history! Whose wail in that dread day that shall see thee sink into the gulf of final ruin shall be the loudest over thee? Whose grief and whose extremity shall surpass all these accumulated horrors within thy walls? Whose is to be that last shriek that shall the deepest compel into that dumb unpitying blue concave-witholding its lightnings-when the smoke of thy hugest sacrifice THYSELF-shall rise in its utter fiery-tinged mass to the footsteps of the Throne of the immutable and sternly punishing Lord, who hath willed all this-wills it still ?"

A woman was tossing her arms wildly in agony as these shrill cries escaped her. Worn and reduced into an object almost, itself, of personal horror to beholders, she yet challenged the extremest affright for herselffear almost too great for pity-in her attitude as she lay with one almost dead child on the one side of her, and another just struggling for breath with its few items of life to cling to her long fingers; on the other. All three of this deplorable group of human-kind were sunk into a state that would have been the most heartrending in the world, had not callousness and utter indifference even to the most tremendous horrors possessed the whole city. Sense of self and of unutterable individual inflictions alone survived in Jerusalem now.

There was a very deep gateway which extended its arch of huge architectural stone over the wretched woman and her dying children. People had collected into this avenue; some to die, some to stab and plunder the living. Among the crowd were a number of soldiers who were tearing off their blood-bedabbled armour in their rage and hewing at the hinges in order to seek their wounds, and to relieve by oils or water the intolerable pain they were enduring. Disease and famine were elsewhere also doing their direful work. The incessant thundering of the battering-rams and the monotonous fall of stones and the cataract of rubbish in answer, with an occasional flicker in the sky as artificial false fires flew; these, with the subdolous, never-ceasing, rumbling flow of pounded marble and of fractured bricks out of the breaches, told of the activity of the

beleaguering army of Titus shouting now and then under the walls.

As the poor woman after a prolonged cry, which was only quieted by a sudden fierce blow from the bluntend of a spear-this by a wounded soldier who stood (falling nearly to the earth) in the extremity of his hunger or pain, and whom the cry maddened; as the tortured woman, we say, shrank convulsively at the stroke, rocking herself on the now almost, indeed (from the battering engines), shaking pavements, a Jewish horseman of distinction (to judge from his armour and his trappings) would have dashed madly by this entrance of the arch had not his horse reared actually at the sight he sidelong encountered. An instant's glance of the rider as his horse fell to his fore-feet again seemed to tell him the whole history of the woman. And ere he urged again on, he thrust his hand into the bosom of his robe and threw her a large piece of silver. It was the fateful PIECE which has so often playedout its mission in our pages. The very piece it was; but-How got it there?

Elisheba for that was the name of this Jewish woman -caught the coin eagerly in her clutch. And she started to her feet as if there were new life intensifying then through her limbs and lifting her, at this so probably powerful means of melting the relentlessness of those who yet had "food" to give. Several near her saw the action of the pitying horseman and understood that gift. But either through compassion or more presumedly from the very dead despairing apathy and indifference which possessed everybody, no one sought to plunder her. With flashing eyes like a fury or a sibyl-guarded for everything-clasping the coin hard and seizing her children in her arms, like a maddened Niobe daring and challenging if possible yet further stroke, she cleared her way from out of the archway and through the famine-stricken, pestilence-falling crowd. And she made her path good through a whole street that bordered the battlemented wall, where, because of the falling wreck and the danger of shot from the Roman engines, the road was freer. She feared not

stone, shot, or arrow in that eager haste to avoid the something dreaded as yet more terrible.

She passes and comes along with rapidity to some distance. She espies a point or nook in the wall where a hungry group are devouring something. With a falcon eye she descries bread. With a laugh of joy she madly kisses now her almost dying little ones; she places them tenderly under the protection of a ledge of stone lining the lower rampart. And then she springs upward-upward-scales a shaking stair, mounting from stone to stone unto the topmost ridge of the wall, now all hot glare, and crashes, and dust; where the fierce arrows fly, lightning like, by her, and the thunder of the conflict resounds, shaking the very foundation of the city. "Money! money for a morsel of bread. It is for my little ones," she shrieks, holding up the direful, mysterious COIN; unconscious in her tremblingly eager fingers. A soldier guarding a basket of bread snatches the coin; but with no intention of giving her any food. A colossal spearman, clutching the bread away at once from the grasp of the soldier and from the sight of the woman, deals both a dreadful blow. And Elisheba, tottering, falls backward over the edge of the rampart and becomes one more disregarded sacrifice of that groaning Jerusalem in the fiery hour of her bitterest trial. A cloud of smoke springs up vengefully from the chasm as if in answer to the woman's fall. And the noise of the tumbling towers goes on incessantly as an underbeaten chorus to the more salient exciting louder tune of the hail of stones of the catapults, and the sharper shrieks which come in as the shrill notes.

