Only you must not be impatient; you must wait and hope. You don't know as well as I do what difficulties are in the way. Perhaps I ought to have foreseen what was likely to happen, when you and Alan were thrown so much together as you have been lately; but I never dreamt-' she stopped, compressing her lips, as if annoyed that a truth, for once, was escaping them. 'Well-never mind; confess, Helen, you did not fear that I should oppose your wishes? You know my first object in life is to see you happy; and I have not often contradicted you, have I, since you were old enough to have a will of your own?'

I fancy that most damsels, under similar circumstances, would have been of Miss Vavasour's opinion"That there never was such a darling mother.' She did not express it very intelligibly, though; and, indeed, it must be confessed, that the conversation from this point was of a somewhat incoherent and irrational nature. Feminine example is miraculously contagious; if the fountain of tears is once unlocked, the gentle influence of the Naïad will be sure to descend on every womanly bosom within the circle of its spray. I do not mean

to imply that upon the present occasion there was any profuse weeping; but they got into a sort of caressive and altogether childish frame of mind-a condition very unusual with either mother or daughter. It may be questioned, if the sympathetic weakness displayed by Lady Mildred was altogether assumed. The most accomplished actresses have sometimes so identified themselves with their parts, as to ignore audience and foot-lights, and become natural in real emotion. Five minutes, however, were more than enough to restore one of the parties to her own calm, calculating self. Another yet fonder caress told Helen, as plainly as words could have done, that the audience was ended: as soon as she was alone, Lady Mildred fell back into her old quiet, musing attitude. But the French novel was not taken up again; its late reader had a plot, if not a romance, of her own, to interest her now. Whether the thoughts that chased one another so rapidly through that busy brain were kindly or angry, whether the glimpses of the future were gloomy or hopeful-the smooth, white brow and steady lips betrayed, neither by frown nor smile.

rocks of the wilderness from its horrid pollution. In fact, there has been in modern times a good deal of loose thinking and talking on this subject. We have confounded things which ought not to have been mixed up together, and shown in our judgments no small lack of discrimination. The solitary have been classed with the monkish orders, and have come in for a considerable share of the opprobrium which has justly enough been attached to conventual establishments of all kinds. But a hermit's life is comparatively innocent; a monk's can hardly be so. Wherever men are congregated into masses, no matter under what pretence, and especially if they enjoy any corporate privileges, there corruption springs up with tropical rankness. The mere withdrawing from the world, and leading a life of contemplative solitude, partakes more of eccentricity than moral defilement. Besides, it must be borne in mind that retiring to a cave or hut in Egypt, Nubia, or Mesapotamia, is a very different sort of thing from dwelling in a cave or hut on the hills of Westmoreland, or in the gorges of the Highlands. A cave in hot countries is a most delicious retreat-a place coveted and sought after—

From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.

And when we hear of the anchorites living on the simple herbs of the wilderness, we must remember that these consist of the delicious grape, the orange, the pomegranate, the fig, and other equally pleasant and nourishing productions, not the wild haws and blackberries which, even in nature's most prodigal humour, would be all that would fall to the lot of any poor fellow who should take a fancy in European regions for a life of seclusion from society. Then, again, the physical man does not need in these warm regions the diet of a London alderman; nay, it becomes revolting to the stomach, and destructive of life itself. It is often mentioned in the lives of the Eastern hermits that they had little

gardens about their habitations; and we have no doubt but if we could lift up the veil of past times, and could arrive at the real facts of the case, we should find that the majority of these devotees to asceticism really lived very comfortable and cozy lives in these dry and delicious climates. The bodily mortifications we associate with their names is little more than ideal, being founded on things having little or no positive relation to each other.

As to the question, how far a solitary life, for the avowed purpose of religious contemplation, is allowable, according to the spirit and letter of Christian doctrine, much might be said; and the question naturally gives rise to many nice points, which cannot be satisfactorily disposed of in a short paper like this. We shall therefore leave them, and merely make an observation or two on the general bearings of the main questions connected with Christian asceticism.

It must be conceded on all hands that religion must be either one of the most important things in this life, or it must be nothing at all. There is no middle course to steer. To those, therefore, who are fully convinced of the first part of the position, it will not appear so extravagant should their feelings be so roused, and their hopes and fears excited, as to induce them to give undivided attention to such a vital question, to devote the entire intellectual man to its sublime truths, and to consider no earthly sacrifice too great to endeavour to raise human nature up to its elevated scale of morality and devotion. This course of proceeding would seem to be countenanced by many obvious analogies in nature. When important ends in the constituted order of things are to be effected, we always recognise a sufficiently powerful and wellarranged apparatus for their accomplishment. And it certainly would appear a thing out of all character were the serious and awful considerations of a future life of endless happiness or misery to fall

upon the human ear with all the transitory coldness and indifference attached to temporal affairs. There seems, then, to be some degree of fitness in religion engrossing the individual attention of a part of mankind at least, in order that they may prove instruments in preserving its vital principles, and in imparting a share of their enthusiasm, by personal devotion, to the greater and colder masses of human kind.

