Accordingly it was discovered, about the end of the fourth century,
that the mountains and deserts of Egypt were full of Christian men
who had fled out of the dying world, in the hope of attaining
everlasting life. Wonderful things were told of their courage,
their abstinence, their miracles: and of their virtues also; of
their purity, their humility, their helpfulness, and charity to each
other and to all. They called each other, it was said, brothers;
and they lived up to that sacred name, forgotten, if ever known, by
the rest of the Roman Empire. Like the Apostolic Christians in the
first fervour of their conversion, they had all things in common;
they lived at peace with each other, under a mild and charitable
rule; and kept literally those commands of Christ which all the rest
of the world explained away to nothing.

The news spread. It chimed in with all that was best, as well as
with much that was questionable, in the public mind. That men could
be brothers; that they could live without the tawdry luxury, the
tasteless and often brutal amusements, the low sensuality, the base
intrigue, the bloody warfare, which was the accepted lot of the
many; that they could find time to look stedfastly at heaven and
hell as awful realities, which must be faced some day, which had
best be faced at once; this, just as much as curiosity about their
alleged miracles, and the selfish longing to rival them in
superhuman powers, led many of the most virtuous and the most
learned men of the time to visit them, and ascertain the truth.
Jerome, Ruffinus, Evagrius, Sulpicius Severus, went to see them,
undergoing on the way the severest toils and dangers, and brought
back reports of mingled truth and falsehood, specimens of which will
be seen in these pages. Travelling in those days was a labour, if