ent settlement on this side of the Rhine before the time of
Clovis, is refuted with much learning and good sense by M. Biet, who
has proved by a chain of evidence, their uninterrupted possession of
Toxandria, one hundred and thirty years before the accession of Clovis.
The Dissertation of M. Biet was crowned by the Academy of Soissons, in
the year 1736, and seems to have been justly preferred to the discourse
of his more celebrated competitor, the Abbe le Boeuf, an antiquarian,
whose name was happily expressive of his talents.]

Chapter XIX: Constantius Sole Emperor.--Part IV.

Under these melancholy circumstances, an unexperienced youth was
appointed to save and to govern the provinces of Gaul, or rather, as he
expressed it himself, to exhibit the vain image of Imperial greatness.
The retired scholastic education of Julian, in which he had been more
conversant with books than with arms, with the dead than with the
living, left him in profound ignorance of the practical arts of war and
government; and when he awkwardly repeated some military exercise which
it was necessary for him to learn, he exclaimed with a sigh, "O Plato,
Plato, what a task for a philosopher!" Yet even this speculative
philosophy, which men of business are too apt to despise, had filled the
mind of Julian with the noblest precepts and the most shining examples;
had animated him with the love of virtue, the desire of fame, and the
contempt of death. The habits of temperance recommended in the schools,
are still more essential in the severe discipline of a camp. The simple
wants of nature regulated the measure of his food and sleep. Rejecting
with disdain the delicacies provided for his table, he satisfied his
appetite with the coarse and common fare which was allotted to the
meanest soldiers. During the rigor of a Gallic winter, he never suffered
a fire in his bed-chamber; and after a short and interrupted slumber, he
frequently rose in the middle of the night from a carpet spread on the
floor, to despatch any urgent business, to visit his rounds, or to steal
a few moments for the prosecution of his favorite studies. [67] The
precepts of eloquence, which he had hitherto practised on fancied topics
of declamation, were more usefully applied to excite or to assuage the
passions of an armed multitude: and although Julian, from his early
habits of conversation and literature, was more familiarly acquainted
with the beauties of the Greek language, h