n India in his
time, hunts and shoots in season, manages his estates with
something between amateur and professional interest, reads Horace
for his pleasure, and even has a turn for writing Latin verses.
Ausonius leaves us a picture of the life of his class: a placid,
cultured life, with quite a strong ethical side to it; sterile
of any deep thought or speculation; far removed from unrest.--
Another respresentative man was his friend Symmachus at Rome:
also highly cultured and of dignified leisure; a very upright
and capable gentleman widely respected for his sterling honesty;
a pagan, not for any stirring of life within his heart or
mind, but simply for love of the ancient Roman idea,--sheer
conservatism;--for much the same reasons, in fact, as make the
Englishman above-mentioned a staunch member of the English Church.

There were many such men about: admirable men; but unluckily
without the great constructive energies that might, under
Julian's guidance for example, have saved the empire. But the
empire! In that crisis,--in that narrow pass in time! It is not
excellent gentlemen that can do such near-thaumaturgic business;
but only disciples; for the proposition is, as I understand it,
to link this world with the God-world, and hold fast through
thunders and cataclysm, so that what shall come through,--what
shall be when the thunder is stilled and the cataclysm over,--
shall flow on and up onto a new order of cycles, higher, nearer
the Spirit. . . . . No; it is not to be done by amiable
gentlemen, or excellent administrators, or clever politicians. .
. . Julian had come flaming down into the world, to see if he
could rouse up and call together those who should do it; but his
bugles had sounded in the empty desert, and died away over the
sands.

There were tremendous energies abroad; but they were all with
the Destroyers, and were to be, ever increasingly: with such men
as, at this time, Saint Martin of Tours, that great tearer-down
of temples; or in the next century, Saint Cyril of Alexandria
and Peter the Reader, the tearers-to-pieces of Hypatia. Perhaps
the greatest energies of all you should have found, now and
later, in the Christian mob of Alexandria,--wild beasts innocent
of nothing but soap and water.

It was Symmachus who was chosen by the Roman Senate to remonstrate
with the emperor Valentinian against the removal of the altar
and statue of Victory,--the Pagan symbols,--from the senate
house.