BOOKS.

LA FIN DU PAGANISME.* IN this book, as pleasant to read as it is learned and impartial, M. Boissier proves himself master of that historical method by which the reader is made a contemporary of the persons and events described. In his pages we become acquainted with the daily life, the customs and manners which moulded even the great personalities of the fourth and fifth centuries. He puts aside controversies between Christians, that he may give unity to the great humanitarian movement which dis- placed Paganism. Arius and Atbanasius are scarcely men- tioned, and the reader is invited rather to dwell on the assimilation of antique thought by the literary chiefs of the new creed than to take a part in their local and temporary disputes. Never was the principle of "progression by antagonism" more fully exemplified than in the struggles of that time, and it is the resulting progress to which we moderns owe so much, the fusions rather than the differences, on which we are bidden to look.

Except in the opening studies of Constantine and Julian, M. Boissier leaves the well-trodden road of historical events, and in a series of literary portraits he sets before us the prin- cipal agents who linked the elder learning with the revolu- tionary energy of freshly emancipated Christianity. In all the clearness of French arrangement and style, he points out the disintegration and the re-formation of ideas in the crucibles of political change. By his account of the daily habits of such differing men as Symmachus and Ambrose, Julian and Augustine, we better understand the relative value of their words ; and in his painting of Roman society, we appreciate the conflict of old and new thought, more apparent to us than to that society itself, which in some traits is curiously like our

• La Fin du Paganism. Par Gaston Boiseier, de l'Academie Francais°. Paris: Hachette.

own,—as certain of permanence, as reliant on intellectual superiority. But the G-alilean leaven of love and hope to be fulfilled in an ideal Justice was gradually breaking up. or transforming primieval myths and decrepit cults. A hundred rivulets were merged in the new current which could float humanity to its bourne all the more surely for their supplies ; but in the fourth century it was thick with detritus caught in a thousand eddies the turmoil of which is perhaps better ex- pressed in these sketches than in a more connected form of history.

It is difficult to estimate the importance of Letters in the

centuries of which M. Boissier writes. Rhetoric was the chief motive-force of the complex world, and what we call a "classical education" was the key to power, from the Ca3sara to the slaves. The system of education occupies, of course, a large place in these studies, a system which, notwithstanding. almost insurmountable difficulties, Christians were bound to adopt and hand down, even to our own times. Ciceronian forms, phraseology dating from the Augustan age, could alone be tolerated. It was the task of Jerome and Augustine to gain appreciation for the splendours of the Sacred Scriptures from Roman ears. A new school of Christian poets and rhetoricians appeared, who gradually forged links between the elder and

the new world. To use a fine expression of Sainte-Benve's, "Le Christianisme n'est que la rectitude de toutes les

croyances universelles, l'axe centrale qui fixe le sena de toutes les deviations," and we see it forcing its way as if by its own weight, with a catholicity vainly limited by its own champions as it assimilates all human products to its own end, the education of our race. It is our common impression that the decadence of letters was a consequence of the triumph of Christian thought ; but after pointing out the sterility of the third cen- tury, M. Boissier remarks that its only writers who are remembered are the Christian apologists, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and their fellow-believers :—

" All at once," he continues "the desert begins to be repeopled. With returning security, letters revive. From the reign of Con- stantine, writers in prose and in verse become more numerous, and a great literary era is begun. We are justified in so naming it, not only because it followed a barren period, but because it pro- duced poets such as Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola, as Prudentius and Claudian, writers on various subjects such as Symmachus and St. Jerome, orators like St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. I do not think it can be denied that this renaissance, as Niebuhr justly calls it, must be in great part attributed to the fresh spiritual and intellectual energy infused by Christian faith. It is noteworthy that all the world profited by it, profane as well as sacred lettem made progress, and every branch of literature revived."

It is natural that, after reviewing the technical details of the linguistic change, M. Boissier should express regret not,

so much for the introduction of new words as for the damage to syntax which followed the Christian use of popular lan- guage. We have the excuse in St. Augustine's words, fine scholar and rhetorician as he was : "I had rather grammarians complained than that my flock should fail to understand my meaning." M. _Boissier, indeed, suggests no special reason for the decay of Roman power, but he shows abundantly how much was saved from its wreck by those Christian hands which preserved all that was most valuable of Roman law and letters, which conquered the barbarians by the arts of peace,. and carried spiritual empire round the world.

Letters remain, M. Boissier thinks, the most important legacy of pre-Christian times, and their influence is the theme of his book. His chapter on the origins of Christian poetry is of special interest. It has its roots, he says, in the legends of the first two centuries,—in the Sibylline utterances, the Shepherd of Hernias, the Apocryphal Gospels, which have so largely coloured medimval conceptions. "We see them issue,. so to speak, from the popular feeling in anonymous and common forms to be elaborated later, and which for centuries have inspired art and poetry."

