as I hear they are called--about as promising, to judge by the form and
face, as some of our Roman brood of the same name. I need not ask whose
head that is in the carriage next succeeding; it can belong to no other
in Palmyra than the great Longinus. What a divine repose breathes over
that noble countenance! What a clear and far-sighted spirit looks out of
those eyes! But--gods of Rome and of the world!--who sits beside him?
Whose dark soul is lodged in that fearful tenement?--fearful and yet
beautiful, as would be a statue of ebony!'

'Know you not him? Know you not the Egyptian Zabdas?--the mirror of
accomplished knighthood--the pillar of the state--the Aurelian of the
East? Ah! far may you go to find two such men as those--of gifts so
diverse, and power so great--sitting together like brothers. It all shows
the greater power of Zenobia, who can tame the roughest and most ambitious
spirits to her uses. Who is like Zenobia?'

'So ends, it seems to me,' I replied,' every sentence of every
Palmyrene--"Who is like Zenobia?"'

'Well, Roman,' said he, 'it is a good ending; may there never be a worse.
Happy were it for mankind, if kings and queens were all like her. She
rules to make others happy--not to rule. She conceives herself to be an
instrument of government, not its end. Many is the time, that, standing in
her private closet, with my cases of rare jewels, or with some pretty
fancy of mine in the way of statue or vase, I have heard the wisdom of
Aristotle dropping in the honey of Plato's Greek from her divine lips.'

'You are all going mad with love,' said I; 'I begin to tremble for
myself as a Roman. I must depart while I am yet safe. But see! the crowd
and the show are vanished. Let me hear of the earliest return of Isaac,