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men have called it in every age. From the want of well understanding this, Eusebius and many others have fallen into the grossest errors. All their care

about a church is centred in her external decorations and embellishments; whereas this custom, whenever it has prevailed to an undue length, has always driven zealous, serious, and really pious men from the church. This is a lamentable

fact. Active members of the church have taken great pains to decorate her in variegated marble, never for a moment considering that the building is one thing, and the church another;-that the latter is composed of holy and harmless spirits, while wood and stone are the materials of the other.

The several topics treated of by St. Peter in his three other letters are handled in the same plain and common-sense spirit.*

St. Alonzo de Vega was a Spanish recluse who is well known in the theological annals of his own country. He flourished about the end of the seventh century. He was the son and only child of a military officer of rank. At a very early age St. Alonzo became inspired with a burning zeal for the propagation of the Christian system throughout all the most unenlightened portions of Spain; founding churches, and interesting himself in every possible undertaking for the good of the people. He traversed Navarre, Guípuscoa, Biscaya, Alva, Burgos, Old Castile, the Asturias, and Leon. He then set sail for Africa, but a storm overtook them when near the land, and he was shipwrecked, and only himself and a seaman were saved. This disaster produced a great change in his mind; he betook himself to solitude, and died in the eightyninth year of his age.

There is a work called Meditations, which has been often noticed by Spanish writers. One of the Meditations is 'On the Nature of Unbelief.' The author attempts to show what are its ordinary foundations, and the common characters or attributes it

assumes among men of the world. His reflections on The Immortality of the Soul,' and on 'Eternal Punishments,' show that he was deeply skilled in the ancient philosophy of Greece and Rome. In the Meditations we have several other essays, under the following heads, 'De la Prudencia, gran ornato, y madre de las virtudes; 'De la Felicidad que puede aver en este mundo;' 'De la Sapiencia, que es el mayor ornato del Anima.'t

Some years after this we meet with St. Isidorus, but the accounts of him in the Spanish chronicles are conflicting and obscure. We are at a loss to determine whether he is the same person as St. Isidorus Pacencis, who wrote in the year 735 However, this is not a matter of any great moment. It would appear that the Isidorus of whom we are about to speak was born about the end of the seventh or the commencement of the eighth century. He studied all the branches of learning and philosophy of his age; filled some distinguished public situations with ability and credit; and about his fortieth year was smitten with a love of solitude. He took with him, we are told, into retirement, the Sacred Scriptures, the works of St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, Origen, Tertullian, and the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome. It is mentioned that his memory was so retentive that he could recite the whole of the books of Scripture without making a single mistake.

After having been a few years a recluse in one of the most wild and sequestered localities of Spain, he determined to travel to the East and visit the Holy Land. This journey occupied him two years. He says, 'I have had, during my whole life, an ardent desire to see Judea the place of our Saviour's birth, life, sufferings, and death. This desire, as I increased in years, became every day more vehement

Le Lettre di San-Pietro l'Eremita. Milan. 1542.

+ See Los Padres del Desierto, Madrid, 1564, vol. 2, art. Alonza de Vega;' Dialogos de Cosas Espirituales; Flos Sanctorum, Madrid, 1602; Origen de los frailes Ermitanos de la Orden de St. Agustin, Salamanca, folio, 1630.

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and uncontrollable, until at length I felt it my duty to yield compliance with it.' He went by way of Egypt; ascended the Nile for a considerable distance, and visited many of the religious solitaries in that part of the country. His conversations with them, and his descriptions of their state and condition, are given in a journal; but we regret that our space will not allow us to transcribe any part of them.

In another small work, called On the Improvements of the Soul, he gives us an account of the Holy Land; and this is extremely interesting in a historical point of view, as furnishing a striking proof of that deep-seated and long-cherished feeling entertained by religious men, on the necessity of obtaining, if not possession, at least an easy access to this sacred portion of the world. Here we see that feeling in a lively state of effervescence full three centuries before the Crusades commenced. Isidorus says:

my

I shall never forget my first sensations on obtaining a glimpse of the Holy Land. I fell down upon my face; I felt an inward thrill of sublimity run through every part of my body; and conceived I was now certainly in the presence of Jehovah himself. I remained in this torpid state for several minutes, so that my guides were apprehensive I was dead. When I recovered from the tumult of my feelings, I felt a sweet and tranquil joy, that, through the mercies of God, I had been able to see with my own eyes that which mind had dwelt upon from the earliest days of my childhood. Yes! I had now seen the Holy Land; that blessed spot of God's creation so fruitful of wonders and happiness to the human race. I was now treading upon the very ground where, perhaps, my Saviour, or some of his own chosen disciples, had trodden before, when effecting the sublime work of man's salvation. How engrossing the thought! How interesting the retrospect of such mighty events! As I trod over the ground, every stone, every twig, every tree, in fact everything which presented itself to my senses, possessed an unusual charm and interest, which I had never before experienced. Even the

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barren rocks and frightful deserts had their charms, and recalled to my mind many of the leading events in the history of the Jewish people, the chosen of the Almighty. I thought of the garden of Eden, of man's creation, his fall and expulsion from it; of the deluge, of the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai; and all the marvellous things which are contained in the Old Testament. My soul was filled with holy awe, and pious resolutions to devote the whole of my life to the contemplation of these mysterious but interesting themes.