Born before Constantine's conversion, the little-known Commodianus appears to head the list of Christian poets with the display of extraordinary literary courage. The "Man of Gaza," the "Beggar of Christ," he desired to.

be an apostle of poverty, a precursor of the Franciscan order, and, like St. Francis, he used the popular language as yet unsanctioned by serious writers. But Commodianus

had not the bland tenderness of Francis, and scholars did not accept his rough attempts to break classic bonds. He- expressly addressed in the plainest speech, and without rhe-

torical turns, the uneducated folk of the market-place. But. he did more than that; he played havoc with metre. His wan the first note of enfranchised and familiar song. He began the transition from intellectual rules of correct verse to the more emotional joy of rhythm which links poetry to vibration ; to natural rather than artificial law, whether obeyed by the in- numerable atoms of the universe, or by human feet in dancing and human voices in singing. Coramodianus, however, was not welcomed, yet it was important to gain over literate society to the great Christian cause. Paulinus of Nola and Pradentins presented its claims with greater success, and helped to remove the stigma of vulgarity and ignorance attached by classical critics to all Christian letters. Some of the new emotion could, however, be uttered according to received rules, and Paulinus not only wrote poetry correctly, but lived the poetic life in the dignified charity of his career.

M. Boissier sets before us with success the contrasts of Roman society as its control was shifted from pagan and philosophic hands to those of martyrs for human brotherhood, from worshippers of divine Rome to seers of the illimitable • horizons which were opening on the world. The surpassing rhetoric which swayed men's minds, and was everywhere the chief conservative force, at last begot a reactionary thirst for simple " yea " and "nay," and the intricate systems of philo- sophy constructed dogmas eagerly received by men when cult after cult failed to satisfy them. The social dislocations of a time when, though the Church had assumed visible shape, Senators and Princes still vied with each other for priesthood at pagan shrines, when the altar of Victory was more respected by the upper class than the Labarum, have in M. Boissier's pages an interest not inapplicable to our own times. The democratic spirit was then, as now, akin to Christian morals, and though M. Boissier imposes on us no conclusions, he gives us suggestive pictures of the struggle between the new order of love enforced by a new standard of sin and

the egotism of stoical virtue. He supplies a careful study of St. Augustine, who is the foremost example of conversion in all ages, his Confessions reflecting as in a mirror the con-

fusions of the time, harmonised to Christian ends of noble philosophy and personal sanctity. We see the great Bishop taking spoil of pagan literature, as the Hebrews did of the Egyptians, assimilating all knowledge, and, after Alaric's sack of Rome, rebuilding the "City of God." M. Boissier _points out how, to meet the steady advance of Christian faith, which the educated classes considered a degrading and immoral superstition, dangerous to society, they endeavoured to concentrate inefficient polytheism into philosophic deism, and the worship of Mithra, was popularised as the beat anti- dote to that of our Lord, the best substitute for discredited Olympus. To the use by philosophers of precise formulas he traces dogma, and the taste spread to religion, which was required to express itself in definite creeds :—

"No one had demanded the like before," he observes. "I even imagine that in Cicero's time vagueness of belief was considered very satisfactory, for it left complete liberty to philo- sophers. As regarded the state religion, they were only bound in certain practices which were familiar to them from infancy, and which gave them little trouble ; while as to the main points of their faith, they could believe as they chose, there being no definite official creed. It was the golden age for free-thinkers, but it did not last. As nations at some epochs desire despotism to escape disorder, so in some crises thinkers long for certitude, and will make any sacrifice to attain their desire. They then crave the yoke with the same ardour as they usually demand independence. But it is not enough to desire subjection. It is not so easy as it would seem to find an authority which is able to impose faith. Paganism seemed unequal to the task. It was difficult to invent dogmas, to enforce them on its adherents, and to explain its divinities and its legends so as to give no offence. Yet paganism made the attempt. It sought repeatedly to renew its youth, to respond to the exigencies of public opinion, and one of the chief interests of the City of God is, while it combats them, to make us acquainted with these attempts."

Stoics and Neo-Platonists vied with each other in reconstruc- tion of a religious idea that would stay revolutionary Christian protests against the Imperial bribes of bread and games and bloodshed, whether in the arena or in unjust war, that would defeat the new claim of spiritual equality, and the steady re- sistance of the new sect to the tyranny rampant in every village of the Empire. M. Boissier acquits Christianity of having sapped the Empire, the ruin of which was long prepared; yet no doubt its growth tended to break through all but the limita- tions of the universe. Its mission had no term ; its duty was to extend the Christian commonwealth among barbarians as within Rome. Yet, with prevision wanting to the chiefs of Islam, the Church never broke with ancient literature. The renaissance of antique learning was welcome to her in the fourth as in the sixteenth century. To this day she uses in her schools, much after the antique Roman fashion, the literature which she accepts as part of the human inheritance. As M. Boissier remarks, we enjoy a. double bequest from the past through the great Christian writers of the fourth century. They preserved for us classical letters and Christian tradition. They point the path of progress by assimilation rather than renunciation of a fruitful antiquity.