virtuous Roman in the mausoleum of the Claudii, which distinguished family enjoyed the privilege of burial within the walls of the city.

By his last will Lucius Claudius provided for the future emancipation of Adonijah, which was to take place at the conclusion of the Jewish war. He was in the interim to be exonerated from all servile labour, as he had been during his master's life. Nor when restored to freedom was he to depart without receiving a sum adequate to his future wants. The testator gave his large estates to his brother and sister, assigning to the former the larger portion, as the head of his house. Nor did he forget the Roman people, nor his own slaves. The name of the emperor did not appear in the instrument, but the justice and generosity of the deceased Roman was displayed even in his last testament.

THE return of the emperor did not allay the discontent of the public. His frivolous pursuits, his ridiculous triumphal entry, disgusted all; and, far from curbing by his own authority the rapacity of his favourites, his presence gave the signal for renewing those crimes which had been perpetrated under his name during his absence. Cruelty seemed born of luxury; whatever could enervate the soul or corrupt the heart being united with the most unfeeling barbarity. Avarice and prodigality, forgetting their ancient opposition, appeared to sway the conduct of Nero and his satellites, whose rapacious gains were dissipated in voluptuous feasts and sumptuous shows. Till the death of his revered patron, Adonijah had never been

present at any public spectacle or private entertainment; for Lucius, plain and simple in his manners, charged all the degeneracy of Rome upon the innovations of luxury but Julius was fond of grandeur, and chose to be attended in public by the Hebrew, whose commanding stature and majestic features greatly added to the splendour of his retinue. In these scenes of riot and intemperance, Adonijah again beheld the master of the world. The laurelled brow, the sceptered hand, the smile, nay, even his wild participation in the unhallowed revelries in which he delighted, could not disguise Nero Cæsar from the eye of the slave who had witnessed his agonies of remorse at Corinth. To him the smile appeared mockery, and the mirth unreal; for in its very tones he seemed to hear the frantic cry with which he had fled from the spectral train his conscience had called up. He marked the guilty glare that shrank affrighted from every shadowy nook, as if he feared to see his mother rise armed with the scorpion whip with which his agonized remorse had armed her hand; and in the gloomy, joyless eye, the lurking fear that saw the dagger in every hand, the poison lurk

ing in every bowl, he recognised the imperial wretch who envied even laborious slavery its slumbers.

Within the circles of the great and gay, Adonijah sometimes saw the vestal priestesses, whose order Nero had invested with new privileges. Among them the ardent lover marked the object of his secret passion, and perceived by her pale cheek and languid eye how heavily her brother's death pressed upon her heart. According to the strict rules of her profession, she wore no mourning, nor was allowed the seclusion to which other Roman ladies were confined for many months after such bereavement. Her abstracted manner and downcast look were out of keeping with the scenes of festivity in which she mingled. Sometimes indeed a light word or bold look from those around her flushed her fair face with the crimson glow of wounded modesty, and her eyes sparkled till tears of shame dimmed them, and again she looked like a sculptured personification of purity and sorrow. The deep sympathy of Adonijah, although unexpressed by words or manner, was conveyed by looks whose language needed no

other eloquence. She felt that one being among the heartless throng regarded her with interest, with compassion, and with love. From the undisguised admiration of Nymphidius she shrank back with unrestrained aversion, which only served to inflame his passion. He had hoped to corrupt her mind by the tainted atmosphere in which his influence with the emperor compelled her to move, but Lucia remained unchanged in manner, as pure as within the secluded temple of her goddess, and he prized her virtue beyond her beauty.

Much as she abhorred the mandates that compelled her attendance on those public occasions, even the service of the temple had become distasteful to the young priestess. Strange doubts had arisen in her mind, and those words of Adonijah often recurred to her remembrance, which affirmed her worshipped goddess to be a wild chimera, an empty name. Then came those yearnings after immortality, those conjectures respecting a future state, which those who lose their dearest kindred ties feel when bereaved of them, if they never felt them before. Nature, with fond fidelity clinging to the ashes of the dead, forbade her