HOW A ROMAN EMPEROR LIVED.

Bruce, in his "Classic and Historic Portraits," gives the followsketch of that effeminate creature, the Emperor Heliogabalus :

In his magnificence, Heliogabalus was truly Oriental. He had beds and couches of solid silver. He adorned others of his beds with gold. His chariots glittered with gems. They were drawn sometimes by elephants, sometimes by stags, and sometimes by beautiful naked women. His drinking and cooking vessels were of silver. He was also guilty of the luxury, which, at a later period, St. Chrysostom charges as a sin against the Christian ladies of Constantinople-of using vessels of the most precious material for the most ignoble purposes.

He had cups artificially perfumed for drinking, and others on which lascivious designs were sculptured, an iniquity not confined to ancient and heathen times. At table he reclined on couches stuffed with the fur of hares or the down of partridges. He wore cloaks heavy with gems, and used to say, that he was burdened with a load of pleasure. He had gens in his shoes, sculptured with designs by the finest artists. He wore a diadem of precious stones that he might resemble a woman. He is said to have been the first Roman who wore robes of entire silk. He never, it is said, wore a ring for more than one day, or twice put on the same shoes.

In his more refined and elegant luxuries he was the rival of the ancient Demetrius Poliorcetes. He had beds and couches of roses, and walked amongst lilies, violets, hyacinths and narcissus.

When he wished to add the piquant flavor of cruelty to his enjoyments, he would stifle a courtier to death in a bed of flowers. He swam in water perfumed with saffron and precious unguents; and wine and aromatics were poured into his fish-ponds and his baths.

In eating and drinking he appears not so much as a glutton, but as the chief of all royal epicures the equal in gastronomic science of the renowned Apicus. He joined with all who studied the pleasure of the palate in admiration of the dish which the Romans made of the teats of a newly farrowed pig-the most celebrated of ancient luxuries. After the example of Apicus he indulged in dishes made of the tender parts of the heel of the camel, and of combs torn from the heads of living cocks. This latter delicacy, Cassaubon, in his commentary on the passage in the Augustan historian in which it is referred to, tells us, is at this day-that is in his day, two hundred years ago-passionately sought after by men of learned palates. Like Vitellus, he seems to have had his appetite whetted by the expensiveness of the dishes which he procured; and in sacrificing the rarest and most beautiful birds for the sake of eating their heads, their brains or their tongues.

At one entertainment he displayed on his table the heads of six hundred ostriches, whose brains, as well as those of the flamingo and thrush, were amongst his favorite repasts. He also indulged in the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, believing that they had a medical virtue in averting epilepsy. He also made dishes of the mullet, of the eggs of partridges, and the heads of pheasants, peacocks and parrots. We wonder at the destruction of creatures so lovely to the sight as the peacock, the flamingo and the pheasant, for the particle of delicate eating to be got from them; but epicurism and gluttony consume and destroy all other tastes.

The genius of Heliogabalus shone particularly bright in the cooking of fish. In this department he is said to have invented new modes unknown to Apicus; but with a refined hatred of things common and cheap, he would never taste fish at all when he was near the sea, but always took delight in them when far removed from water, just as he took a fancy for having snow brought to him in mid-summer. He offered rewards for the discovery of new dishes of exquisite flavor, and he had a humorous way of stimulating the invention of those around him in this science. When a courtier, after exerting his best skill to please him, produced a dish which he did not relish, he made the ingenious artist himself continue to eat of that dish and of nothing else, till his faculties, sharpened by disgust, enabled him to find out something superior for his master.

Like Nero and Caligula, Heliogabalus had his jocularitiesgenerally practical ones-sometimes merely absurd, sometimes characteristically cruel. His most harmless entertainments in this way consisted of the suppers which he would give one night to eight men, all of them blind of one eye, sometimes to eight deaf men, eight black men, eight tall and eight fat men.

He kept lions and leopards, which lay at table with him, in order to frighten his friends. He would get a company filled with drink, and after locking them up for the night would let loose amongst them lions, leopards and bears, with their claws pared, to terrify them; and many, it is said, died of fright.

At other times, when daylight would break in on the company who had been drinking the night before, they would find themselves in the arms of an ugly old black women. At other times he made sham entertainments, like the Barmicide's feast in the Eastern tale, setting his guests down to dishes made of wax, ivory or stone, painted after nature. He collected serpents together and let them loose to bite his visitors. He would tie his courtiers to a wheel and have them whirled round in water, calling them, in allusion to the mythological fable, his "Ixionite friends."

Fearing a violent death from the vengeance of the people, Heliogabalus had made preparations, which turned out to be all in vain, for terminating his existence in an elegant manner. He had poison mixed up with the most precious articles, he had robes of crimson and purple silk ready to strangle himself with, and golden swords to stab himself with. He had also a high tower built with rich adornings, where he might breathe out his last in royal state.

The manner of his death was just the reverse of all that he desired. After being slain, his body was first thrown into the common sewer, then dragged through the streets and cast into the Tiber. According to Herodian and Dion, the same indignities were inflicted on the body of his mother, who was killed at the same time. Dion represents Heliogabalus as having been slain in her arms, and states that both their heads were cut off, and their bodies stripped naked, and that the one was thrown into one place of the river and the other into another.

THE CHILD'S LITTLE EVENING PRAYER.

BY THE EDITOR.

"Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep;

It I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take."

III.

THE CATHOLICITY OF THIS LITTLE PRAYER.

