ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were charged,――a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with all its paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or exchanged for one whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in its desolating vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken zeal in the objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders. The latter alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady, benignant sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change should take place which should give the country a ruler of less independent and scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice his own moral sense to the attainment of favor with the most important subjects of his government. Until that desirable end should be attained, in the course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it seemed best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly dropped all active proceedings, leaving the new sect to progress as it might, with the impulse gained from the re-action consequent on this late unfortunate excitement against it. But they still kept a watchful eye on their proceedings, though with hands for a while powerless; and treasured up accumulating vengeance through tedious years, for the day when the progress of political changes should bring the secular power beneath their influence, and make it subservient to their purpose of dreadful retribution. That day had now fully come. PETER’S THREATENED MARTYRDOM.