y of
himself. Julian had to take up a body in which on the one side
ran the warrior blood of Claudius Gothicus and Constantius
Chlorus, on the other, the refinement and culture of the
senatorial house of the Anicii. Two such streams, coming
together, might well need some harmonizing: might well produce,
for example, an acute self-consciousness,--to be mastered. What
he got from them, for world-service, was on the one hand his
superb military leadership and mastery of affairs; on the other,
his intense devotion to learning and culture. Thus the two
streams of heredity appeared, dominated by his own quality of
Vision. The paternal stream, by his generation, had grown much
vitiated: it was pure warriorism in Claudius Gothicus, and even
in Constantius Chlorus; it was warriorism refined with subtlety
and cruelty in Constantine I; it was mere fussy treacherous
cruelty in the Spider-Octopus,--and sensual brutality in Julian's
brother Gallus. The vices of the latter may indicate how great a
self-conqueror the unstained Julian was.

He was a Keats in imperial affairs, dying when he had given no
more than a promise of what he should become. He laws, his
valor, his victories, his writings, are no more than _juvenilia:_
they are equal to the grand performance, not the promise, of many
who are counted great. He came out from his overshadowment and
long seclusion, from him books and dreams; was thrown into
conditions that would have been difficult for an experienced
statesman, and won through them all triumphantly; was set to
conduct a war that would have taxed the genius of a Caesar, a
Tiberius, or an Aurelius,--and swept through to as signal
victories as any of theirs. He learnt the elements of drill, and
was straight sent to conquer the conquering Germans; and did it
brilliantly. He came to a Gaul as broken and hopeless as Joan of
Arc's France; and found within himself every quality needed to
heal it and make it whole.

Joan conquered with her Vision; Julian conquered with his. He
set out with this before his eyes and in his soul:--The Gods are
there; the beautiful Gods; uttermost splendor of divinity is at
the heart of things. The glory of the Gods and of their world
filled his eyes; and the determination filled his soul to make
this outer world conform to the beauty of his vision. The thing
he did not care about,--did not notice, except in a humourous
way,--was that queer thing of a personality that had been