Christians. Language the most
ferocious met my ear. The moderation and tardiness of the Emperor--of
him who had in every thing else been noted for the rapidity of his
movements--were frequent subjects of complaint.

'It is most strange,' they said, 'that Aurelian should hesitate in this
matter, in truth as if he were afraid to move. Were it not for Fronto,
it is thought that nothing would be done after all. But this we may feel
sure of, that if the Emperor once fairly begins the work of
extermination, he is not the man to stop half way. And there is not a
friend of the ancient institutions of religion, but who says that their
very existence depends upon--not the partial obstruction of this
sect--but upon its actual and total extermination. Who does not know
that measures of opposition and resistance, which go but part way and
then stop, through a certain unwillingness as it were to proceed to
extremes, do but increase the evil they aim to suppress. Weeds that are
but mown, come up afterwards only the more vigorously. Their very roots
must be torn up and then burned.' Such language was heard on all sides,
uttered with utmost violence--of voice and gesture.

I paused, among other curious and busy idlers, at the door of a smith's
shop, which, as I passed slowly by, presented a striking view of a vast
and almost boundless interior, blazing with innumerable fires, where
laborers half naked--and seeming as if fire themselves, from the
reflection from their steaming bodies of the red glare of the
furnaces--stood in groups, some drawing forth the bars of heated metal
and holding them, while others wielding their cyclopean hammers made the
anvils and the vast interior ring with the blows they gave. All around
the outside of the shop and in separate places within stood the
implements and machines of various kinds which were either made, or were
in the process of being put together. Those whom I joined were just
within the principal entrance looking upon a fabric of iron consisting
of a complicated array of wheels and pulleys, to which the workmen were
just in the act of adding the last pieces. The master of the place now
approaching and standing with us, while he gave diverse orders to the
men, I said to him,

'What new device may this be? The times labor with new contrivances by
which to assist the laborer in his art, and cause iron to do what the
arm has been accustomed to perform. But after observing this with care I
can m