we have already
described.

The marking peculiarity in the construction of the Pagan religion may
be most aptly compared to the marking peculiarity in the construction
of the pagan temples. Both were designed to attract the general eye by
the outward effect only, which was in both the false delusive
reflection of the inward substance.

In the temple, the people, as they worshipped beneath the long
colonnades, or beheld the lofty porticoes from the street, were left to
imagine the corresponding majesty and symmetry of the interior of the
structure, and were not admitted to discover how grievously it
disappointed the brilliant expectations which the exterior was so well
calculated to inspire; how little the dark, narrow halls of the idols,
the secret vaults and gloomy recesses within, fulfilled the promise of
the long flights of steps, the broad extent of pavement, the massive
sun-brightened pillars without. So in the religion, the votary was
allured by the splendour of processions; by the pomp of auguries; by
the poetry of the superstition which peopled his native woods with the
sportive Dryads, and the fountains from which he drank with their
guardian Naiads; which gave to mountain and lake, to sun and moon and
stars, to all things around and above him, their fantastic allegory, or
their gracious legend of beauty and love: but beyond this, his first
acquaintance with his worship was not permitted to extend, here his
initiation concluded. He was kept in ignorance of the dark and
dangerous depths which lurked beneath this smooth and attractive
surface; he was left to imagine that what was displayed was but the
prelude to the future discovery of what was hidden of beauty in the
rites of Paganism; he was not admitted to behold the wretched
impostures, the loathsome orgies, the hideous incantations, the bloody
human sacrifices perpetrated in secret, which made the foul, real
substance of the fair exterior form. His first sight of the temple was
not less successful in deceiving his eye than his first impression of
the religion in deluding his mind.

With these hidden and guilty mysteries of the Pagan worship, the vault
before which Ulpius now stood with his captives was intimately
connected.

The human sacrifices offered among the Romans were of two kinds; those
publicly and those privately performed. The first were of annual
recurrence in the early years of the Republic; were prohibited at a
later date; were rev