n adorned with brighter virtues.
But my design is not to write her eulogy, or to recite the wonderful
story of her life. That task requires a stronger and a more impartial
hand than mine. The life of Zenobia by Nicomachus, would be the portrait
of a mother and a divinity, drawn by the pen of a child and a
worshipper.

My object is a humbler, but perhaps also a more useful one. It is to
collect and arrange, in their proper order, such of the letters of the
most noble LUCIUS MANLIUS PISO, as shall throw most light upon his
character and times, supplying all defects of incident, and filling up
all chasms that may occur, out of the knowledge which more exactly than
any one else, I have been able to gather concerning all that relates to
the distinguished family of the Pisos, after its connection with the
more distinguished one still, of the Queen of Palmyra.

It is in this manner that I propose to amuse the few remaining days of a
green old age, not without hope both to amuse and benefit others also.
This is a labor, as those will discover who read, not unsuitable to one
who stands trembling on the verge of life, and whom a single rude blast
may in a moment consign to the embraces of the universal mother. I will
not deny that my chief satisfaction springs from the fact, that in
collecting these letters, and binding them together by a connecting
narrative, I am engaged in the honorable task of tracing out some of the
steps by which the new religion has risen to its present height of
power. For whether true or false, neither friend nor foe, neither
philosopher nor fool, can refuse to admit the regenerating and genial
influences of its so wide reception upon the Roman character and
manners. If not the gift of the gods, it is every way worthy a divine
origin; and I cannot but feel myself to be worthily occupied in
recording the deeds, the virtues, and the sufferings, of those who put
their faith in it, and, in times of danger and oppression, stood forth
to defend it. Age is slow of belief. The thoughts then cling with a
violent pertinacity to the fictions of its youth, once held to be the
most sacred realities. But for this I should, I believe, myself long ago
have been a Christian. I daily pray to the Supreme Power that my
stubborn nature may yet so far yield, that I may be able, with a free
and full assent, to call myself a follower of Christ. A Greek by birth,
a Palmyrene by choice and adoption, a Roman by necessity--and the