In the meantime, Vespasian having been chosen emperor, the command of the invading army was transferred to his son Titus, who advanced against Jerusalem a little before the feast of the Passover. Rarely had such crowds of Jews come from the most remote parts to solemnize this festival, for the leaders in Palestine had summoned their brethren to come and share in this final struggle for freedom. Titus at first expected that these strangers would overcome the factious, and return to their allegiance. But, when he approached Jerusalem, he found that all parties, however hostile to each other, were united in determined enmity to the Romans. He made the necessary preparations for commencing the siege in form.

In a short time the city was girdled by mounds, trenches, and platforms; the walls shook from the repeated blows of the battering-rams, while huge stones, flung from engines called catapults, swept away several of the garrison at one blow. Still, the Jews did not despair; they made frequent sallies, burned many of the Roman battering engines, and erected a second wall, when the first was unfit for further defence. Famine soon appeared in the devoted city; the soldiers searched the houses of

the citizens, and cruelly tortured those whom they suspected of concealing provisions. "I should," says the historian Josephus, "undertake an impossible task, were I to enter into a detail of all the cruelties of these impious wretches; it will be sufficient to say that I do not think that, since the creation, any city ever suffered such dreadful calamities, or abounded with men so fertile in every kind of wickedness."

Pestilence was soon added to the horrors of famine; no means of escape were opened to the wretched citizens; the Romans blocked up every avenue, and those who attempted to fly were either massacred or sold into slavery. Thus fearfully was the awful description given by the prophet Jeremiah fulfilled, "Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth. And it shall come to pass, if they say unto thee, Whither shall we go forth? then thou shalt tell them, Thus saith the Lord, Such as are for death, to death; and such as are for the sword, to the sword; and such as are for the famine, to the famine; and such as are for the captivity, to the captivity, And I will appoint over them four

kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy. And I will cause them to be removed into all kingdoms of the earth. For who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall go aside to ask how thou doest? Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting. And I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children, I will destroy my people, since they return not from their ways. Their widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas; I have brought upon them against the mother of the young men a spoiler at noonday; I have caused him to fall upon it suddenly, and terrors upon the city. She that hath borne seven languisheth; she hath given up the ghost; her sun is gone down while it was yet day; she hath been ashamed and confounded; and the residue of them will I deliver to the sword before their enemies, saith the Lord."

The dead became so numerous that the living could not bury them; the putrifying bodies lay

exposed in the streets, and such was the horrid effects of the famine that parents killed their own children for food. When Titus heard of this cannibalism, he vowed that he would bury the citizens under the ruins of their metropolis, and renewed his attacks with such fury that the principal fortresses erected for the defence of the city were taken. The Temple was now the last hope of the Jews; it was fiercely assailed, and as fiercely defended. At length an entrance was forced, and a soldier, casting a flaming brand into one of the apartments, set fire to the edifice. In the words of the Poet,

"The storm prevails,-the rampart yields a way,-
Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay;
Hark! as the smouldering piles with thunder fall,
A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call;
Earth shook-red meteors flash'd across the sky,
And conscious Nature shudder'd at the cry."

A dreadful massacre followed; the Romans spared neither age nor sex; the Jews, with desperate resolution, disputed every inch of ground, until the city remained a heap of ruins. All the Jews who survived were sold into slavery; but, before they could be brought to the market, many died from hunger or the cruelty of their guards, and many others

starved themselves in despair. The description of the fearful end of the Jewish nation by the late Bishop Heber, equally remarkable for its spirit of piety and of poetry, will appropriately conclude this chapter.

Ye faithful few, by bold affection led,

Who round the Saviour's cross your sorrows shed,
Not for his sake your tearful vigils keep ;-

Weep for your country, for your children weep!
-Vengenace! thy fiery wing their race pursu'd;
Thy thirsty poniard blush'd with infant blood.
Rous'd at thy call, and panting still for game,
The bird of war, the Latian eagle, came.
Then Judah rag'd, by ruffian Discord led,
Drunk with the steamy carnage of the dead:
He saw his sons by dubious slaughter fall,
And war without, and death within the wall.
Wide-wasting Plague, gaunt Famine, mad Despair,
And dire Debate, and clamourous Strife was there :
Love, strong as Death, retain'd his might no more,
And the pale parent drank her children's gore.
Yet they who, wont to roam th' ensanguin'd plain,
And spurn with fell delight their kindred slain;
E'en they, when, high above the dusty fight,
Their burning Temple rose in lurid light,
To their lov'd altars paid a parting groan,
And in their country's woes forgot their own.
As 'mid the cedar courts, and gates of gold,
The trampled ranks in miry carnage roll❜d,