and if for the words, "got together those that were most faithful to him," we read, "got together all those that were ready to swear away their own souls, if by so doing they could oblige their mistress Salome, and compass the death of Mariamne," we may chance to obtain the only correct rendering of the sentence.

Before such judges, and against such witnesses, what would innocence avail? Josephus does not give us the particulars of the trial; but from the queen's conduct on her way to execution, we may suppose her demeanour when in presence of her judges. A dignified composure, a calm denial of the charge, were the only words which probably passed those lips which falsehood had never tarnished. She was innocent - innocent alike of the charge accused, and the charge implied; for no doubt, though adultery was not made the reason of the trial for the reasons stated above, they sought to cover her with the implication of dishonour; and innocence, in such awful hours, in truth is strength. It will not always support us through lingering years of misery, of being shunned by our fellows, because accused of deeds we have no power to prove are false; but God Himself has mercy then, and when the frame dwindles from a breaking heart, takes us to His Heaven, to enjoy an eternity of blessedness for a period of woe.

On the threshold of that eternity, Mariamne stood; and no thought of the opinion of man could disturb the tranquillity with which innocence strengthened her to look on death. She must long have expected this. From the hour of her brother's murder, disclosing, as it did, the true character of Herod, and his fixed resolve to exterminate the Asmonæan line, she must have anti

cipated for herself a similar fate. She had faced it, as impending for five years; and the noble spirit which had enabled her, during that interval, so calmly to regard it, as never to waver in the line of strict integrity, or even by word or sign to lower the dignity of her character and race, would not forsake her at its termination.

The mockery of justice enacted by that iniquitous trial, Josephus himself proves. Creatures of Herod, his will was theirs, and their sentence his. "Accordingly when the court was at length satisfied that he was so resolved, they passed the sentence of death upon her." There is not a syllable as to their own conviction, or their own judgment, nor the wherefore of their sentence, except the resolution of the king-not a word as to the guilt of the prisoner-still Herod shrunk in his selfish passion from losing her entirely. He remanded the sentence of death for one of perpetual imprisonment. But dreading that, if permitted to live even now, every scheme for her destruction would fall to the ground, Salome and her party never rested, till by dint of alarming the ambition of the king, they obtained the order for her execution. Here, again, we penetrate the passion which divided Herod's heart with the opposing element of love. It was not by bringing forward the chances of her again dishonouring him, or her becoming the property of another, with which Salome now endeavoured to work upon her brother, but by artfully suggesting, that were she permitted to live, there was always danger of the multitudes revolting, releasing her from prison, and making her sovereign in his stead: for such is evidently the meaning of Josephus's words; and not, as a mere

hasty reading might suppose, that the people were so enraged against her, that they would be tumultuous if she were suffered to live. This is contrary to both history and reason. We know that Herod was not so much beloved, that the multitudes should be enraged against an attempted assassin, by the simple fact that conspiracies were continually forming against him--men forming in bodies by some means to compass his death. His very race, as well as his public measures and private character, were odious; whereas Mariamne was almost idolised, alike for herself, and as being the last representative of a race so long beloved. A very little reflection on these facts will, I think, be convincing, that the above analysis of Salome's arguments is founded on

reason.

The order for the execution of the queen was at length issued, and Mariamne prepared for it, with the same calm intrepidity as she had faced it years before. Yet who can refuse sympathy in this undeserved fate for one so innocent, so lovely, and still so young, that she could barely have exceeded five and twenty years? Nor was she entirely without ties, binding her with silvery links to earth, fraught with anguish and trial as it was. All whom she had loved with a girl's and woman's fondness, had either fallen in death, or by their dark deeds annihilated every capability of affection; but others had arisen, to concentrate on them a heart clinging in its desolation to them, even yet more closely, more devotedly than ordinary love. How might she leave her infant children? Who on earth was to care for them? Would not the same persevering hatred poison their young existence, as it had her own? To

whom did she leave them, Herod, Salome, Cypros? Would they supply her place? And her own mother? Alas! she must have already learned that she, too, was not one on whom her heart could rest, or to whom she could entrust treasures far more precious than herself; and in the brief interval stretching between her and death, she was to feel this yet more agonisingly-the last drop of bitterness flung into her cup was thrown by a mother's hand! It was not then the mere separation by her own violent death from her beloved ones. Thoughts of far deeper anguish must have occupied some of her parting moments. Nor is this, as we shall, no doubt, be accused, taking too great licence, and allowing imagination to usurp the unvarnished tale of history. We never refuse the meed of sympathy to Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, Mary Queen of Scots, and other sufferers of more modern times; yet, compared with the unsullied purity of Mariamne, the first of these was unredeemably guilty, and the last burdened by many historians with a charge (which though we ourselves believe it a false and most unproved one, still attaches itself to her name) of a husband's murder. In point of innocence, the second only can be named with her; and sad as was her fate, it was little removed from joy, compared to the trials and death of Mariamne. If we give these three our sympathyif we teach the young heart to feel for them-if the tale of Anne's parting from her own Elizabeth, and remorse for her neglect of Mary excite our sympathy -why shall we hurry over the memoirs of our own, and refuse them the meed of admiration, love, and pity, which, if we reflect, even their brief unsatisfactory

records in Jewish history must excite? Let any wife and mother place herself in idea, in the position of the Asmonæan princess; or if this be too fanciful for her imagination, let her suppose her nearest and dearest relatives injured alike openly and secretly by the man she has married, and whom she could have loved—herself insulted, doubted-treated at one time with furious love, at others imprisoned, and in danger of her life from the same being-and then accused, condemned, without hope of justice or relief-let her ponder on this; and if she be a mother, say where her last thoughts would rest, and then accuse us, if she can, of so infusing history with imagination, as to render it impossible to divide the one from the other. Is human nature, human feeling different now to what it was in former ages? Shall we deprive the characters of history of all power of emotion, only because they existed under a different modification of social customs? If so, and we are not to exercise either reflection, analysation or intellect, history must remain the bare recital of events and dates, of which so many justly complain, and from which no lesson, no moral can be deduced.