Salem, the home of prophets, helpless lies,
The mean one's jest, the raging heathen's prize.
Fire wraps her towers, her blazing temple falls,
With all its golden spires and cedared halls.
Yes, that proud fane, as by an earthquake's shock,
Is hurled to dust, and levelled with the rock;
And o'er its site must pass the Latian plough.

I stood beneath the Arch of Titus long;

On Hebrew forms there sculptured long I pored;
Till fancy, by a distant clarion stung,

N. MICHELL.

Woke; and methought there moved that arch toward
A Roman triumph. Lance and helm and sword
Glittered, white coursers tramped, and trumpets rung;
Last came, car-borne amid a captive throng,
The laurelled son of Rome's imperial lord.
As though by wings of unseen eagles fanned,
The Conqueror's cheek, when first that arch he saw,
Burned with the flush he strove in vain to quell.
Titus! a loftier arch than thine hath spanned
Rome and the world with empery and law;
Thereof each stone was hewn from Israel.

AUBREY DE VERE.

From the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome

I beheld thee, O Sion! when rendered to Rome;

"T was thy last sun went down, and the flames of thy fall
Flashed back on the last glance I gave to thy wall.

Since the last dispersion the name of Israel is lost to human history. A scattered and long-suffering remnant, a people of zealous and indomitable faith, more tenacious than ever of traditions and rites that set them apart from all; the traders and slave-merchants of barbaric times, outcasts from the Feudal System, first victims of the Crusades and the Inquisition, clinging still through long centuries to the hope that once and again had plunged them in so deep disaster, they have lived on, a singular and deathless monument of the Life that had its home of old in Palestine. — J. H. ALLEN.

SECOND CENTURY.

(100-200.)

ROME remains, as in the last century, the great power of the world. The Emperor Trajan adds to the Roman Empire in 106 the province of Dacia, lying north of the lower Danube. He also has contests with the Parthians, and adds the provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, thus extending the boundary of the Roman Empire to the greatest limit which it ever reached, embracing the greater part of the world known at the time. This extension of the Roman dominion is, however, of but short duration, as Trajan's conquests in the East are soon surrendered by his successor, Hadrian.

PARTHIA is a powerful state, though an unequal rival of Rome.