destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, prophesies, certainly, that not one stone should remain upon another of the temple of the Idumæan Herod; but no evangelist says that it shall never be rebuilt. It is perfectly false that not one stone remained upon another when Titus demolished it. All its foundations remained together, with one entire wall and the tower Antonia.

2. Of what consequence could it be to the Supreme Being whether there was a Jewish temple, a magazine, or a mosque, on the spot where the Jews were in the habit of slaughtering bullocks and cows?

3. It is not ascertained whether it was from within the circuit of the walls of the city, or from within that of the temple, that those fires proceeded which burned the workmen. But it is not very obvious why the Jews should burn the workmen of the emperor Julian, and not those of the caliph Omar, who long afterwards built a mosque upon the ruins of the temple; or those of the great Saladin who rebuilt the same mosque. Had Jesus any particular predilection for the mosques of the Mussulmans?

4. Jesus, notwithstanding his having predicted that there would not remain one stone upon another in Jerusalem, did not prevent the rebuilding of that city.

5. Jesus predicted many things which God permitted never to come to pass. He predicted the end of the world, and his coming in the clouds with great power and majesty, before or about the end of the then existing generation. The world, however, has lasted to the present moment, and in all probability will last much longer.

6. If Julian had written an account of this miracle, I should say that he had been imposed upon by a false and ridiculous report; I should think that the Christians, his enemies, employed every artifice to oppose his enterprise, that they themselves killed the workmen, and excited and promoted the belief of their being destroyed by a miracle; but Julian does not say a single word on the subject. The war against the Persians at that time fully occupied his attention; he put off the rebuilding of the temple to some other time, and he died before he was able to commence the building.

7. This prodigy is related by Ammianus Marcellinus, who was a Pagan. It is very possible that it may have been an interpolation of the Christians. They have been charged with committing numberless others which have been clearly proved.

But it is not the less probable that at a time when nothing was spoken of but prodigies and stories of witchcraft, Ammianus Marcellinus may have reported this fable on the faith of some credulous narrator. From Titus Livius to de Thou, inclusively, all historians have been infected with prodigies.

8. Contemporary authors relate that at the same period there was in Syria a great convulsion of the earth, which in many places broke out in conflagrations and swallowed up many cities. There was therefore more miracle.

9. If Jesus performed miracles, would it be in order to prevent the rebuilding of a temple in which he had himself sacrificed, and in which he was circumcised? Or would he not rather perform miracles to convert to Christianity the various nations who at present ridicule it? Or rather still, to render more humane, more kind, Christians themselves, who, from Arius and Athanasius down to Roland and the Paladins of the Cévennes, have shed torrents of human blood, and conducted themselves nearly as might be expected from cannibals?

Hence I conclude that "nature" is not in "collusion", as La Bletterie expresses it, with Christianity, but that La Bletterie is in collusion with some old women's stories, one of those persons, as Julian phrases it, "quibus cum stolidis aniculis negotium erat."

La Bletterie, after having done justice to some of Julian's virtues, yet concludes the history of that great man by observing, that his death was the effect of "divine vengeance". If that be the case, all the heroes who have died young, from Alexander to Gustavus Adolphus, have, we must infer, been punished by God. Julian died the noblest of deaths, in the pursuit of his enemies, after many victories. Jovian, who succeeded him, reigned a much shorter time than he did, and reigned in disgrace. I see no divine vengeance in the matter; and I see in La Bletterie himself nothing more than a disingenuous, dishonest declaimer. But where are the men to be found who will dare to speak out?

Libanius the Stoic was one of these extraordinary men. He celebrated the brave and clement Julian in the presence of Theodosius, the wholesale murderer of the Thessalonians; but Le Beau and La Bletterie fear to praise him in the hearing of their own puny parish officers.

SECTION II.

Let any one suppose for a moment that Julian had abandoned false gods for Christianity; then examine him as a man, a philosopher, and an emperor; and let the examiner then point out the man whom he will venture to prefer to him. If he had lived only ten years longer, there is great probability that he would have given a different form to Europe from that which it bears at present.

The Christian religion depended upon his life; the efforts which he made for its destruction rendered his name execrable to the nations who have embraced it. The Christian priests, who were his contemporaries, accuse him of almost every crime, because he had committed what in their eyes was the greatest of all—he had lowered and humiliated them. It is not long since his name was never quoted without the epithet of apostate attached to it; and it is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of reason that he has at length ceased to be mentioned under so opprobrious a designation. Who would imagine that in one of the "Mercuries of Paris", for the year 1745, the author sharply rebukes a certain writer for failing in the common courtesies of life, by calling this emperor Julian "the apostate"? Not more than a hundred years ago the man that would not have treated him as an apostate would himself have been treated as an atheist.

What is very singular, and at the same time perfectly true, is that if you put out of consideration the various disputes between Pagans and Christians, in which this emperor was engaged; if you follow him neither to the Christian churches nor idolatrous temples, but observe him attentively in his own household, in camp, in battle, in his manners, his conduct, and his writings, you will find him in every respect equal to Marcus Aurelius.

Thus, the man who has been described as so abominable and execrable, is perhaps the first, or at least the second of mankind. Always sober, always temperate, indulging in no licentious pleasures, sleeping on a mere bear's skin, devoting only a few hours, and even those with regret, to sleep; dividing his time between study and business, generous, susceptible of friendship, and an enemy to all pomp, and pride, and ostentation. Had he been merely a private individual he must have extorted universal admiration.

If we consider him in his military character, we see him constantly at the head of his troops, establishing or restoring discipline without rigor, beloved by his soldiers and at the same time restraining their excesses, conducting his armies almost always on foot, and showing them an example of enduring every species of hardship, ever victorious in all his expeditions even to the last moments of his life, and at length dying at the glorious crisis when the Persians were routed. His death was that of a hero, and his last words were those of a philosopher: "I submit," says he, "willingly to the eternal decrees of heaven, convinced that he who is captivated with life, when his last hour is arrived, is more weak and pusillanimous than he who would rush to voluntary death when it is his duty still to live." He converses to the last moment on the immortality of the soul; manifests no regrets, shows no weakness, and speaks only of his submission to the decrees of Providence. Let it be remembered that this is the death of an emperor at the age of thirty-two, and let it be then decided whether his memory should be