As no man claims its authorship so no sect or branch of Christendom can claim it as exclusively suited to its own peculiar religious views and ideas of devotion. No one has ever heard, from any quarter, that it has been charged with heterodoxy. True, in its original form as including only four lines, it has been thought defective because it does not express formally that prayer must be offered up through the mediation of Jesus Christ; and hence a final line has been added, at a time and by a hand unknown. Thus :

"And this I ask for Jesus' sake."

But may not the child be taught to address the whole prayer directly to Christ, under the name "Lord," under which name He is frequently mentioned in Scripture.

The popularity of the prayer evidences its catholicity. It has been found so well adapted to its end, that it is almost universally in use; and is in the English tongue the classic infant prayer. It is safe to say, that ever since its existence, millions of children in every generation have been taught to use it; and there is not an evening that settles down around the habitations of men when this prayer is not lisped from a countless number of infant lips.

Its use is not confined to any class or condition of society. It is the prayer of the rich and of the poor, of the learned and unlearned, and of the high and the lowly. It ascends from huts and hovels, from cottages and farm houses, from palatial city residences and princely country villas.

A paragraph went the rounds of the papers a few years ago,

stating, that Queen Victoria taught it to her princely children. Though our republican ideas might lead us to make no particular account of this, yet if true, it would be a pleasant incident. The fact, however, is not confirmed. To ascertain the truth of the report, we addressed a letter to Dr. Cummings of London. In his reply, dated Jan. 17th, 1861, he says: "I applied personally to the Duchess of Sutherland, who is a member of my flock, as to the alleged royal use of the Child's Prayer you inquire about. I have reason for believing that the report is not true." The little prayer is, however, said to be used in England and Scotland as it is in our own country.

The fact of its general use shows, that there is a general feeling in the Christian mind that forms of prayer, committed to memory and devotionally repeated, are a want which cannot be left unsupplied. Christians in denominations where forms of prayer for pub. lic devotion are discarded still feel themselves bound to teach their children this and other prayers. It seems not to be feared that this course might produce in their tender minds a bias toward formality in devotional feeling. Nor is there in fact any ground for such a fear. Facts and experience prove the contrary. These devotional forms, savored by long use, and imbedded in the pleasant memories of childhood, linger with great blessing in the heart through all after life, and continue to be sweet as all the sacred recollections of that period of comparative innocence which has been left behind.

IV.

THE USE OF THIS LITTLE PRAYER IN AFTER LIFE.

The fact, so well known, that many who have been trained to the use of this little prayer in childhood have been reluctant to give up its use in later life, has its ground in a deep philosophy. This prayer is childlike, but not childish, and hence it is as suitable for the future adult as for the present child. Prayers for children ought never to be such as they will entirely outgrow. Whilst they must leave behind the childish, they ought never outgrow the childlike. The very spirit of Christianity is childlike; and we must all receive the kingdom of heaven as little children. The associations of childhood bound up with the prayer give it a sacred power over the heart in after life. The feelings and memories it inspires, are not like toys, to be cast away and left behind by an advance to manhood. The simple dependence on God which true infant prayers express, serve admirably ever to call back the heart from its later tendency to self-dependence, and enable us to return to, and realize the implicit faith of childhood.

Hence we find that the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue, the Angelic Hymn, the Te Deum, and many other venerable and anointed forms of piety, while they are in all respects adapted to be lodged in the early memories of childhood, are at the same time the true pabulum on which the ripest adult piety may feed; even as a seed finds the soil adapted to all its infant needs, even

though it has not yet tested, and cannot as yet appropriate, all the powers that lie in that same soil for its future and riper use. On the same principle the Bible, whilst it is a suitable book for children, is none the less adapted to all the needs of adult Christian

life.

This being so, the zeal which some parents manifest to encourage their children to pray originally, seems of doubtful propriety. Such prayers are far more likely to be childish than childlike; and by their puerile character the sublime in devotion is easily made ridiculous and that which should be solemn and sacred becomes ludicrous.

His

An instance will illustrate the result of praying originally. It is related of a little boy, who, after saying nightly the prayers which had been taught him, was quite tenacious of what he called "praying his own way." He had a large number of brothers and sisters, whose needs and peculiarities he sometimes made the subject of his petitions. On one occasion, on commencing this exercise he was overcome with sleep. Wrestling with his stupor, he said : "O Lord! bless Lizzy, and make her better than she is." head fell back on his pillow; but soon rousing, he murmured, drowsily, "Bless Henry too." It was in vain; the tongue refused its office, so he added, indistinctly, "O Lord, I can't, there's so many of 'em;" and he sank into the deep slumber of childhood. At another time, while conducting this exercise in a somewhat more wakeful manner, he said, "Lord, please bless father, and give him a new heart. Be so kind as to bless sister Mary, and give her a new heart. O Lord! bless mother; but you need not give her a new heart, for she could not have any better one than she's got."

The experience of many parents will furnish similar illustrations. The quaint originality of the attempt may for the moment please the parental heart; but it is easy to see that the effect of it must be any thing else than to inspire the heart of the child with the sacredness of devotion. If the experiments of adult attempts at original prayer in public so often prove ludicrous, if not ludicrous and profane, as abundant instances prove they do, have we any right to expect anything more successful from children? Little streams, and we may say also, shallow streams, are soon lost unless they have channels prepared for them; and we may even say that it is no disadvantage to large and strong streams to keep to the courses cut out for their flow. Nor ought an infant stream as it grows in strength to be transferred to a new channel; it is only necessary that it should widen its own channel as it increases in strength. The same water, moreover, which constituted the rill, must still make part of the stream and the river.

We must take the infant with us into the child, the child into youth, the youth into the man or the woman; never leaving be hind any part of the identity of our life, but suffering the tissues of our early life ever to be a beautifying and sustaining substance of what follows. We would all be better and lovelier as men, did we