On the wide field of Pagan ruin there now rose but one structure entirely unimpaired.

The Temple of Serapis still reared its head--unshaken, unbending, unpolluted.

Here the sacrifice still prospered and the people still bowed in worship.

Before this monument of the religious glories of ages, even the rising power of Christian supremacy quailed in dismay.

Though the ranks of its once multitudinous congregations were now perceptibly thinned, though the new churches swarmed with converts, though the edicts from Rome denounced it as a blot on the face of the earth, its gloomy and solitary grandeur was still preserved.