homage to his own. The orgies of Heliogabalus were more insulting to the elder paganism of Rome than injurious to the new faith, which equally detested both; and the offended moral feeling of the city reacted, perhaps, in favor of the Christian cause, and prepared the way for that more public teaching of the religion in buildings avowedly dedicated to the purpose, which was first permitted in the succeeding reign. . . . From their fellow-believers trading with the Levant, or arriving thence, the pastors of the metropolis would learn the propitious temper of the young Cæsar [Alexander Severus], and would feel no surprise, when he succeeded to the palace of his cousin, that he not only swept out the ministers of lust and luxury, but in his private oratory enshrined, among the busts of pagan benefactors, the images also of Abraham and of Christ. They could not, however, but observe how little the morals of the court and the wisdom of the government could now avail to arrest the progress of decay, and reach in detail the vices and miseries of a degenerate state. The emperor who, gazing in his chapel on the features of Christ, recognized a religion human and universal, was the first under whom a visible badge was put on the slave and a distinctive servile dress adopted; the slave markets were still in consecrated spots, the temple of Castor and the Via Sacra. The commonwealth had never boasted of so many great jurists; but as the science of law was perfected, the power of law declined, and Alexander Severus, the justest of emperors, was unable to protect Ulpian, the greatest of civilians, from military assassination in the palace itself, or to punish the perpetrators of this outrage on popular feeling as well as public right. - JAMES MARTINEAU.

At the close of the third century after Christ, the prospects of mankind were fearfully dreary. A system of etiquette, as pompously frivolous as that of the Escurial, had been established. A sovereign almost invisible; a crowd of dignitaries minutely distinguished by badges and titles; rhetoricians who said nothing but what had been said ten thousand times; schools in which nothing was taught but what had been known for ages, — such was the machinery provided for the government and instruction of the most enlightened part of the human race. That great community was then in danger of experiencing a calamity far more terrible than any of the quick, inflammatory, destroying maladies to which nations are liable, ‚—a tottering, drivelling, paralytic longevity, the immortality of the Struldbrugs, a Chinese civilization. — MACAULAY.

In the latter part of this century many pretenders to the imperial dignity arose, and the empire was quite divided among rival claimants. At Palmyra, in Syria, one of these, Odenatus, was proclaimed emperor, and succeeded in establishing a powerful state. He was followed by his wife, Zenobia, a remarkable woman, who bore the title of Queen of the East, but who was defeated, and the kingdom overthrown by the Emperor Aurelian.

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls.

Doomed Tadmor's walls, to deafening trumpets' sound.
Aurelian bids the desert princess yield,

But hark! her answer-clashing sword and shield!

.. But ceaseless war, and famine's tortures slow, Wear bravery out, and bring Palmyra low.

N. MICHELL.

PERSIA.

IN 226 the Persian power again rose under the dynasty of the Sassanidæ, in place of the Parthian dynasty, which had lasted since about 256 B. C.

The greatness of Persia under this dynasty is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the world. - FREEMAN. Western Asia gained, perhaps, something, but it did not gain much, from the substitution of the Persians for the Parthians as

the dominant power. But it is a change, on the whole, for the better. It is accompanied by a revival of art, by improvements in architecture; it inaugurates a religious revolution which has advantages. Above all, it saves the East from stagnation. It is one among many of those salutary shocks which, in the political as in the natural world, are needed from time to time to stimulate action and prevent torpor and apathy.— RAWLINSON.

ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL, - NEO-PLATONISTS.

THE fame of Alexandria as a seat of learning has been referred to under the third century before Christ. It continued till the beginning of the Christian era; but that celebrated philosophy called Neo-Platonism arose towards the end of the third century, flourished with some modifications until the fifth century, and then rapidly declined.

The term "Alexandrian School" is applied, in a loose sense, to the whole body of eminent men who, in all the departments of knowledge, conferred lustre on the capital of the Ptolemies; but, as a characteristic designation, it is more strictly confined to that particular section of its philosophers known as the Neo-Platonists. Encyclopædia Britannica.