a remarkable instance to this purpose, of which he was himself an eye-witness. While Egypt lay under the greatest terror of the Roman name, a legionary soldier having inadvertently been guilty of the sacrilegious impiety of killing a cat, the whole people rose upon him with the utmost fury; and all the efforts of their prince were not able to save him. The senate and people of Rome, I am persuaded, would not, then, have been so delicate with regard to their national deities. They very frankly, a little after that time, voted Augustus a place in the celestial mansions; and would have dethroned every god in heaven, for his sake, had he seemed to desire it. Præsens divus habebitur Augustus, says Horace. That is a very important point: And in other nations and other ages, the same circumstance has not been esteemed altogether indifferent[1].
Notwithstanding the sanctity of our holy religion, says Tully[2], no crime is more
- ↑ When Louis the XIVth took on himself the protection of the Jesuites college of Clermont, the society ordered the king's arms to be put up over the gate, and took down the cross, in order to make way for it: Which gave occasion to the following epigram:Sustulit hinc Christi, posuitque insignia Regis:
Impia gens, alium nescit habere Deum. - ↑ De nat. Deor. l. i.
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