de Chrysostomus an excellent wife, a little over-prudish, some
thought. When, nearly two centuries afterwards, the Courts of Love came to
be established in Provence, the question at issue between her and Euprepia
was referred to those tribunals, which, finding the decision difficult,
adjourned it for seven hundred years. That period having now expired, it is
submitted to the British public.

THE WISDOM OF THE INDIANS

Everybody knows that in the reign of the Emperor Elagabalus Rome was
visited by an embassy from India; whose members, on their way from the
East, had held that memorable interview with the illustrious (though
heretical) Christian philosopher Bardesanes which enabled him to formulate
his doctrine of Fate, borrowed from the Indian theory of Karma, and
therefore, until lately, grievously misunderstood by his commentators.

It may not, however, be equally notorious that the ambassadors returned by
sea as far as Berytus, and upon landing there were hospitably entertained
by the sage Euphronius, the head of the philosophical faculty of that
University.

Euphronius naturally inquired what circumstance in Rome had appeared to his
visitors most worthy of remark.

"The extreme evil of the Emperor's Karma," said they.

Euphronius requested further explanation.

"Karma," explained their interpreter, "is that congeries of circumstances
which has necessitated the birth of each individual, and of whose good or
evil he is the incarnation. Every act must needs be attended by
consequences, and as these are usually of too far-reaching a character to
be exhausted in the life of the doer of the action, they cannot but
engender another person by whom they are to be borne. This truth is
popularly expressed by the doctrine of transmigration, according to which
individuals, as the character of their deeds may determine, are re-born as
pigs or peacocks, beggars or princes. But this is a loose and unscientific
way of speaking, for in fact it is not the individual that is re-born, but
the character; which, even as the silkworm clothes itself with silk and the
caddis-worm with mud and small shingle, creates for itself a new
personality, congruous with its own nature. We are therefore led to reflect
what a prodigious multitude of sins some one must have committed ere the
Roman world could be afflicted with such an Emperor as Elagabalus."

"What have ye found so exceedingly reprehensible in the Emperor's conduct?"
deman