that occasion, that sitting cannot be was my guide and mentor in those disassociated from dinner, and that days, and I went to him in my per(putting fatigue aside) dinner would be plexity. degraded to the level of a stand-up supper if the guests were upright. I leave the question to the future. "Is it true? What does he mean?” "Quite true, my friend. Reach what point we may in the past, there is always something behind it.". "Then is it true of history ?". "Yes of history! History, too, knows no beginning! Yet be it remembered that history knows many beginnings. Abraham's start from Ur be shades of local of the Chaldees was one of them. Mohammed's Hegira from Mecca was another, and a third was Cæsar's first campaign in Gaul." This sort of life in Paris is not, after all, more worldly than the same existence is elsewhere. Wherever amusement is lifted to the position of the first object of existence, the moral effect on those who pursue it is virtually the same; there may difference, but the tendency of the mind grows everywhere alike. It would therefore be unfair to attribute any special frivolity to Paris because How often have I thought of those small sections of its society achieve ex- words! How long it was before I at treme brilliancy of worldliness; just as all understood how Cæsar's campaigns it would be unfair to praise it specially in Gaul could be regarded as one of because other classes are particularly the great beginnings of history; how worthy of esteem. In the universal it was the first great opening out of average of good and bad, Paris stands on the same general level as other capitals; but in glistening pleasantness it rises, here and there, above them all. How long that superiority of pleasantness will endure remains to be seen; it is weakening fast from the progressive disappearance of the women who, thus far, have maintained it. If it does vanish altogether, Paris will become like any other place, with the same respectabilities and dulnesses; but its indoor life will have left behind it a history and a memory proper to itself, and some day, perhaps, its women will wake up again and will reassume the feminine grace and the feminine capacities which were so delightfully distinctive of their ancestors. the West to the light that should come from the East; how the sudden start of Cæsar from Rome in the spring of 58 B.C. was another of those momentous hegiras which usher in a new era for the nations of the world. Seven years after that the western frontier of the great republic had advanced from the shores of the Mediterranean to the seaboard of the Atlantic, and stretched from the mouth of the Rhine to the Bay of Biscay. The people of Gaul had become subject and tributary to Rome, and what the future might be which the wonderful conquest had opened out for the victors and vanquished - who could forecast or imagine? mur. Among the last of those many peoples in the great basin of the Loire whom Cæsar names in his "Commentaries " were the Turones. Their territory appears to have extended along both banks of the Loire from Blois to SauEven then it must have been a fruitful land through whose southern borders flowed the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne. Then, as now, it must have been sunny Touraine.' But the people were not as warlike as the dwellers in the more rugged districts of Gaul; and when Cæsar made his dispositions for keeping the lately vanquished peoples in due sub- of apostles and semi-apostles going jection, he counted it enough to leave forth here, there, and everywhere when two legions in Touraine to overwe for the Church of Christ— time was the whole district of the lower Loire young, there is less than no proof from the Cher to the sea. Whether that in the wide region that lies bethe Turones had any important oppi-tween the Seine and the Garonne, and dum in their borders up to this time comprehends the whole basin of the does not appear, but the military oc- Loire -no proof, but strong presumpcupation of Touraine by a regular tion the other way, that Christianity army implied the existence of a gar- had got any firm foothold even at the rison town with regular defences; and beginning of the fourth century. early in the first century of our era we find such a stronghold occupying a commanding position at the point where the Loire is joined by the Cher. The city soon rejoiced in an imperial rare and not discouraged, there remains designation, and was called Augustodunum. For long it has been kuowu among men by its modern and more familiar name of Tours. We learn but little about this earlier Roman fortress or depôt. The people of Touraine broke out in revolt in the days of Tiberius; were promptly reduced to submission; seem to have behaved themselves becomingly for a few generations; lived in that kind of happiness which results in a people having no history; and were rewarded with the honor of freedom, for the meaning of which term any one who wishes to know is hereby referred to the work of M. Fustel de Coulanges.1 For religion, there is reason to believe that these people clung stubbornly to some half-mystic, half-idolatrous forms of faith and worship which we vaguely call Druidism. But as the generations passed on, and