in Christ, which no wealth could purchase, no chains of slavery fetter,
nor even death itself destroy. In the Christian Church the distinctions
of worldly rank were abolished.[27] The highest spiritual privileges
were opened to the lowliest slave. In the ecclesiastical hierarchy were
no rights of birth, and no privileges of blood. In the inscriptions of
the Catacombs, no badges of servitude, no titles of honour appear. The
wealthy noble, the lord of many acres, recognized in his lowly servant a
fellow heir of glory. They bowed together at the same table of the Lord,
saluted each other with the mutual kiss of charity, and side by side in
their narrow graves, at length returned to indistinguishable dust. The
story of Onesimus was often repeated, and the patrician master received
his returning slave, "not now as a servant, but above a servant--a
brother beloved." Nay, he may even have bowed to him as his
ecclesiastical superior, and received from his plebeian hands the
emblems of their common Lord.

We return from this digression to the slave-market of Milan. Very few of
Ezra's stock were black--not more than half a dozen, from Nubia and
Libya. Most of them were as white as himself, or whiter still. There
were Dalmatians, Illyrians, Iberians, Gauls, Greeks, Syrians, and many
other nationalities. Ezra was engaged in busy converse, in a broken
mixture of Latin and Greek, with the wealthy patrician, Vitellius, the
lord of wide corn lands on the fertile banks of the Po.

"Field hands your Excellency wants? I have some splendid ones," he said,
eagerly. "Here, you fellows, step out there and show your muscles;" and
he struck with his whip-lash two brawny white-skinned, blue-eyed,
yellow-haired British slaves.

"Sullen dogs these British often are," he said, "but they are as good as
gold. They never run away like the Germans, nor steal like the Greeks,
nor kill themselves like the Gauls."[28]

"Glad of that," said Vitellius. "I have had a perfect epidemic of
suicide among my slaves. I had to kill several of them to keep them from
killing themselves"--a sad but frequent comment on the utter
wretchedness of their condition, from which death itself was the only
refuge.

"Does your Excellency want anything of a higher grade?" asked Ezra.
"Some skilled workmen to finish your elegant villa, for instance. I have
a splendid Greek sculptor, almost another Phidias, and another a second
Zeuxis with the brush. Then if you want a stewar