pomegranate, and revelling in the jars of precious oil of Cyprus and Mendes in the store-rooms. 6. They come up to the walls of Sicca, and are flung against them into the ditch. Not a moment's hesitation or delay; they recover their footing, they climb up the wood or stucco, they surmount the parapet, or they have entered in at the windows, filling the apartments, and the most private and luxurious chambers, not one or two, like stragglers at forage, or rioters after a victory, but in order of battle, and with the array of an army. Choice plants or flowers about the impluvia and xysti, for ornament or refreshment-myrtles, oranges, pomegranates, the rose, and the carnation-have disappeared. 7. They dim the bright marbles of the walls and the gilding of the ceiling. They enter the triclinium in the midst of the banquet; they crawl over the viands, and spoil what they do not devour. Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret, mysterious instinct keeps them together, as If they had a king over them. They move along the floor in so strange an order that they seem to be a tessellated pavement themselves, and to be the artificial embellishment of the place; so true are their lines, and so perfect is the pattern they describe. 8. Onward they go, to the market, to the temple sacrifices, to bakers' stores, to the cook-shops, to the confectioners, to the druggists; nothing comes amiss to them; wherever man has aught to eat or drink there are they, reckless of death, strong of appetite, certain of conquest. They have passed on; the men of Sicca sadly congratulate themselves, and begin to look about them and to sum up their losses. Being the proprietors of the neighboring districts, and the purchasers of its produce, they lament over the devasta tion, not because the fair country is disfigured, but because income is becoming scanty, and prices are becoming high. 9. How is a population of many thousands to be fed? Where is the grain? where the melons, the figs, the dates, the gourds, the beans, the grapes, to sustain and solace the multitudes in their lanes, caverns, and garrets? This is another weighty consideration for the class well-to-do in the world The taxes, too, and contributions, the capitation tax, the percentage upon corn, the various articles of revenue due to Rome, how are they to be paid? How are the cattle to be provided for the sacrifices and the tables of the wealthy? One-half, at least, of the supply of Sicca is cut off. 10. No longer slaves are seen coming into the city from the country in troops, with their baskets on their shoulders, or beating forward the horse, or mule, or ox overladen with its burden, or driving in the dangerous cow or the unresisting sheep. The animation of the place is gone; a gloom hangs over the Forum, and if its frequenters are still merry there is something of sullenness and recklessness in their mirth. The gods have given the city up; something or other has angered them. Locusts, indeed, are no uncommon visitation, but at an earlier season. Perhaps some temple has been polluted, or some unholy rite practised, or some secret conspiracy bas spread. 11. Another, and a still worse, calamity. The invaders, as we have already hinted, could be more terrible still in their overthrow than in their ravages. The inhabitants of the country had attempted, where they could, to destroy them by fire and water. It would seem as if the malignant animals had resolved that the sufferers should have the benefit of this policy to the full, for they had not got more than twenty miles beyond Sicca when they suddenly sickened and died. When they thus had done all the mischief they could by their living, when they thus had made their foul maws the grave of every living thing, next they died themselves and made the desolated land their own grave. They took from it its hundred forms and varieties of beautiful life, and left it their own fetid and poisonous carcasses in payment. 12. It was a sudden catastrophe; they seemed making for the Mediterranear, as if, like other great conquerors, they had >ther worlds to subdue beyond it; but, whether they were over-gorged, or struck by some atmospheric change, or that their time was come and they paid the debt of nature, so it was that suddenly they fell, and their glory came to naught, and all was vanity to them as to others, and "their steuch rose up, and their corruption rose up, because they had done proudly." 13 The hideous swarms lay dead in the most steaming underwood, in the green swamps, in the sheltered valleys, in the ditches and furrows of the fields, amid the monuments of their own prowess, the ruined crops and the dishonored vineyards. A poisonous element, issuing from their remains, mingled with the atmosphere and corrupted it. The dismayed peasants found that a plague had begun; a new visitation, noţ confined to the territory which the enemy had made its own, but extending far and wide as the atmosphere extends in all directions. Their daily toil, no longer claimed by the fruits of the earth, which have ceased to exist, is now devoted to the object of ridding themselves of the deadly legacy which they have received in their stead. 14. In vain; it is their last toil; they are digging pits, they are raising piles, for their own corpses, as well as for the bodies of their enemies. Invader and victim lie in the same grave, burn in the same heap; they sicken while they work, and the pestilence spreads. A new invasion is menacing Sicca, in the shape of companies of peasants and slaves, with their employers and overseers, nay, the farmers themselves and proprietors, the panic having broken the bonds of discipline, rushing from famine and infection as to a place of safety. The inhabitants of the city are as frightened as they, and more energetic. They determine to keep them at a distance; the gates are closed; a strict cordon is drawn; however, by the continual pressure, numbers contrive to make an entrance, as water into a vessel, or light through the closed shutters, and any how the air can not be put in quarantine, so the pestilence has the better of it, and at last appears in the alleys and in the cellars of Sicca. 107. AN HOUR AT THE OLD PLAY-GROUND. ANON. 1. I SAT an hour to-day, John, Beside the old brook stream; Where we were school-boys in old times, The brook is choked with falling leaves, I scarce believe that you would know 2. The school-house is no more, John; The wild-rose by the window side Has been plongh'd up by stranger hands, 8 The chestnut-tree is dead, John, Beneath the grass-grown bank, John, 5. I took the old blind road, John. And seems so lone and still; 6. I sat me on the fence, John, The same half pannel in the path And thought how o'er the bars of life The faces that are gone. 108. CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN ROME. DR. NELIGAN. EV. WILLIAM H. NELIGAN, LL. D., was born in Clonmel, County Tip perary, Ireland. Formerly a minister of the Church of England-became a convert in 1858; studied in Rome, and was ordained priest in New York by Archbishop Hughes in 1857. His work on "Rome, its churches, &c.," gives a striking and correct picture of the Eternal City. He has also writ ten an edifying work entitled "Saintly Characters," with others of less note. 1. ROME is a city of contrasts. Like Rebecca, she bears within her two worlds opposed to each other. It is agreeable to pass from one to the other. Having spent the morning in Christian Rome, we would now take a glimpse at ancient Rome. This makes the chief happiness of the pigrim. It seems to multiply his existence. We sat down on the eastern part of the Palatine Hill, as the sun was casting his declining rays on the scene before us. 2. This seems to me to be a place which Jeremias would select, to meditate on the ruins of the city. Seated upon the |