and greater imprudence of then persecuting him.