Even in the official report, which the better and well-meaning younger Pliny transmitted to Trajan in the year 120, while he was governor of Pontus and Bithynia, we can clearly discern the embarrassment of the generous Roman, who was at a loss how to consider the new religion, so perfectly mysterious and totally inexplicable did it appear to him; and who in consequence was quite undetermined what he was to do, and how he was to treat the matter. He writes that, according to the confessions wrung from the Christians by torture, after the Roman custom, they were found to entertain an excessive, strange, heterogeneous, an very perverse, faith of superstition; but that in other respects they were people of irreproachable morals, and who on a certain day of the week, Sunday, assembled in the morning to sing the praises of their God Christ, and to engage themselves to the fulfilment of the most important precepts of virtue, and that they met again in the evening to enjoy a simple and blameless repast. He adds that their numbers had already increased to such an extent that the altars of Paganism were nearly abandoned; and that a great number of women, boys and children belonged to their sect. He is at a loss to know, with respect to the latter, whether he should make any difference in the degree of punishment which, it appears, they have inevitably incurred under the old Roman laws against all societies and fraternities not sanctioned by the state; and on this subject he demands further instructions from the emperor, in this memorable official letter, which is still extant, and contains the most ancient portrait of the Christians drawn by a Roman hand. Thus then, in this period of the world, in this decisive crisis between ancient and modern times, in this great central point of history, stood two powers opposed to each other:--on one hand, we behold Tiberius, Caligula and Nero, the earthly gods, and absolute masters of the world, in all the pomp and splendor of ancient paganism--standing, as it were, on the very summit and verge of the old world, now tottering to its ruin:--and, on the other hand, we trace the obscure rise of an almost imperceptible point of Light, from which the whole modern world was to spring, and whose further progress and full development, through all succeeding ages, constitutes the true purport of _modern history_. END OF VOL. I. NEW WORKS PUBLISHED BY MESSRS. SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET, HANOVER SQUARE. I. MR. BULWER'S NEW WORK. In 2 vols. post 8vo. THE STUDENT. By the Author of "EUGENE ARAM," "ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH," &c. "Great as is both the power and beauty of Mr. Bulwer's former works, we know none that mark the creative thinker more than the present production--its pages are full of new lights and happy illustrations."--_Lit. Gaz._ II. COWPER'S WORKS. THE SIXTH VOLUME OF THE COMPLETE EDITION OF COWPER. By the REV. MR. GRIMSHAWE.