ulty was of so practical a character as to keep them inactive for
the space of several hours. Meanwhile their passions were excited to the
boiling point by the very presence of the difficulty, as men go mad of
thirst when water is denied them. At length, after a long season of such
violent commotion, such restless pain, such curses, shrieks, and
blasphemies, such bootless gesticulations, such aimless contests with each
other, that they seemed to be already inmates of the prison beneath, they
set off in a blind way to make the circuit of the city as before they had
paraded round the Forum, still in the knight-errant line, looking out for
what might turn up where they were sure of nothing, and relieving the
intense irritation of their passions by locomotion, if nothing more
substantial was offered to them.

It was an awful day for the respectable inhabitants of the place; worse
than anything that even the most timid of them had anticipated, when they
had showed their jealousy of a popular movement against the proscribed
religion; for the stimulus of famine and pestilence was added to hatred of
Christianity, in that unreasoning multitude. The magistrates shut
themselves up in dismay; the small body of Roman soldiery reserved their
strength for the defence of themselves; and the poor wretches, not a few,
who had fallen from the faith, and offered sacrifice, hung out from their
doors sinful heathen symbols, to avert a storm against which apostasy was
no sufficient safeguard. In this conduct the Gnostics and other sectaries
imitated them, while the Tertullianists took a more manly part, from
principle or pride.

It would require the brazen voice which Homer speaks of, or the magic pen
of Sir Walter, to catalogue and to picture, as far as it is lawful to do
either, the figures and groups of that most miserable procession. As it
went forward it gained a variety and strength, which the circuit of the
Forum could not furnish. The more respectable religious establishments
shut their gates, and would have nothing to do with it. The priests of
Jupiter, the educational establishments of the Temple of Mercury, the
Temple of the Genius of Rome near the Capitol, the hierophants of Isis,
the Minerva, the Juno, the Esculapius, viewed the popular rising with
terror and disgust; but these were not the popular worships. The vast
homestead of Astarte, which in the number and vowed profligacy of its
inhabitants rivalled the vaults upon the For