monsters, as if turned away by an angel," shot themselves into the
water; while they ran on to Nitria, meditating on the words of Job,
"Seven times shall He deliver thee from trouble; and in the eighth
there shall no evil touch thee."

The great St. Athanasius, fleeing from persecution, had taken refuge
among these monks. He carried the report of their virtues to Treves
in Gaul, and wrote a life of St. Antony, the perusal of which was a
main agent in the conversion of St. Augustine. Hilarion (a
remarkable personage, whose history will be told hereafter) carried
their report and their example likewise into Palestine; and from
that time Judaea, desolate and seemingly accursed by the sin of the
Jewish people, became once more the Holy Land; the place of
pilgrimage; whose ruins, whose very soil, were kept sacred by
hermits, the guardians of the footsteps of Christ.

In Rome itself the news produced an effect which, to the thoughtful
mind, is altogether tragical in its nobleness. The Roman
aristocracy was deprived of all political power; it had been
decimated, too, with horrible cruelty only one generation before,
{12} by Valentinian and his satellites, on the charges of
profligacy, treason, and magic. Mere rich men, they still lingered
on, in idleness and luxury, without art, science, true civilization
of any kind; followed by long trains of slaves; punishing a servant
with three hundred stripes if he were too long in bringing hot
water; weighing the fish, or birds, or dormice put on their tables,
while secretaries stood by, with tablets to record all; hating
learning as they hated poison; indulging at the baths in conduct
which had best be left undescribed; and "complaining that they were
not born among the Cimmerians, if amid their golden fans a fly