ot
accept his evidence for one part and reject the other. We often receive
small evidence as a proof of a thing we believe to be within the limits
of probability or possibility, and we reject exactly the same evidence,
when the thing to which it refers appears very improbable or impossible.
But this is a false method of inquiry, though it is followed by some
modern writers, who select what they like from a story and reject the
rest of the evidence; or if they do not reject it, they dishonestly
suppress it. A man can only act consistently by accepting all this
letter or rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either. But he
who rejects it may still admit that such a letter may be founded on real
facts; and he would make this admission as the most probable way of
accounting for the existence of the letter; but if, as he would suppose,
the writer has stated some things falsely, he cannot tell what part of
his story is worthy of credit.

The war on the northern frontier appears to have been uninterrupted
during the visit of Antoninus to the East, and on his return the emperor
again left Rome to oppose the barbarians. The Germanic people were
defeated in a great battle A.D. 179. During this campaign the emperor
was seized with some contagious malady, of which he died in the camp at
Sirmium (Mitrovitz), on the Save, in Lower Pannonia, but at Vindebona
(Vienna), according to other authorities, on the 17th of March, A.D.
180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. His son Commodus was with him.
The body, or the ashes probably, of the emperor were carried to Rome,
and he received the honor of deification. Those who could afford it had
his statue or bust; and when Capitolinus wrote, many people still had
statues of Antoninus among the Dei Penates or household deities. He was
in a manner made a saint. Commodus erected to the memory of his father
the Antonine column which is now in the Piazza Colonna at Rome. The
_bassi rilievi_ which are placed in a spiral line round the shaft
commemorate the victories of Antoninus over the Marcomanni and the
Quadi, and the miraculous shower of rain which refreshed the Roman
soldiers and discomfited their enemies. The statue of Antoninus was
placed on the capital of the column, but it was removed at some time
unknown, and a bronze statue of St. Paul was put in the place by Pope
Sixtus the fifth.

The historical evidence for the times of Antoninus is very defective,
and some of that which rema