After our author has described Jerusalem and its vicinity with considerable minuteness, he makes use of the following remarkable words:

I speak of my joy in visiting the Holy City; but I speak with a mournful re

serve, when I consider who are now the rulers of this country- the enemies of our faith, and our persecutors. But such is the fact. My heart bleeds when I think of those conquests, and the subsequent severities which the savage invaders have inflicted in this scene of the most wonderful events the world ever witnessed. But repining is useless; and I feel assured that future ages will revenge themselves upon these cruel intruders into holy and sanctified ground. *

Saint Benoit was a solitary of Phrygia, and in early life pursued his studies at Alexandria, and at several other seats of learning. We have a Fragment on Predestination and Grace from his pen. He treats of this great question in a very general and summary way, but is sufficiently explicit to show that he perfectly comprehended where the real difficulties of the subject really lay. After Benoit, we have Saint Clement, born of noble parents, and of large landed possessions, which he sold on going into solitude, and gave the produce to the poor. He has a small work on the Mysteries of Religion, which embraces the following heads :The Incarnation, the Birth of our Saviour, His Circumcision, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, His Transfiguration, His Entry into

*Sanctorum Eremitorum Vitæ, Strasburgh, folio, 1693; Los Padres, vol. i. p. 250; Les Pensées de la Solitude Chrétienne, Paris, 1622, in 12m0, p. 200.

Jerusalem, His Passion, His Resurrection, His Ascension, the Feast of Pentecost, the Sacrament, and the Mysteries of the Trinity.

Saint Pelagius was a native of Syria. His parents were rich and influential, and they gave him a learned education. He was employed in the early part of his life in the service of Prince Abderaman, who, in 750, at the revolution of the Califate, at Damascus, having fled from the massacre of his family, came into Spain, and fixed his residence at Cordova. Here he founded an independent kingdom, where the arts and sciences were introduced and cultivated with assiduity, during a period when most of the other kingdoms of Europe were involved in darkness and barbarism.

Pelagius, for several years after the establishment of the Prince Abderaman in Spain, laboured with uncommon zeal and effect in promoting a knowledge of all kinds of science and a love of general literature. At the age of fifty three he became, however, tired of public life, and was determined to withdraw into solitude, and devote himself to the perusal of the Holy Scriptures, to the nature of which, his biographers say, he had not till then paid much attention. The pious man sought out one of the most barren and desolate places in the country, where he fixed his dwelling, which was simply a cave hewn out of a solid rock. Here he lived and studied for many years, and prolonged his life to the age of eighty-two.

The works ascribed to him are under the general head of Fragments, embracing topics of a speculative and philosophical cast. We have his thoughts on Knowledge in General, on Reasoning, and on the Thinking Principles of Animals. Pelagius says there are only two

faculties of the mind-judgment and memory; that what we call knowledge is not a thing of the senses, but of the reason; and that the errors of man proceed chiefly from the innate weakness of the mental powers of certain classes of persons. On the thinking faculties of brutes, he says but little, contenting himself with giving a short outline of the opinions of some Arabian philosophers on the subject. He adds, however, It must be allowed on all hands that there is something pre-eminent about man over all the other classes of the living creation.'

Saint Ammon is the last of the solitaries we shall notice. We are told that at the age of forty-eight he retired into a desert spot in Arabia Felix, where he built himself a rude hut, and observed the most austere rules of bodily mortification. He was often visited by groups of Christian pilgrims, who were delighted with the courteousness of his demeanour and learned conversation. His biographers give us a great number of these gossiping literary entertainments, but we must pass them over in order to notice a poem attributed to St. Ammon on the Burning of the Alexandrian Library. This work has, we have been informed, been translated within the last century into both French and Italian; but we have never been so fortunate as to obtain either of those translations. The extracts we give here are from the Spanish copy, which was itself a translation from the Latin about three hundred years ago. We have followed the general sense of the Spanish as closely as we could. After describing the progress of the fire, its fierce ragings from one section of the building to another, the consternation felt at the direful effects, the author says

Alas! what mental treasures perished there,
And shone their last in that destroying glare!
Which human wisdom to their grasp must yield.
Here did the martyr Justin yearn in youth,