Roman culture and Roman ideas took even a deeper root, Druidism tended to die out, and what was left in its place which appealed to the people's hopes and fears and aspirations behind the veil none can tell us. The Saviour's Gospel soon got a firm foothold in the valley of the Rhone. The Narbonensis might be almost called a Christian land before the third century was well over. On the Rhine and the Seine there were important centres of the new faith. ever much the hagiologists may babble Nevertheless, when we have brushed away as much as we please of legend and fable and of tradition invented in the times when pious frauds were not a certain residuum of fact which may be accepted as the basis of sober history, and which finds us standing upon solid ground. It seems clearly established that in the middle of the third century a great missionary movement was started from Rome in the days of Pope Sixtus the Second, having as its object the evangelization of Celtic Gaul. Missionary work in those days was begun and carried on after a fashion which we in our times are only beginning to adopt. Those early missionaries were sent out in bands under a bishop appointed as the leader and commander, and one of these bands, it appears, was sent to Touraine, with a certain Gatian as its responsible director and head. He fixed his headquarters in the neighborhood of Tours. He found himself among a heathen people—a people who had lost their old Druid hierarchy with its elaborate organization, and whose religion was a confused and chaotic polytheism in which no one quite believed, which no one could hope to explain or defend, and which exercised over no one any moral influence or control. The Roman fortress occupying the extreme eastern limit of the modern town presented a frontage of about four hundred and fifty yards along the left bank of the Loire; its western limit extended to the point where the But, how-piers of the suspension bridge now stand, and it comprehended within its area the soldiers' quarters the Prætorium, the baths, and au immense semi 1 La Gaule Romaine, p. 210 et seq. circular theatre, the diameter of which | seven-and-thirty years; meanwhile There was a certain wealthy citizen of Tours whose name was Litor, a devout and earnest man, large-hearted and open-handed. He saw that the by which seems to be meant a sort of cloistral establishment, where the clergy might live in society, strengthening each other's hands. Then the Christians said, "Let Litor be our bishop," and somehow a bishop he was nearly five hundred feet, and cal-Christianity had been steadily making culated to hold seventeen thousand way. Constantine, the great emperor, spectators. To the westward the city had taken up with the new creed, and itself extended along the river bank. the world was following in his steps. The enormous walls which surrounded There was no talk of persecuting now, this important military station, and of nor any need to beg for mere tolerawhich fragments still remain to attest tion. The men that had jeered at the their cyclopean proportions, were not meek and lowly Gatian had passed yet built up. The terror of the Roman away, and a new generation had sprung name was sufficient in the third cen-up who had learnt to revere his name. tury to overawe the most audacious By this time peradventure they had subjects of the Empire, and the barba- got to call him a saint, and to wish rians on the frontiers had not yet burst there were another like him. the barriers that kept them within the borders assigned them. Tours was a free city. The taxes and tribute were not burdensome; trade flourished after a sort. There was peace and content- Christian folk were many, and that the ment in the land. The missionary time had come for providing them with bishop preached and taught and gath- a worthy place of assembly. So he ered converts. There is not much to built them a church wherein to worshow that the opposition he met with ship, and he acquired a great house in was fierce or violent, nor much to indi- | which a nobleman of Tours had dwelt, cate that his success was great. The and he converted it into a Basilica, converts were, it seems, the poor and lowly, but the "common people heard him gladly." At times he had to hide himself among the caverns in the rocks over there, on the other side of the river. At times he came forth again, showing an example of a life of became. We hear but little of him. self-sacrifice, and an example of holiness, meekness, and love. The only strip of land which those Christians owned among them seems to have been a cemetery outside the limits of the city to the west, and this cemetery appears to have been held on the same tenure as similar burial-places were held by the early Christians at Rome. There they laid their first bishop in the "Poor men's graveyard." Not yet, does it seem, could they call it a churchyard, for a church they could hardly venture yet to raise and worship in as their own. For fifty years we hear this man of faith and prayer stayed at his post; and when he died, While Litor was ruling his diocese there was none to carry on his work. with quiet zeal and discretion, a far There was nothing to tempt the half-more illustrious ruler than he was