Christianity is a comprehensive system, in reference to the feelings of mankind. It always did and always must affect men in different modes, and with different degrees of intensity. All the facts connected with its promulgation display this inherent characteristic. One lawgiver and prophet, one apostle and disciple, one ancient father and martyr, differed from another; and various degrees of ardour, devotedness, zeal, judgment, and spiritual devotion animated and directed them in every movement and path of life.

The question as to the historical evidence for the literary fragments ascribed to the early solitaries of the desert will necessarily be viewed in various lights. It must be admitted that there cannot be the same degree of external evidence for the authenticity of these productions, as there is for the biographical narratives and remains of all or any of those voluminous writers of the early ages of the Church who took a conspicuous part in the stirring events to which the introduction of Christianity gave rise. Solitary individuals

afford little inducement to notoriety and distinction. Whatever flowers of intellect or piety blossom here are certainly doomed to waste their sweetness on the desert air.' But still this natural state of things would not altogether exclude collections of scattered records of these martyrs to seclusion. This would to a certain extent take place; and there is this circumstance connected with statements about them, that they gave little occasion to fabrications as to their conduct, talents, or opinions.

285

They were placed beyond the pale of sectarian animosity and party feeling; therefore, if the narratives respecting them be probable in themselves, they may fairly enough lay claim to a reasonable share of credibility and belief.

And it may be observed in passing, that every one knows, who has paid any attention to the history of Christianity, that the question as to the historical authenticity of many of the most important and esteemed works connected with our religion, is, even to this hour, in some measure an open one, and will remain such, in all probability, till the end of the world. This arises from the very nature of things. It is a very easy matter to call in question the genuineness of any literary work of antiquity; but a difficult undertaking to trace step by step those several links of evidence which lead the mind to a rational conviction. There is no writer, even on profane subjects, of five centuries' standing, who could go through such a searching ordeal as that to which theological writings are subjected, even when they can justly date their origin from more remote times. Here authority and tradition become powerful and necessary auxiliaries to truth. Without their assistance the treasures of wisdom, whether religious or secular, could never be accumulated; and our experience of to-day would prove completely inoperative for our guidance and direction to-morrow.

But let us pass on to historical evidences. Ruffinus, who flourished in the middle of the third century, collected memoirs of the solitaries of the desert. He went from Rome to visit those who dwelt in Egypt. He then proceeded to the city of Jerusalem, where he spent twenty years, chiefly in visiting and in obtaining accounts of these pious men. These memoirs were originally published without his name, and the religious world would have remained entirely ignorant of their real authorship, had it not been preserved by means of the Christian father of the Church, Jerome. The number of biogra

phical sketches by Ruffinus amounts to thirty-three. They have always maintained a high repute among theological writers, and are alluded to by Saints Benoit, Cassiodorus, Gregory of Tours, Fulbert bishop of Chartres, and others. Palladius of Galatia was another writer on the ascetics. He was himself one of the hermits who lived on Mount Nitre, and flourished in the year 388, and was subsequently made bishop of a diocese in Bythinia. He visited all the solitaries of the desert of whom he could learn any account; and heard from their own lips matters concerning their mode of life, the country they respectively belonged to, and the progress they had made in Christian knowledge, humility, and self-denial. In the eightieth year of his age, he was requested by the Governor of Cappadocia to write the lives of the most distinguished of the anchorites of Egypt, Lybia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, and Italy. This compilation was made and dedicated to his patron, the governor. Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, and St. John of Damascus, speak highly of it.

Sulpicius Severus gives an account of a journey that his patron, St. Martin, had made three years before his death, to see and converse with the solitaries of Egypt; and Theodoret, bishop of Cyr, furnishes a statement of the recluses of the desert in Syria and the neighbouring countries. Theodoret lived in

the middle of the fifth century: he declares that his information is correct, and that he describes nothing but what he saw himself or obtained from eye-witnesses of undoubted credit and purity of character.

Pelagius, a deacon of the Roman church, translated into Latin, in conjunction with John, a subdeacon, a work on the Life and Doctrines of the Fathers of the Desert. The original treatise was in Greek. Paschal, who is supposed to have been a monk in the Abbey of Dume, in Gallacia, translated from the Greek a work containing questions put to many anchorets in the East, and the answers they made to them. And John Mose, an abbot, gives an account of the most remarkable actions and sayings of these ancient solitaries, in a work entitled The Spiritual Flower Garden.*

Now a word or two upon the manner in which the Catholic Church has treated the writings and characters of a portion of these ascetic devotees. It has uniformly, within the last three centuries especially, been anxious to throw a moiety of them into the background; to pass a slight on those whose writings either in letter or spirit seemed to oppose the childish and puerile superstitions with which it feeds the credulity of its followers in every portion of the globe. Books on the Ancient Fathers of the Desert,