h a roll from his cabinet, and read as
follows:--

"Again the supreme gods have granted victory to our legions. Favoured
by the darkness and their boats, the barbarians attacked us from three
separate points. Led on by Fingal and his warriors, whom beforetime we
erroneously reported to be slain, they crossed over to the station
where we had pitched our tents. But the Roman eagle was yet watchful.
Though retreating behind our last defences, we left not the field
until a thousand, the choicest of our foes, bit the dust. Morning
showed us the red-haired chief and his bards, but they were departing,
and their spears were glittering on the mountains."

"Enough!" said the emperor. "Caracalla tarries yet with the camp. Our
person is not menaced by his hand. Prithee, send a brasier hither. The
night is far spent, and slumber will not again visit these eyelids."

A bronze tripod was brought supported by sphinxes, the worship of Isis
being a fashionable idolatry at that period. Charred wood was then
placed in a round dish pierced with holes, and perfumes thrown in to
correct the smell. The emperor commanded that he should be left alone.
Covering his shoulders with a richly-embroidered mantle, he took from
behind his pillow a Greek treatise on the occult sciences, to the
study of which he was passionately addicted.

It is said of him by historians that he was guided by his skill in
judicial astrology to the choice of the reigning empress, having lost
his first wife when governor of the Lyonnese Gaul. Finding that a lady
of Emesa in Syria, one Julia Domna, had what was termed "a royal
nativity," he solicited and obtained her hand, thus making the
prophecy the means of its accomplishment.

A woman of great beauty and strong natural acquirements, she was at
the same time the patron of all that was noble and distinguished in
the philosophy and literature of the age. It was even said that
secretly she was a favourer of the Christians. Be this as it may, we
do not find she ever became a professor of the faith.

Sleep, that capricious guest which comes unbidden but not invited, was
just stealing over the monarch's eyelids when the roll fell from his
grasp. The unexpected movement startled him. His eye fell on the
bright crystal opposite. He thought a glimmer was moving in the glass.
He remembered the words of the sage, and his eye was riveted on the
mystic goblet. A sudden flash was reflected from it. He started
forward, when a na