t inheritor of the
important office once held by the powerful and active Macrinus.
Beholding himself thus secure of the distinction for which he had
laboured, the aspiring priest found leisure, at length, to look forth
upon the affairs of the passing day. From every side desolation
darkened the prospect that he beheld. Already, throughout many
provinces of the Empire, the temples of the gods had been overthrown by
the destructive zeal of the triumphant Christians. Already hosts of
the terrified people, fearing that the fate of their idols might
ultimately be their own, finding themselves deserted by their disbanded
priests, and surrounded by the implacable enemies of the ancient faith,
had renounced their worship for the sake of saving their lives and
securing their property. On the wide field of Pagan ruin there now
rose but one structure entirely unimpaired. The Temple of Serapis
still reared its head--unshaken, unbending, unpolluted. Here the
sacrifice still prospered and the people still bowed in worship. Before
this monument of the religious glories of ages, even the rising power
of Christian supremacy quailed in dismay. Though the ranks of its once
multitudinous congregations were now perceptibly thinned, though the
new churches swarmed with converts, though the edicts from Rome
denounced it as a blot on the face of the earth, its gloomy and
solitary grandeur was still preserved. No unhallowed foot trod its
secret recesses; no destroying hand was raised as yet against its
ancient and glorious walls.

Indignation, but not despondency, filled the heart of Ulpius as he
surveyed the situation of the Pagan world. A determination nourished
as his had been by the reflections of years, and matured by incessant
industry of deliberation, is above all those shocks which affect a
hasty decision or destroy a wavering intention. Impervious to failure,
disasters urge it into action, but never depress it to repose. Its
existence is the air that preserves the vitality of the mind--the
spring that moves the action of the thoughts. Never for a moment did
Ulpius waver in his devotion to his great design, or despair of its
ultimate execution and success. Though every succeeding day brought
the news of fresh misfortunes for the Pagans and fresh triumphs for the
Christians, still, with a few of his more zealous comrades, he
persisted in expecting the advent of another Julian, and a day of
restoration for the dismantled shr