which Herod’s remorseless policy had exterminated. Her he made his wife, and after a few years sacrificed her to some wild freak of jealousy, only to reap long years of agonizing remorse for the hasty act, when a cooler search had shown, too late, her stainless innocence. But a passionate despot never yet learned wisdom by being made to feel the recoil of his own folly; and in the course of later years this cruelty was equalled, and almost outdone, by a similar act, committed by him on those whom her memory should have saved, if anything could. The innocent and unfortunate Mariamne left him two sons, then mere children, whom the miserable, repentant tyrant, cherished and reared with an affectionate care, which might almost have seemed a partial atonement for the injuries of their murdered mother. After some years passed in obtaining a foreign education at the imperial court of Rome, these two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, returned at their father’s summons, to his court, where their noble qualities, their eloquence and manly accomplishments, as well as the interest excited by their mother’s fate, drew on them the favorable and admiring regard of the whole people. But all that made them admirable and amiable to others, was as powerless as the memory of their mother, to save them from the fury of the suspicious tyrant. Those whose interests could be benefited by such a course, soon found means to make them objects of jealousy and terror to him, and ere long involved them in a groundless accusation of conspiring against his dominion and life. The uneasiness excited in Herod by their great popularity and their commanding talents, led him to believe this charge; and the miserable old tyrant, driven from fear to jealousy, and from jealousy to fury, at last crowned his own wretchedness and their wrongs, by strangling them both, after an imprisonment of so great a length as to take away from his crime even the shadowy excuse of hastiness. This was one of the last acts of a bloody life; but ere he died, returning tenderness towards the unfortunate race of Mariamne, led him to spare and cherish the infant children of Aristobulus, the younger of the two, who left three sons and two daughters to the tender mercies of his cruel father. One of these was the person who is concerned in the next event of Peter’s life, and whose situation and conduct in reference to that affair, was such as to justify this prolonged episode. He received in infancy the name of Agrippa, out of compliment to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the favorite and minister of Augustus Caesar, and the steady friend of the great Herod. This name was exclusively borne by this son of Aristobulus in childhood, nor was it ever displaced by any other, except by some of the Jews, who, out of compliment to the restoration of the Herodian line of kings, in place of the Roman sub-governors, gave him the name of his royal grandfather, so that he is mentioned only by the name