the distinguishing characteristic of ancient Rome was extinct. The proverbial discipline of the legions had been supplanted by license and disorder. Immunity from foreign incursion was secured by the ignominious and obnoxious expedient of tribute. Yet, in the midst of this accumulation of horrors which threatened the total destruction of a society already thoroughly disorganized, numbers of resolute men existed in every community who, while despoiled and oppressed, had not entirely abandoned themselves to despair, and in the minds of many of these, imperceptibly to the masses, and, indeed, scarcely discernible save by the most acute and sagacious observer, a great moral revolution was passing. The misfortunes which had befallen in succession the Pagan and the Christian religions had weakened the hold of both upon the reverence and affections of the multitude. Persons familiar with the Gospels, and with whom the Apocrypha claimed as much respect as the remaining portions of the Scriptures, looked forward to the coming of a reformer, known as the Paraclete, or Comforter, repeatedly promised in the Bible, whose mission was to restore to mankind, in its pristine purity, the truth as expounded by Christ. The material advantages which might accrue from the realization of this prediction were fully appreciated by the heads of a considerable number of contemporary sects--among them the Gnostics, the Cerintheans, the Montanists, and the Manicheans, each of whom confidently asserted that he was the heavenly messenger referred to and that all others were impostors. The Gospel of St. Barnabas is said, upon very respectable authority, to have originally contained the word Περικλῦτὸς, “Illustrious,” instead of Παράκλητος, “Comforter;” and to have been subsequently altered, with a view to checking the increasing number of claimants to divine inspiration, whose pretensions were becoming troublesome and dangerous. Moslem ingenuity has shrewdly availed itself of this prophecy, which popular credulity accepted as a direct announcement of the coming Mohammed, whose name, “The Illustrious,” is the Arabic equivalent of Περικλῦτὸς. It is also stated in the most ancient chronicles that a prophet called Ahmed, or Mohammed, had for centuries been expected in Arabia, where the Gospels were widely distributed; and it is therefore possible that a word written in an unknown tongue, a thousand miles from Mecca, may have had no inconsiderable share in determining the political and religious destinies of a large portion of the human race.