anded and incurred; to strike the very
remembrance of the Cross out of the memory of man; and to reinstate
Paganism on her throne of sacrifices, and under her roof of gold, more
powerful from her past persecutions; more universal in her sudden
restoration, than in all the glories of her ancient rule!

Such thoughts as these passed through the Pagan's toiling mind as,
unobservant of all outward events, he paced through the streets of the
beleaguered city. Already he beheld the array of the Goths preparing
the way, as the unconscious pioneers of the returning gods, for the
march of that mighty revolution which he was determined to lead. The
warmth of his past eloquence, the glow of his old courage, thrilled
through his heart, as he figured to himself the prospect that would
soon stretch before him--a city laid waste, a people terrified, a
government distracted, a religion destroyed. Then, arising amid this
darkness and ruin; amid this solitude, desolation, and decay, it would
be his glorious privilege to summon an unfaithful people to return to
the mistress of their ancient love; to rise from prostration beneath a
dismantled Church; and to seek prosperity in temples repeopled and at
shrines restored!

All remembrance of late events now entirely vanished from his mind.
Numerian, Vetranio, Antonina, they were all forgotten in this memorable
advent of the Goths! His slavery in the mines, his last visit to
Alexandria, his earlier wanderings--even these, so present to his
memory until the morning of the siege, were swept from its very surface
now. Age, solitude, infirmity--hitherto the mournful sensations which
were proofs to him that he still continued to exist--suddenly vanished
from his perceptions, as things that were not; and now at length he
forgot that he was an outcast, and remembered triumphantly that he was
still a priest. He felt animated by the same hopes, elevated by the
same aspirations, as in those early days when he had harangued the
wavering Pagans in the Temple, and first plotted the overthrow of the
Christian Church.

It was a terrible and warning proof of the omnipotent influence that a
single idea may exercise over a whole life, to see that old man
wandering among the crowds around him, still enslaved, after years of
suffering and solitude, degradation, and crime, by the same ruling
ambition, which had crushed the promise of his early youth! It was an
awful testimony to the eternal and mysterious