life
of Ulpius. At the expiration of that period the death of Julian
darkened the brilliant prospects of the Pagan world. Scarcely had the
priests of Serapis recovered the first shock of astonishment and grief
consequent upon the fatal news of the vacancy in the imperial throne,
when the edict of toleration issued by Jovian, the new Emperor, reached
the city of Alexandria, and was elevated on the walls of the temple.

The first sight of this proclamation (permitting freedom of worship to
the Christians) aroused in the highly wrought disposition of Ulpius the
most violent emotions of anger and contempt. The enthusiasm of his
character and age, guided invariably in the one direction of his
worship, took the character of the wildest fanaticism when he
discovered the Emperor's careless infringement of the supremacy of the
temple. He volunteered in the first moments of his fury to tear down
the edict from the walls, to lead an attack on the meetings of the
triumphant Christians, or to travel to the imperial abode and exhort
Jovian to withdraw his act of perilous leniency ere it was too late.
With difficulty did his more cautious confederates restrain him from
the execution of his impetuous designs. For two days he withdrew
himself from his companions, and brooded in solitude over the injury
offered to his beloved superstition, and the prospective augmentation
of the influence of the Christian sect.

But the despair of the young enthusiast was destined to be further
augmented by a private calamity, at once mysterious in its cause and
overwhelming in its effect. Two days after the publication of the
edict the high priest Macrinus, in the prime of vigour and manhood,
suddenly died.

To narrate the confusion and horror within and without the temple on
the discovery of this fatal even; to describe the execrations and
tumults of the priests and the populace, who at once suspected the
favoured and ambitious Christians of causing, by poison, the death of
their spiritual ruler, might be interesting as a history of the manners
of the times, but is immaterial to the object of this chapter. We
prefer rather to trace the effect on the mind of Ulpius of his personal
and private bereavement; of this loss--irretrievable to him--of the
master whom he loved and the guardian whom it was his privilege to
revere.

An illness of some months, during the latter part of which his
attendants trembled for his life and reason, sufficientl