an illiterate education had not prevented him from forming a just
estimate of the value of learning; and the arts and sciences
derived some encouragement from the munificent protection of
Constantine. In the despatch of business, his diligence was
indefatigable; and the active powers of his mind were almost
continually exercised in reading, writing, or meditating, in
giving audiences to ambassadors, and in examining the complaints
of his subjects. Even those who censured the propriety of his
measures were compelled to acknowledge, that he possessed
magnanimity to conceive, and patience to execute, the most
arduous designs, without being checked either by the prejudices
of education, or by the clamors of the multitude. In the field,
he infused his own intrepid spirit into the troops, whom he
conducted with the talents of a consummate general; and to his
abilities, rather than to his fortune, we may ascribe the signal
victories which he obtained over the foreign and domestic foes of
the republic. He loved glory as the reward, perhaps as the
motive, of his labors. The boundless ambition, which, from the
moment of his accepting the purple at York, appears as the ruling
passion of his soul, may be justified by the dangers of his own
situation, by the character of his rivals, by the consciousness
of superior merit, and by the prospect that his success would
enable him to restore peace and order to the distracted
empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he had
engaged on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared
the undissembled vices of those tyrants with the spirit of wisdom
and justice which seemed to direct the general tenor of the
administration of Constantine. ^2

[Footnote 2: The virtues of Constantine are collected for the