nt sur Constantin, en croyant tout le
mal ru'en dit Eusebe, et tout le bien qu'en dit Zosime. Fleury, Hist.
Ecclesiastique, tom. iii. p. 233. Eusebius and Zosimus form indeed the
two extremes of flattery and invective. The intermediate shades are
expressed by those writers, whose character or situation variously
tempered the influence of their religious zeal.]

The person, as well as the mind, of Constantine, had been enriched
by nature with her choices endowments. His stature was lofty, his
countenance majestic, his deportment graceful; his strength and activity
were displayed in every manly exercise, and from his earliest youth,
to a very advanced season of life, he preserved the vigor of his
constitution by a strict adherence to the domestic virtues of chastity
and temperance. He delighted in the social intercourse of familiar
conversation; and though he might sometimes indulge his disposition to
raillery with less reserve than was required by the severe dignity
of his station, the courtesy and liberality of his manners gained the
hearts of all who approached him. The sincerity of his friendship
has been suspected; yet he showed, on some occasions, that he was not
incapable of a warm and lasting attachment. The disadvantage of an
illiterate education had not prevented him from forming a just estimate
of the value of learning; and the arts and sciences derived some
encouragement from the munificent protection of Constantine. In the
despatch of business, his diligence was indefatigable; and the active
powers of his mind were almost continually exercised in reading,
writing, or meditating, in giving audiences to ambassadors, and in
examining the complaints of his subjects. Even those who censured
the propriety of his measures were compelled to acknowledge, that he
possessed magnanimity to conceive, and patience to execute, the most
arduous designs, without being checked either by the prejudices of
education, or by the clamors of the multitude. In the field, he infused
his own intrepid spirit into the troops, whom he conducted with the
talents of a consummate general; and to his abilities, rather than to
his fortune, we may ascribe the signal victories which he obtained over
the foreign and domestic foes of the republic. He loved glory as the
reward, perhaps as the motive, of his labors. The boundless ambition,
which, from the moment of his accepting the purple at York, appears as
the ruling passion of his soul, may be j