[15] That the reader may not question whether the custom existed in ancient days of having National or other flags flying, for the purpose of recognition, it may be necessary to show that it was the custom. This is proved upon the authority of ST. PAUL, who, after his shipwreck upon the Island of Malta (_i. e._ Melita) and residing there three months, again set sail in an Alexandrian ship for Rome; the ensign or flag of which vessel represented the Jovian Sons of Leda. "And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the Isle, whose sign (_i. e._ flag or ensign) was Castor and Pollux." [Acts xxviii. 11.]--_G. J._ Thus escaped, and upon the broad and friendly "Sea," it will readily be imagined that Tyrian prayers and thanksgivings were "lifted up" in purity and sincerity. Upon leaving Tyrus, they rowed towards the open waters of the Mediterranean; but keeping in-shore, and for the approaching nightfall, their prows would be turned toward the West. The first sunset of their flight may have been crimsoned with the tints of Nature,--but towards the East, on the horizon of their once-loved home, arose the red clouds from furious conflagration,-- their fallen and flaming dwellings quenched only in the flowing and heated streams of human blood! As Night struggled for supremacy with expiring Day, the sky and waters were illumined from the raging fire, rising from the funeral pile of an once mighty, but now prostrate nation. The Tyrian "Queen of the Sea," now dressed in her last crimson robe (which like that of Hercules festered her to madness), from her Island-throne cast her expiring looks upon the Mediterranean,--her faithful, yet conquered champion,--whose bright panoply reflected and increased the grandeur of the Monarch's fall--which, like a Star falling from the purple dome of Night, and its fiery train reflected on the Ocean, and both on the same instant, as in sympathy, expire: so the Sea-girt Queen's--and, like that Star, cast from the Pleiades of Nations--never to be found in her own, but in _another_ Sphere!