e world, heaven,
as prefigured in the Christian idea, would not be a heaven to
the majority; on the other hand, neither would all suffer equally
in the so-called Tophet. Cultivation has its balances. As the mind
is made intelligent, the capacity of the soul for pure enjoyment
is proportionally increased. Well, therefore, if it be saved! If
lost, however, alas that it ever had cultivation! its capacity for
enjoyment in the one case is the measure of its capacity to suffer
in the other. Wherefore repentance must be something more than mere
remorse for sins; it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.

We repeat, to form an adequate idea of the suffering endured by
the mother of Ben-Hur, the reader must think of her spirit and its
sensibilities as much as, if not more than, of the conditions of
the immurement; the question being, not what the conditions were,
but how she was affected by them. And now we may be permitted to
say it was in anticipation of this thought that the scene in the
summer-house on the roof of the family palace was given so fully
in the beginning of the Second Book of our story. So, too, to be
helpful when the inquiry should come up, we ventured the elaborate
description of the palace of the Hurs.

In other words, let the serene, happy, luxurious life in the
princely house be recalled and contrasted with this existence
in the lower dungeon of the Tower of Antonia; then if the reader,
in his effort to realize the misery of the woman, persists in mere
reference to conditions physical, he cannot go amiss; as he is a
lover of his kind, tender of heart, he will be melted with much
sympathy. But will he go further; will he more than sympathize
with her; will he share her agony of mind and spirit; will he at
least try to measure it--let him recall her as she discoursed to
her son of God and nations and heroes; one moment a philosopher,
the next a teacher, and all the time a mother.

Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you
hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

With quickened remembrance of these unfortunates--remembrance
of them as they were--let us go down and see them as they are.

The cell VI. was in form as Gesius drew it on his map. Of its
dimensions but little idea can be had; enough that it was
a roomy, roughened interior, with ledged and broken walls
and floor.

In the beginning, the site of the Macedonian Castle was separated
from the site of the Temple