are rather tried than tormented; for whatsoever this world affords is mortal and like a shadow." "Kneeling down in the place of torment, she besought of God an end of this life, protesting that she had not for love of life so long deferred to die, but only for her children's sake, and that now she had seen them all seven triumphing." The fury of Antiochus now waxed hot, and he commanded this worthy mother to be tormented, who was, as the tyrant willed, stripped and hung up by the hands and most cruelly scourged. "In addition to this, after her body had been lacerated, she was placed in a red-hot frying-pan; being most willing to follow her children's steps in torment, and lifting up her eyes and hands to heaven, she prayed, and so yielded her chaste soul to God." Josephus adds, that "Antiochus was stricken with fire from heaven;" he is reported, however, to have afterward warred against the Persians, and to have perished in the most horrible manner. With the usual arrangement of Divine Providence, his cruelty tended to the illustration of faith; and although no bright and glowing panegyric of human eloquence seeks to illustrate the greatness of his victim's virtue, yet this "plain unvarnished tale" of martyrdom may challenge comparison with the grandest epoch of Roman fortitude, and surpasses it in the elevation of principle which gave it power. MARIAMNE, WIFE OF HEROD THE GREAT. B. C. 29. HISTORY, in many instances, affords only the strong lines of character as marked by some extraordinary incidents in the existence of the individual, but leaves the experienced observer of human life to fill up the intermediate spaces with colors drawn from his own mind. Hence, we ought to view the representation given to us by the original draught with much allowance, from the paucity of details, and not unfrequently from the inequality of the traits as exhibited through the medium of the historian's conception; for the truest narrative, if uninspired, is not the single unmixed ray falling from the primary light of fact, but the scintillation of the latter combined with the hue of the transmitting lens. In the life before us this is especially the case; for the scantiness of the record, and its strongly-marked delineation, make us aware of the excellent qualities and powerful impulses which have been lost, through the lapse of time, which in the portraiture of Mariamne, who yet has established an undoubted claim to heroism. We find, also, that the latter has been justly attrib uted by mankind no less to the fortitude of suffering than to the energy of act, and that she has been thereby placed high in the niche of fame, who, debarred by a jealous tyrant from exemplifying her constitutional gentleness as a wife, earned an imperishable glory by the majesty of her endurance as a martyr. Herod "the Great" (the latter title often an antithesis, as here, to "good") was the second son of Antipater, by whom he was made governor of Galilee, and, after the battle of Philippi, was preferred by Antony to the tetrarchy of Judea in conjunction with his brother Phasael. Upon being opposed by Antigonus in his sovereignty, he had to fly from his potent rival, with Cypros his mother, Salome his sister, his betrothed bride Mariamne, also, and her mother Alexandra, sharing the fortunes of one who seemed born to visit with misery every one attached to him. Having left them in the strong fortress of Massada, he departed to Rome, whence, confirmed in his kingdom by Octavius and Marc Antony, he received such powerful assistance as enabled him with the Roman forces to defeat Antigonus, and finally to take Jerusalem. During this period of strife and anxiety, as if in foreshadow of her future fate, the marriage of Mariamne took place. Her very family connection with the Asmonean race, a line of heroes whose transcendant deeds riveted the Jewish love which national consanguinity attracted, rendered her position pain ful as that of a witness of the cruel jealousy toward their great name excited in her husband's mind, conscious of unjust usurpation. She was the daughter of Alexander, the son of King Aristobulus, and granddaughter of Hyrcanus the high-priest, and, from all accounts, exhibited in the highest perfection the personal beauty of that ancient lineage, together with individual capacities of the rarest order. Indeed, it was her misfortune to possess the fatal dower of loveliness and talent; for, united to one so selfish as Herod, whose evil genius drew a margin of blood around him, in which he stood the presiding demon of the scene, the most trivial word, the expression of the unsophisticated heart, was construed into ill, according to the distorted construction of slander or distrust; for "Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong Violent in his emotions, and with a temperament affecting more the turbulence of the tempest than the serenity of an equable sphere, Herod idolized his wife with the selfish impetuosity of passion, impulsive though not evanescent, and from their earliest union rendered her existence a scene of variable emotions, concentrating always into pain. Her brother Aristobulus, described by Josephus as "wonderfully beautiful," was the first to feel the fickleness of fate when associated with the patronage of a ty rant. He had been raised to the priesthood when only seventeen years old, and appearing before the populace appareled in the ornaments of his office, so reminded them, by his majestic deportment, of their favorite prince, his namesake and grandfather, that "they broke out by little and little into happy acclamations, mixed with wishes and prayers, and manifestly (although too hastily in such a kingdom) declared what evils they generally endured." Upon his retirement, therefore, to the baths upon a subsequent occasion, "being persuaded to swim, by Herod, certain of the latter's confederates, (deputed to execute the murder,) under pretense of sport ducked him repeatedly in the water, and never gave over until such time as they had stifled him." Hypocrisy and deceit are twin sisters to jealousy, and though unmoved by repentance, the criminal pays an involuntary tribute to virtue by counterfeiting sorrow at transgression. Herod disclaimed all participation in the murder, and labored to persuade the world that it occurred without his connivance. It was no wonder, therefore, that, as we read, Mariamne hated him as much as he loved her; and having a just cause and color of discontent, and, moreover, emboldened by the love which he bore her, she every day upbraided him with "what he had done to her brother." This crime brought results which, by revealing the selfish suspicion of Herod's nature, even in his love to Mariamne, widened the breach so extensively |