either of popular or imperial tyranny. A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;――for thus wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous: Justum et tenacem propositi virum, Non civium ardor prava jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida. * * * The moral energy of the Roman character made the exemplifications of this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter days of Roman glory. There were some like Petronius, who gave life and reality to this poetical conception of Horace,――“A man just and resolute, unshaken from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses of popular rage, and by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And these were among the chief blessings of the Roman sway, to those lands in which it ruled,――that the great interests of the country were not subjected to the blind movements of a perverse public opinion, changing with each year, and frustrating every good which required a steady policy for its accomplishment,――that the majority of the people were not allowed to tyrannize over the minority, nor the minority over the majority;――and that a mighty power amenable to neither, but whose interest and glory would always coincide with the good of the whole, held over all a dominion unchecked by the demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for the imperfections of all human systems;――among the curses of that Roman sway, must be numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise and amiable, into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but too often occurred,――overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment, the results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this very case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate rule, were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the nation at last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in the utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of several years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was felt in the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on all, and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the doctrine of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that remarkable repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from all the interference with their labors by the Roman government. The death of Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the civil power had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a mere freak of