ch to redeem himself. Always was he, indeed, vastly superior to
his brothers; but now, he is not only that, but very much more.
Qualities have unfolded themselves, and affections and tastes warmed
into life, which we none of us, I believe, so much as suspected the
existence of. Zenobia has come to be devotedly attached to him, and to
repose the same sort of confidence in him as formerly in Julia. All this
makes her the more reluctant to part with him; but, as it is for a
throne, she acquiesces. He carries away from Rome with him one of its
most beautiful and estimable women--the youngest daughter of the
venerable Tacitus--to whom he has just been married. In her you will see
an almost too favorable specimen of Roman women.

Several days have elapsed since I wrote to you, giving an account of the
sufferings and death of the Christian Macer--as I learned them from
those who were present--for a breach of the late edicts, and for
sacrilegiously, as the laws term it, tearing down the parchment
containing them from one of the columns of the capitol. During this
period other horrors of the same kind have been enacted in different
parts of the city. Macer is not the only one who has already paid for
his faith with his life. All the restraints of the law seem to be
withdrawn, not confessedly but virtually, and the Christians in humble
condition--and such for the most part we are--are no longer safe from
violence in the streets of Rome. Although, Fausta, you believe not with
us, you must, scarcely the less for that, pity us in our present
straits. Can the mind picture to itself, in some aspects of the case, a
more miserable lot! Were the times, even at the worst, so full of horror
in Palmyra as now here in Rome? There, if the city were given up to
pillage, the citizen had at least the satisfaction of dying in the
excitement of a contest, and in the defence of himself and his children.
Here the prospect is--the actual scene is almost arrived and
present--that all the Christians of Rome will be given over to the
butchery, first, of the Prefect's court, and others of the same
character, established throughout the city for the express purpose of
trying the Christians--and next, of the mob commissioned with full
powers to search out, find, and slay, all who bear the hated name. The
Christians, it is true, die for a great cause. In that cause they would
rather die than live, if to live, they must sacrifice any of the
interests of truth