senate-house, and sending for the chief conspirators, told them what had passed. Then exhorting them to murder the consul, he left Rome that night, accompanied by three hundred of his associates, and went and joined Manlius. He caused lictors, with fasces and axes, to walk before him, as if he had really been a magistrate. Upon the news of this insurrection, the senate ordered Antonius, the consul, to march the legions against the rebels, and Cicero to look after the peace of the city.

7. Soon after, Lentulus, Cethegus, Gabinius, and two more who were principals of the conspiracy, were arrested, convicted, and conveyed to different prisons. The contest in the senate was long and warm, respecting the nature of the punishment that should be inflicted upon them. It was, however, at last resolved that they should be put to death; and Cicero, upon the bare sentence of the senate, and without submitting the matter to the people, as was usual, ordered them to be executed in the different prisons in which they were confined. These executions at once crushed the plot, and overturned all the designs of the conspirators, who had that night resolved to rescue them from confinement, that they might immediately join Catiline.

8. News being brought to Cat line's camp, of the late executions, great numbers of his soldiers abandoned him in the night; but this did not disconcert or dishearten Catiline, for he was determined either to ruin the commonwealth, or perish in the attempt. He thereupon raised new forces, filled the cohorts with them, and soon completed the legions, which were all inflamed with the same passion for blood and slaughter and the destruction of their native country. By the good management of the consul, Catiline found himself surrounded by the enemy. He therefore resolved to hazard a battle, though he was considerably inferior in number.

9. Petreius, who had served thirty years in the field, and from a private soldier had been made a general, commanded for the republic in the room of the consul, who was suddenly taken ill. He engaged Catiline with the greatest bravery, and the battle was sustained on both sides with the utmost intrepidity. Petreius was at last victorious, and the rebels were all put to the sword. But Catiline, who could not bear the thoughts of surviving the ruin of his party, rushed into that part of the battle where death was making the greatest

havoc, and there fell a victim to his own folly and iniquity. He was afterwards found among the dead and mangled bodies of the rebels, which lay in heaps. On his pale and lifeless face was still pictured the haughty ferocity of his soul, which even death could not extinguish.

THE TEARS OF JUDAH.

HUSH'D is the voice of Judah's mirth-
And Judah's minstrels too are gone;
The harps that told Messiah's birth,
And hung on Heaven's eternal throne.

Fled is the bright and shining throng
That swell'd on earth the welcome strain,
And lost in air the choral song

That floated wild on David's plain.

For dark and sad is Bethlehem's fate,
Her valleys gush with human blood;
Despair sits mourning at her gate,

And Murder stalks in frantic mood.

At morn, the mother's heart was light,
Her infant bloom'd upon her breast;
At eve, 'twas pale and wither'd quite,
And gone to its eternal rest.

Weep on, ye childless mothers, weep!
Your babes are hush'd in one cold grave!
In Jordan's stream their spirits sleep,
Their blood is mingled with the wave.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

1. JERUSALEM was built on two mountains, and surrounded by three walls on every side, except where it was enclosed with deep valleys, which were deemed inaccessible. Each wall was fortified by high towers. The celebrated temple, and strong castle of Antonia, were on the east side of the

city, and directly opposite to the Mount of Olives. But notwithstanding the prodigious strength of this famed metropolis, the infatuated Jews brought on their own destruction by their intestine contests. At a time when a formidable army was rapidly advancing, and the Jews were assembling from all parts to keep the passover, the contending factions were continually inventing new methods of mutual destruction, and in their ungoverned fury they wasted and destroyed such vast quantities of provisions as might have preserved the city

many years.

2. Such was the miserable situation of Jerusalem, wher Titus began his march towards it with a formidable army; and, having laid waste the country in his progress, and slaughtered the inhabitants, arrived before its walls. The sight of the Romans produced a temporary reconciliation among the contending factions, and they unanimously resolved to oppose the common enemy. Their first sally was accordingly made with such fury and resolution, that, though Titus displayed uncommon valor on this occasion, the besiegers were obliged to abandon their camps, and flee to the mountains. No sooner had the Jews a short interval of quiet from their foreign enemies, than their civil disorders were renewed. John, by an impious stratagem, found means to cut off, or force Eleazer's men to submit to him; and the factions were again reduced to two, who opposed each other with implacable animosity.

