or
independent type. England and Russia were not parts of the Germanic
revival of Charlemagne, but they had just the same two elements dominant
in their life: the classical tradition and the Christian Church.

And so throughout this time, the expansion of this society--by whatever
name we may call it, discovery, exploration, geographical knowledge--has
a continuous history. But before the rise of Islam, in the seventh
century, throws Christendom into its proper mediaeval life, before the
new religion begins the really new age, at the end of which lived Henry
himself, we are too far from our subject to feel, for instance in the
fourth and fifth-century pilgrims and in Cosmas Indicopleustes, anything
but a remote preparation for Henry's work. It is only with the seventh
century, and with the time of our own Bede and Wilfrid, that the
necessary introduction to our subject really begins.

Yet as an illustration of the general idea, that discovery is an early
and natural outlet of any vigorous society and is in proportion to the
universal activity of the State, it is not without interest to note that
Christian Pilgrimage begins with Constantine. This, the first
department of exploring energy, at once evidences the new settlement of
religion and politics. Helena, the Emperor's mother, helped, by her
visit to Palestine, her church at Bethlehem, and her discoveries of
relics in Jerusalem, to make a ruling fashion out of the custom of a few
devotees; and eight years after the council of Nicaea, in 333, appeared
the first Christian geography, as a guide-book or itinerary, from
Bordeaux to the Holy Places of Syria, modelled upon the imperial survey
of the Antonines. The route followed in this runs by North Italy,
Aquileia, Sirmium, Constantinople, and Asia Minor, and upon the same
course thousands of nameless pilgrims journeyed in the next three
hundred years, besides some eight or nine who have left an account
mainly religious in form, but containing in substance the widest view of
the globe then possible among Westerns.

Most of the pilgrims, like Jerome's friend Paula, Bishop Eucherius, and
Melania, tread the same path and stop at the same points, but three or
four of them distinctly add some fresh knowledge to the ordinary
results.

St. Silvia, of Aquitaine (_c._ 385), not only travels through Syria, she
visits Lower Egypt and Stony or Sinaitic Arabia, and even Edessa in
Northern Mesopotamia, on the very borders of hostil