nt to Constantinople a counter-protest
declaring that there had been no disturbance in the city.

Athanasius, with nearly the whole of the nation for his friends, easily
escaped the vengeance of the emperor; and, withdrawing for a third time
from public life, he passed the remainder of this reign in concealment.
He did not, however, neglect the interests of his flock. He encouraged
them with his letters, and even privately visited his friends in
Alexandria. As the greater part of the population was eager to befriend
him, he was there able to hide himself for six years. Disregarding
the scandal that might arise from it, he lived in the house of a young
woman, who concealed him in her chamber, and waited on him with untiring
zeal. She was then in the flower of her youth, only twenty years of age;
and fifty years afterwards, in the reign of Theodosius II., when the
name of the archbishop ranked with those of the apostles, this woman
used to boast among the monks of Alexandria that in her youth she had
for six years concealed the great Athanasius.

But though the general was not wholly successful, yet the Athanasian
party was for the time crushed. Sebastianus, the new prefect, was sent
into Egypt with orders to seize Athanasius dead or alive, wherever he
should be found within the province; and under his protection the Arian
party in Alexandria again ventured to meet in public, and proceeded
to choose a bishop. They elected to this high position the celebrated
George of Cappadocia, a man who, while he equalled his more popular
rival in learning and in ambition, fell far behind him in coolness of
judgment, and in that political skill which is as much wanted in the
guidance of a religious party as in the government of an empire.

George was born at Epiphania in Cilicia, and was the son of a clothier,
but his ambition led him into the Church, as being at that time the
fairest field for the display of talent; and he rose from one station
to another till he reached the high post of Bishop of Alexandria. The
fickle, irritable Alexandrians needed no such firebrand to light up the
flames of discontent. George took no pains to conceal the fact that he
held his bishopric by the favour of the emperor and the power of the
army against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, he
opened his doors to informers of the worst description; anybody who
stood in the way of his grasp at power was accused of being an enemy
to the empe