unity, whether under a political or a moral law. At last, with the birth of the monarchy, there sprang up the germ of the greatest of social revolutions, the religion of Christ. — MERIVALE.

According to an ancient legend, the Emperor Augustus Cæsar repaired to the sibyl Tiburtina, to inquire whether he should consent to allow himself to be worshipped with divine honors, which the Senate had decreed to him. The sibyl, after some days of meditation, took the emperor apart, and showed him an altar; and above the altar, in the opening heavens, and in a glory of light, he beheld a beautiful Virgin holding an infant in her arms, and at the same time a voice was heard saying, "This is the altar of the Son of the living God;" whereupon Augustus caused an altar to be erected on the Capitoline Hill, with this inscription, Ara primogeniti Dei; and on the same spot, in later times, was built the church called the Ara-Cœli. . . . This particular prophecy of the Tiburtine sibyl to Augustus rests on some very antique traditions, pagan as well as Christian. It is supposed to have suggested the "Pollio" of Virgil, which suggested the "Messiah" of Pope. It is mentioned by writers of the third and fourth centuries, and our own divines have not wholly rejected it, for Bishop Taylor mentions the sibyl's prophecy among "the great and glorious accidents happening about the birth of Jesus."— MRS. JAMESON.

The sibylline prophecy is supposed to have occurred a short time before the Nativity, about the same period when the decree went forth "that all the world should be taxed."

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Historically regarded, Jesus is uplifted on the great wave formed by the confluence of three main courses of ancient life and thought, the Hebrew, Oriental, and Greek, all embraced in the imperial sway of Rome. His life, as the fulfilment of Hebrew Messianic prophecy, becomes the central and pivotal fact in the annals of mankind. However it be interpreted, the doctrine of the Church remains, that in it met all the separate threads of human development; so that, religiously regarded, it becomes the great revelation of God in human life, and, historically, the isthmus of two great continents, the connecting link between the ancient and modern world. J. H. ALLEN.

But he, her fears to cease,

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;

DURING this century the Romans first came into contact with the kingdom of Parthia, one of the new kingdoms which had arisen out of the dismembered portions of the Empire of the Seleucidæ, and which by continuing good fortune had come to include all the lands from the Euphrates to the Indus and the Oxus.

All these the Parthian (now some ages past,
By great Arsaces led, who founded first
That empire) under his dominion holds,
From the luxurious kings of Antioch won.
And just in time thou com'st to have a view
Of his great power.

see, though from far,

His thousands, in what martial equipage

They issue forth, steel bows and shafts their arms,

1 Mrs. Browning says her poem of "The Dead Pan" was "excited by Schiller's 'Götter Griechenlands,' and partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch ('De Oraculorum Defectu '), according to which, at the hour of the Saviour's agony, a cry of 'Great Pan is dead!' swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners, and the oracles ceased."

Of equal dread in flight or in pursuit ;

All horsemen, in which fight the most excel:
See how in warlike muster they appear,

In rhombs, and wedges, and half-moons, and wings.
He looked, and saw what numbers numberless

The city gates outpoured, light-arméd troops
In coats of mail and military pride;

In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong,
Prancing their riders bore, the flower and choice
Of many provinces from bound to bound.

MILTON.

Speaking broadly, the position that they [the Parthians] occupied was somewhat similar to that which the Turks hold in the system of modern Europe. They had a military strength which caused them to be feared and respected, a vigor of administration which was felt to imply many sterling qualities. A certain coarseness and rudeness attached to them which they found it impossible to shake off; and this drawback was exaggerated by their rivals into an indication of irreclaimable barbarity. Except in respect of their military prowess, it may be doubtful if justice is done them by any classical writer. They were not merely the sole rival which dared to stand up against Rome in the interval between 65 B. C. and A. D. 226, but they were a rival falling in many respects very little below the great power whose glories have thrown them so much into the shade. They maintained from first to last a freedom unknown to later Rome; they excelled the Romans in toleration and in liberal treatment of foreigners, they equalled them in manufactures and in material prosperity, and they fell but little short of them in the extent and productiveness of their dominions. They were the second power in the world for nearly three centuries, and formed a counterpoise to Rome which greatly checked Roman decline, and, by forcing the empire to exert itself, prevented stagnation and corruption. It must, however, be confessed that the tendency of the Parthians was to degenerate. RAWLINSON.