To drink deep draughts from streams of holiest truth.
Here did the bright-souled Origen assay

His mental weapons for a sterner day.
The bold Tertullian, he of soul sublime,

Fierce as his race, and fiery as his clime,

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At length 'tis done. The dying embers red
On many a rood of smoking ruin spread;
But choked and dimmed beneath these ruins lie

Old Egypt's learning, wisdom, mystery.
There lie the fragments of her noblest fame-
Beneath yon ashes Philo's laurels lie,
And works immortal deemed for ever die.
The surging waves of that remorseless fire
Pile o'er man's noblest toils their funeral pyre.
From hall to hall the insatiate fury flies;
Now climbs the roof, and now the wall defies;
Runs up the battlements of yon tall tower,
And flouts the trophies of Egyptian power;
Darts in fierce triumph on each temple's pride,
And showers with mad delight perdition wide;
Flares in grim rapture o'er the sacred dome,
Where mild-eyed science built her favourite home;
And on those groves its direst vengeance flung,
Where sages mused and long-lost poets sung.

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Of HIM, whose hand must strike the crescent down,
Thou wroughtst this hideous deed, thou art well repaid
The sacrilegious scheme thy malice laid.

Behold the Moslem, sunk and trampled now,
The wealth of conquest torn from off his brow;
His fame, his wealth, his influence waning fast,
And all but baffled pride for ever past,

Whilst his high Sultan, fam'd Byzantium's lord,
Quails 'neath the frown of some barbarian horde!
And thou too, Omar, mark thy destiny!

Yon stern avenger will not let thee die;

But stamps on Time's broad page thy blighted name,
And bids thee live embalmed in lasting shame.

VOL. LXIV. NO. CCCLXXXI.

X

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GONE.

EDGAR ALLAN POE thought

the most touching of all words, Nevermore; which, in American fashion, he made one word. American writers do the like with Forever, I think with bad effect. Ellesmere, in that most beautiful story of Gretchen, tells of a sermon he heard in Germany, in which 'that pathetic word verloren (lost) occurred many times.' Every one knows what Dr. Johnson wrote about The Last. It is, of course, a question of individual associations, and how it may strike different minds; but I stand up for the unrivalled reach and pathos of the short word GONE.

There is not very much difference, you see, between the three words. All are on the suburbs of the same idea. All convey the idea of a state of matters which existed for a time, and which is now over. All suggest that the inmost longing of most human hearts is less for a future, untried happiness, than for a return, a resurrection, beautified and unalloyed with care, of what has already been. Somehow, we are ready to feel as if we were safest and surest with that.

It is curious, that the saddest and most touching of human thoughts, when we run it up to its simplest form, is of so homely a thing as a material object existing in a certain space, and then removing from that space to another. That is the essential idea of Gone.

Yet, in the commonest way, there is something touching in that: something touching in the sight of vacant space, once filled by almost anything. You feel a blankness. in the landscape when a tree is gone that you have known all your life. You are conscious of a vague sense of something lacking when even a post is pulled up that you remember always in the centre of a certain field. You feel this yet more when some familiar piece of furniture is taken away from a room which you know well. Here that clumsy easy-chair used to stand; and it is gone. You feel yourself an interloper, standing in

the space where it stood so long. It touches you still more to look at the empty chair which you remember so often filled by one who will never fill it more. You stand in a large railway station: you have come to see a train depart. There is a great bustle on the platform, and there is a great quantity of human life, and of the interests and cares of human life, in those twelve or fourteen carriages, and filling that little space between the rails. You stand by and watch the warm interiors of the carriages, looking so large, and so full, and as if they had so much in them. There are people of every kind of aspect, children and old folk, multitudes of railway rugs, of carpetbags, of portmanteaus, of parcels, of newspapers, of books, of magazines. At length you hear the last bell; then comes that silent, steady pull, which is always striking, though seen ever so often. The train glides away: it is gone. You stand, and look vacantly at the place where it was. How little the space looks; how blank the air! There are the two rails, just four feet eight and a half inches apart: how close together they look. You can hardly think that there was so much of life, and of the interests of life, in so little room. You feel the power upon the average human being of the simple, commonplace fact, that something has been here, and is gone.

Then I go away, in thought, to a certain pier: a pier of wooden piles, running two hundred yards into the sea, at a quiet spot on a lovely coast, where various steam-vessels call on a summer day. You stand at the seaward end of the pier, where it broadens into a considerable platform; and you look down on the deck of a steamer lying alongside. What a bustle: what a hive of human beings, and their children, and their baggage, their hopes, fears, and schemes, fills that space upon the water of a hundred and fifty feet long and twenty-five wide! And what a deafening noise, too, of escaping steam fills

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