3. The Romans, in the mean time, exerted all their energy in making preparations for a powerful attack upon Jerusalem. Trees were cut down, houses levelled, rocks cleft asunder, and valleys filled up; towers were raised, and battering rams erected, with other engines of destruction, against the devoted city. After the offers of peace, which Titus had repeatedly sent by Josephus, were rejected with indignation, the Romans began to play their engines with all their might. The strenuous attacks of the enemy again united the contending parties within the walls, who had also engines, which they plied with uncommon fury. They had taken them lately from Cestius, but were so ignorant of their

When did Titus commence his march towards Jerusalem ?-What feast were the Jews observing at this time?-By whom did Titus frequently send offers of peace?

use, they did little execution, while the Roman legions made terrible havoc. The rebels were soon compelled to retire from the ponderous stones, which they threw incessantly from the towers they had erected, and the battering rams were at full liberty to play against the walls. A breach was soon made in it, at which the Romans entered and encamped in the city, while the Jews retreated behind the second enclosure.

4. The victors immediately advanced to the second wall, and plied their engines aud battering rams so furiously, that one of the towers they had erected began to shake, and the Jews who occupied it, perceiving their impending ruin, set it on fire, and precipitated themselves into the flames. The fall of this structure gave the Romans an entrance into the second enclosure. They were, however, repulsed by the ve sieged; but at length regained the place entirely, and prepared for attacking the third and inner wall. The vast number of people which were enclosed in Jerusalem occasioned a famine, which raged in a terrible manner; and as their calamities increased, the fury of the zealots, if possible, rose to a greater height. They forced open the houses of their fellow citizens, in search of provisions; if they found any, they inflicted the most exquisite tortures upon them, under pretence that they had food concealed. The nearest relations, in the extremity of hunger, snatched the food from each other.

5. Josephus, who was an eye-witness of the unparalleled sufferings the Jews experienced during the siege of their metropolis, remarks, that "all the calamities that ever befel any nation since the beginning of the world were inferior to the miseries of his countrymen at this awful period." Thus we see the exact fulfilment of the emphatic words of our Savior respecting the great tribulation in Jerusalem. "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."

6. Titus, who was apprized of their wretched condition, relaxed the siege four days; and, being still desirous of saving the city, caused provisions to be distributed to his army in sight of the Jews, who flocked upon the walls to behold it.

What distressing consequences resulted from having such mult tudes of Jews shut up in Jerusalem ?

Josephus was next sent to his countrymen, to attempt to persuade them not to plunge themselves in inevitable ruin, by persisting in defence of a place which could hold out but litile longer, and which the Romans looked upon as already their own. He exhorted them, in the most pathetic terms, to save themselves, their temple, and their country; and painted in strong colors the fatal effects which would result from their obstinacy. But the people, after many bitter invectives, began to dart their arrows at him; yet he continued to address them with greater vehemence, and many were induced by his eloquence to run the utmost risk in order to escape to the Romans; while others became more desperate, and resolved to hold out to the last extremity.

7. The Jews who were forcibly seized by the Romans without the walls, and who made the utmost resistance for fear of punishment, were scourged and crucified near the city. Famine made them so daring in these excursions, that five hundred, and sometimes more, suffered this dreadful death every day; and, on account of the number, Josephus observes, that " space was wanted for the crosses, and crosses for the captives." And yet, contrary to Titus's intention, the seditious Jews were not disposed to a surrender by these horrid spectacles. In order to check desertion, they represented the sufferers as suppliants, and not as men taken by resistance. Yet even some, who deemed capital punishment inevitable, escaped to the Romans, considering death, by the hands of their enemies, a desirable refuge, when compared with the complicated distress which they endured. And though Titus mutilated many, and sent them to assure the people that voluntary deserters were well treated by him, and earnestly to recommend a surrender of the city, the Jews reviled Titus from the walls, defied his menaces, and continued to defend the city by every method which stratagem, courage, and despair, could suggest.

8. In order to accelerate the destined ruin of Jerusalem, Titus, discouraged and exasperated by the repeated destruction of his engines and towers, undertook the arduous task of enclosing the city with a strong wall, in order to prevent the inhabitants from receiving any succor from the adjacent country, or eluding his vengeance by flight. Such was the persevering spirit of the soldiers, that in three days they enclosed the city by a wall nearly five miles in circuit. Thus