While the Grizzly Giant was yet a youth, the Persians gained the lordship of the East and lost it later to Alexander the Great. Greece, under Pericles, raised human culture to the highest pinnacle yet attained; Herodotus founded history; Buddha saw his vision of the serenity of the soul; Confucius left to posterity his code of personal conduct. During this fruitful period of man’s advancement, the Grizzly Giant had become conscious of its destiny and had begun to aspire heavenward and attain its place in the sun. Having a form of conical perfection, it was very aristocratic in its trimness. Densely clothed with-short whip-like branches from base to tip, it gradually arose in fringed growths which narrowed pyramid-like toward the sky with charming grace. Other trees show their trunks and knotted boughs, but this tree was compact like a Sequoian cone, and permitted no branch to be seen. Its foliage was of the most exquisite fineness, resembling a series of morning-glory blossoms strung on a string, and forming the softest of forest scenery. The tree had a suppleness which, compared with its present-day rigidity of old age, was as sensitive as the leaves of the quaking aspen. When it reached the glory of prime and attained the lusty strength of maturity, it had lost its youthful characteristics and assumed the nobility of the Sequoia. Having shed the purplish, leaden-gray, flaky bark of early years, it had taken on the deep red, fibrous bark that distinguishes its royal nature. Having also discarded all of its lower branches, it disclosed a straight, regularly tapering trunk fluted with long parallel furrows. This great shaft, both inspiring in its height and uplifting in its stateliness, supported a magnificent dome-shaped crown. In this sumptuous top a multitude of tiny cones ripened annually and sent forth myriads of golden-winged seeds on the Autumn breezes. Soaring now above all the lesser trees of the forest, it lost its desire to go yet higher. Serene and grand, this king of trees presented that “perfect combination of beauty, strength, and grandeur which marks it the noblest of God’s trees.” At this time Imperial Rome, sitting on her seven hills, was the center of the world’s culture, its progress and power. Rome had enjoyed two centuries of peace—the longest period of order and prosperity mankind has ever known—and had reached her greatest territorial extent under Hadrian (138 A. D.) Julius Caesar had destroyed the Republic; Augustus had founded the Empire; the Star of Bethlehem had proclaimed the Birth of the Saviour; Palestine had become a holy land; the world had received the Christian conception of the dignity of labor and the brotherhood of man, and Calvary had witnessed the spectacle of the Crucifixion. Already Nero had inaugurated Christian persecutions by illuminating his gilded palace with human torches, and the Cross had begun in earnest its conquest of the world.