them Omnipotence once, has left them but stone now. The
'Star in the East' has already dimmed the fearful halo which the
devotion of bloodshed once wreathed round their forms. Forsaken and
alone, they stand but as the gloomy monuments of the greatest delusion
ever organised by the ingenuity of man.

We have now, so to express it, exhibited the frame surrounding the
moving picture, which we shall next attempt to present to the reader by
mixing with the multitude before the palace gates.

This assembly resolved itself into three divisions: that collected
before the palace steps, that loitering about the public baths, and
that reposing in the shade of the groves. The first was of the most
consequence in numbers, and of the greatest variety in appearance.
Composed of rogues of the worst order from every quarter of the world,
it might be said to present, in its general aspect of numerical
importance, the very sublime of degradation. Confident in their rude
union of common avidity, these worthy citizens vented their insolence
on all objects, and in every direction, with a careless impartiality
which would have shamed the most victorious efforts of modern mobs.
The hubbub of voices was perfectly fearful. The coarse execrations of
drunken Gauls, the licentious witticisms of effeminate Greeks, the
noisy satisfaction of native Romans, the clamorous indignation of
irritable Jews--all sounded together in one incessant chorus of
discordant noises. Nor were the senses of sight and smell more
agreeably assailed than the faculty of hearing, by this anomalous
congregation. Immodest youth and irreverent age; woman savage, man
cowardly; the swarthy Ethiopian beslabbered with stinking oil; the
stolid Briton begrimed with dirt--these, and a hundred other varying
combinations, to be imagined rather than expressed, met the attention
in every direction. To describe the odours exhaled by the heat from
this seething mixture of many pollutions, would be to force the reader
to close the book; we prefer to return to the distribution which was
the cause of this degrading tumult, and which consisted of small
baskets of roasted meat packed with common fruits and vegetables, and
handed, or rather flung down, to the mob by the servants of the
nobleman who gave the feast. The people revelled in the abundance thus
presented to them. They threw themselves upon it like wild beasts; they
devoured it like hogs, or bore it off like plunderers; while,