rtain Tent-maker of song-rich memory. In Armenia an Arsacid--
that is, Parthian--house has survived and holds sovereignty: and
Armenia is a sort of weak Belgium between Persia and Rome;
inclining to the latter, of course, because ruled by Arsacids,
who are the natural dynastic enemies of the Sassanids of Persia.
Rome has turned Christian; so, to cement his alliance with Rome
and insure Roman aid against powerful Persia, the Armenian king
has had himself coverted likewise, and his people follow suit
with great piety;--which sends Shah Sapor, King of the kings of
Iran and Turan, Brother of the Sun and Moon, to it with a
missionary as well as a dynastic zeal; and a war that is to be
of nearly thirty years' duration has been in process along the
frontier since 336. Persia, better called a kingdom, perhaps,
than an empire, commands about forty millions of subjects; as
against imperial Rome's--who can say? The population there must
have gone down by many millions since the days of the Antonines,
with all the civil wars, plagues, pestilences, and famines that
have harrowed the years between.

The sons of Constantine have succeeded to the throne of their
father; and the portions of Constantine II, the eldest of the
three, and Constans, the youngest, have at last fallen into
the hands, or the web, of Constantius,--a sort of cross between
a spider, an octopus, and an elderly maiden aunt,--and in
general about as unpleasant a creature as ever sat on a throne.
Constantine the Great, indeed, had willed the succession into the
hands of a much larger number of his relatives; but this
Constantius, his father once decently buried, had taken time by
the forelock, and insured things to his two brothers and himself
by killing out two of his uncles and seven of their sons; so
that now, Constantine II and Constans being dead, no male scions
of the house of Constantius Chlorus remain as possible rivals to
him, except two boys who had been at the time of the massacre,
the one too young, and the other too sickly, to count. We shall
come to them by and by.

Christianity is well established; though Constantius, followed
his father's wise example, is deferring his baptism until the
last possible moment: he partly knows the weakness of his
nature, and desires to have license for a little pleasant sinning
until the end, with the certainty of a glorious resurrection to
follow in despite of it.--Dismiss your kindly apprehensions; God
was go