and towards man. In the merciful exercise of his power over the people whose safety and quiet he came to maintain, and, moreover, in the generous use of his pecuniary advantages, he passed his blameless life; and the high motive of this noble conduct, is discovered in the steady, pure devotion, in which he employed many hours of daily retirement, and in which he caused his whole family publicly to join, on proper occasions. Thus is he briefly and strongly characterized by the sacred historian: “devout, and fearing God with all his house; giving much alms, and praying to God always.” _Noble race of patricians._――The _gens Cornelia_, or “Cornelian race,” was unequaled in Rome for the great number of noble families sprung from its stock. The Scipios, the Sullas, the Dolabellas, the Cinnas, the Lentuli, the Cethegi, the Cossi, and many other illustrious branches of this great race, are conspicuous in Roman history; and the Fasti Consulares, record more than sixty of the Cornelian race, who had borne the consular dignity previous to the apostolic era. This is always a _family_ name, and Ainsworth very grossly errs in calling it “the _praenomen_ of several Romans.” Every Roman name of the middle and later ages of the commonwealth, had at least three parts, which were the _praenomen_, marking the individual,――the _nomen_ marking the _gens_, (“race,” “stock,”) and the _cognomen_, marking the family or division of that great stock. Thus in the name “Publius Cornelius Scipio,” the _last_ word shows that the person belonged to the Scipio family, which by the _second_ word is seen to be of the great Cornelian stock, while the first shows that this member of the family was distinguished from his relations, by the name of Publius. (See Adams’s Roman Antiquities, on Names.) Wherever this name, Cornelius, occurs, if the whole appellation of the man is given, this comes in the middle, as the _nomen_, marking the race; as is the case with every one of those quoted by Ainsworth, in his blundering account of the word. See also Sallust, (The Catilinarian Conspiracy, 47, 55,) in defense of this peculiar limitation of the word to the _gens_. Not a single instance can be brought of its application to any person not of this noble patrician race, or of its use as a mere individual appellation. I am therefore authorized in concluding that this Cornelius mentioned in the Acts was related to this line of high nobility. It might, perhaps, be conjectured, that he had borrowed this name from that noble race, from having once been in the service of some one of its families, as was common in the case of freedmen, after they had received their liberty; but this supposition is not allowable; for he is expressly particularized as belonging to an _Italian_ division of the army, which fact excludes the idea of that foreign origin which would belong to a slave.