Everywhere Roman temples testified to the acceptance by the
people of the gods of Rome, and little Helena herself each
morning hung the altar of the emperor-god Claudius with garlands
in the stately temple which had been built in his honor in her
father's palace town, asked the protection of Cybele, "the
Heavenly Virgin," and performed the rites that the Empire
demanded for "the thousand gods of Rome."

Throughout the land, south of the massive wall which the great
Emperor Hadrian had stretched across the island from the mouth of
the Solway to the mouth of the Tyne, the people themselves who
had gathered into or about the thirty growing Roman cities which
the conquerors had founded and beautified, had become Roman in
language, religion, dress, and ways, while the educational
influences of Rome, always following the course of her conquering
eagles, had planted schools and colleges throughout the land, and
laid the foundation for that native learning which in later years
was to make the English nation so great and powerful.

And what a mighty empire must have been that of Rome that, in
those far-off days, when rapid transit was unknown, and steam and
electricity both lay dormant, could have entered into the lives
of two bright young maidens so many leagues removed from one
another--Zenobia, the dusky Palmyrean of the East, and Helena,
the fresh-faced English girl of the West.

But to such distant and widely separated confines had this power
of the vast Empire extended; and to this thoughtful young
princess, drifting down the winding English river, the sense of