frisking round them, and slaves with parasols and fans trooping
along. There might be seen the ever-trading, ever-thriving Jew, fresh
from the wharves, or busy negotiating his loans. But, worst of all, the
chariots with giddy or thoughtful pagans hastening to the academy of
Hypatia, to hear those questions discussed which have never yet been
answered, "Where am I?" "What am I?" "What can I know?"--to hear
discourses on antenatal existence, or, as the vulgar asserted, to find
out the future by the aid of the black art, soothsaying by Chaldee
talismans engraved on precious stones, by incantations with a glass and
water, by moonshine on the walls, by the magic mirror, the reflection of
a sapphire, a sieve, or cymbals; fortune-telling by the veins of the
hand, or consultations with the stars.

[Sidenote: Murder of Hypatia by Cyril.]

Cyril at length determined to remove this great reproach, and overturn
what now appeared to be the only obstacle in his way to uncontrolled
authority in the city. We are reaching one of those moments in which
great general principles embody themselves in individuals. It is Greek
philosophy under the appropriate form of Hypatia; ecclesiastical
ambition under that of Cyril. Their destinies are about to be fulfilled.
As Hypatia comes forth to her academy, she is assaulted by Cyril's
mob--an Alexandrian mob of many monks. Amid the fearful yelling of these
bare-legged and black-cowled fiends she is dragged from her chariot, and
in the public street stripped naked. In her mortal terror she is haled
into an adjacent church, and in that sacred edifice is killed by the
club of Peter the Reader. It is not always in the power of him who has
stirred up the worst passions of a fanatical mob to stop their excesses
when his purpose is accomplished. With the blow given by Peter the aim
of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their
vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and
incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the
flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into
the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at
the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the
righteous indignation of posterity.

[Sidenote: Suppression of Alexandrian science.]

Thus, in the 414th year of our era, the position of philosophy in the
intellectual metropolis of the world was determined; henceforth