playhearted to follow in his steps. The ing a great part some seventy miles to little Christian society, however, kept the south of Tours. Poitiers was a city together and held its own. that lay on the highroad from Tours to This state of things went on for Bordeaux. We know very little of its They date his consecration in the year 337; he died in 371. Far away in the East there were wars and rumors of war—of vast masses of people moving westward of terrors and horror that were at hand; but then in the West, all over the wide basin of the Loire, there was peace and quiet. The revolting peasants had come to a frightful end well-nigh a hundred years ago. Tours was the most important city from the Loire to the Seine, and by this time in Gaul a bishop was a personage whose power and influence were great, and making themselves felt more and more from day to day. early history; but we do know that in have had time for study and reflection. the middle of the fourth century there There, too, he may have heard of the was a large number of Christians set-great Bishop Hilary in the W Vest, tled there; perhaps it is not saying too pounding away at the Arians, and givmuch to assert that Paganism had ing them no rest for they called him almost passed away in this region. At Malleus Arianorum-but all the while any rate the heathen folk were in a living the life of a saint, to whom this minority. At Poitiers, as at Tours, world was but a painful sojourningthere was a man of birth and education, place, the other world was his home. a man of wealth and position, who had Martin—that was his name threw been born in the town, and lived there up his commission, he could find no with his wife and daughter, and his peace; he, too, must become a real livname was Hilary. One day he declared ing, praying, fasting, toiling Christian. himself a Christiau; he had been for His heart was hot within him; he must long a devout student of the Scriptures, needs go to some one who could give but had hesitated to take his side. He him counsel and help, and tell him how would do so no more. He was bap-truth was to be found, and how heaven. tized with his wife and daughter, and could be ours. He was one of those then the eyes of all the faithful were ardent and passionate natures from turned upon him. There is nothing to whom the kingdom of heaven suffereth show that there had been any bishop. violence, who lay siege to its gates and at Poitiers till now. The people's batter its walls with strong sighs and voice rose up to heaven. "We need a tears, and who can give themselves uo guide and teacher among us, speaking rest till they have taken that kingdom with authority, and acting as our leader by force. To Poitiers he came, and and governor. Let Hilary the good be there the saintly Bishop Hilary reour bishop him and none else!"ceived him with open arms. There Those were days when it seems the was no limit to the ascendency which people did not wait for any congé d'élire. the elder man exercised over the It was twelve years or so before this younger. Martin was a man of birth that the church at Tours had elected and fortune, and he laid his worldly Litor; twenty-four years later St. Am-wealth at the feet of his teacher. brose was chosen Bishop of Milan by There was much strife and variance acclamation; now, in the year 350 A.D., among Christians in those days. The Hilary was summoned by the voice of heathen had ceased to persecute people the Christian people to be Bishop of for professing Christianity, but the Poitiers. Never was a popular election Arians and the Orthodox had begun to more justified by the event. Hilary persecute one another. The craze for became the champion of the orthodox asceticism, too, in its various forms had in the West; but he was more than a set in. Martin founded a monastery at mere polemic; the holiness of his Poitiers, doubtless a very different sort daily life exercised an immense per- of establishment from that which desonal attraction. To young men he veloped into the vast institutions of a was a hero to worship. Among them later time, for all this was going on was a young soldier born at Stein-am-more than one hundred years before Anger, a town about one hundred St. Benedict of Nursia was born or miles south of Vienna (Pannónia), who had served in the wars under Julian the Apostate, perhaps against the Alemanni in 359, and probably had been on the young prince's staff when he kept his court at Paris. There he may He was born in 336, consecrated on the 4th of July, 370, died on the 11th of November, 401, æet. 65 (Arndt and Krusch, Greg. ii. 590 n.): thought of. Such as they were, however, these early devotees had begun to be troublesome in the eastern parts of the empire, and their numbers had multiplied so seriously here, there, and everywhere that the Emperor Valens, A.D. 365, issued an edict ordering that monks should not be excused serving in the army, who so refused should be d mere unquestioning credulity, stubboruly receptive of all that might be offered. Let reason or conscience, or prudence, or doubt suggest what they might, these are all devil-born. flogged for his contumacy. But the | to be a force controlling the excesses of as a friend who held personal converse |