"She is

"Let her go!" cried the rapacious soldier. but one." And the rain of missiles on the doomed city deepened. And the smoky sky became fuller of stones; their crash being the awful music of the fall of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem fell-overwhelmed with horrors. And the tide of our story rolls back to its beginning, which was in the "Thirty-Third Year" of our present count of time. The year of the Crucifixion; upon which last phase we are now about fearfully to enter.

MOR

PART THE THIRD.

THE TEMPLE. TIME—A.D. 33.

ORN breaks slow over the hills of Jerusalem. Reluctant Night still clings to the heavens of which she-Dark Daughter-is soon to be dispossessed. The earth is still hushed in awe, as if in expectation of the most solemn of all sacrifices. All nature trembles. There is silence in heaven where the stars are hidden. And in the nether deeps, and in the uttermost parts thereof, and through the length and breadth of the Kingdoms of the Condemned, is there hushed awe, and are there the bowing-down of Crowned Authorities, the shattering of diadems, and the snapping of shadowy sceptres. For a Sign is in the Empyrean and a Word of awful power revolves with the rolling world. A Word inspiring UNIVERSAL FEAR AND

TREMBLING.

And now there gleameth no sun-glance on the leadcoloured Saturnian towers of sin-possessed Jerusalem. The early morning is but as a lighter night. There are low sounds. The thronging and murmur of a multitude is heard as to a world-momentous act. And the gleaming of a long procession of armed men to a Gloomed Hill is distantly seen. Which Hill shall be a name throughout the flights of the centuries for evermore.

Two men meanwhile maintaining most perturbed discourse and occasionally casting glances at the dark alarming sky, were seen to take their way toiling with gasps upward towards the Great Temple-that Temple of Solomon whose countless pinnacles and embattled walls stretched grandly along the summit of the now darkened hill; but from which, when the refulgent sun of

Jerusalem shone, it showed all royally gold. The name of the one man was Eleasah, a just Jew, humble in spirit and pure in heart-wholly a man of innocent and of beneficent life; and the name of the other man—so alone known under this name to his companion—was Jansa, (Iansa, Iudas)-JUDAS.

And as they went on their way, the man Jansa was perpetually seen to strike his forehead as if in agony, and the clouds of the place of dole went as it were and came in his frightful, haggard, pain-channelled visage— to be shown alone in the penal lights. The other man was seeking apparently to calm and to administer words of comfort; and to be putting inquiries, to which the man Jansa would or could afford no reply. And as drops of water unto fierce flame were his expressions of pity and his proffered help to Jansa; extorting almost hisses of anguish.

A bag was in the hand of this so-called Jansa which he held with a clutch that brought tincture of blood into his palm. And ever and anon he would pause to groan as one in the worst extremity groans; and his perplexed distress to witness was most frightful.

And they now reached the Temple. In at the Gate of Shushan, through the Cloister or Porch of Solomon, through the Court of the Gentiles they went—the one man anxious, the other in despair. And they only paused because Jansa in alarm would not permit of the farther passing in with him to his companion Eleasah; as if, for some secret reasons, above all things, dreading it. They therefore abruptly turned round at the high rails and the flight of steps which lead up to the Chel or Terrace.

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Depart from me, for I am a man of sin; and I may not permit of living lower creatures-much less of a human being-to remain within sound of my voice! Aye, or even within sight of my body! Depart—while thou art spared to do it, and art not destroyed, with me, in the lightnings of Heaven. For even looking upon me is unlawful, and standing by my side is sin almost ineffaceable. Go, while the thunders yet pause!" Ere Eleasah could recover from his astonishment, and