Among those of her friends, whose names she had betrayed, was the illustrious Longinus, author of that noble Treatise on the Sublime, which is so well known and appreciated by every scholar. He it was, she confessed, who had drawn up the letter. “Her councillors,” she said, “were to be blamed, and not herself. What could a weak, short-sighted, woman do? especially when beset by artful and ambitious men, who made her subservient to all their schemes? She never had aimed at empire, had they not placed it before her eyes in all its allurements. The letter which affronted Aurelian was not her own—Longinus wrote it; the insolence was his.” When Aurelian heard this, he directed all his fury against the unfortunate Longinus. That illustrious person was immediately led to execution. Far from lamenting his fate, however, he condoled with his friends, pitied Zenobia, and expressed his joy; looking upon death as a blessing, since it would rescue his body from slavery, and give his soul to that freedom he the most desired. “This world,” said he, with his expiring breath, “is nothing but a prison; happy, therefore, is he who gets soonest out of it, and gains his liberty.” A modern poet has very finely alluded to this in his poem on Palmyra. On the hushed plain, where sullen horror broods, And darkest frown the Syrian solitudes; Where morn’s soft steps no balmy fragrance leave, And parched and dewless is the couch of eve; Thy form, pale city of the waste, appears Like some faint vision of departed years; In massy clusters still a giant train, Thy sculptured fabrics whiten on the plain. Still stretch thy columned vistas far away, The shadowed dimness of their long array. But where the stirring crowd, the voice of strife, The glow of action and the thrill of life? Hear the loud crash of yon huge fragments fall, The pealing answer of each desert hall; The night-bird shrieking from her secret cell, The hollow winds, the tale of ruin tell. See, fondly lingering, Mithra’s parting rays Gild the proud towers, once vocal with his praise: But the cold altars clasping weeds entwine, And Moslems worship at the godless shrine. Yet here slow pausing memory loves to pour Her magic influence o’er this pensive hour: And yet, as yon recesses deep prolong The echoed sweetness of the Arab song, Recalls that scene, when wisdom’s sceptred child, First broke the stillness of the lonely wild. From air, from ocean, from earth’s utmost clime, The summoned genii heard the muttered rhyme; The tasking spell their airy hands obeyed, And Tadmor glittered in the palmy shade. So to her feet the tide of ages brings The wealth of nations and the pomp of kings, And for her warrior queen, from Parthia’s plain To the dark Ethiop, spreads her ample reign: Vain boast, ev’n she who winds the field along, Waked fiercer frenzy in the patriot throng;