me to send you the verses which I made at the request of your father-in-law,' that respectable man who, in the society of his equals, was equally ready to command or to obey. But as you desire to know in what place and upon what occasion those verses were made, to the end better to understand this valueless production, lay the blame only on yourself if the preface be longer than the work.

"We were met at the sepulchre of Saint Just,2 illness preventing you from joining us. Before day, the annual procession was made, amidst an immense populace of both sexes, that could not be contained in the church and the crypt, although surrounded by immense porticoes; after the monks and priests had performed morning service, alternately singing the psalms with great sweetness, each retired—not very far, however to the end that all might be ready for tierce, when the priests should celebrate the divine sacrifice. The narrow dimensions of the place, the crowd which pressed around us, and the large quantity of lights, had choked us; the oppressive vapor of a night still bordering upon summer, although cooled by the first freshness of an autumnal dawn, made this inclosure still warmer. While the various classes of society dispersed on all sides, the chief citizens assembled round the tomb of the consul Syagrius, which was not at the distance of an arrow-shot.

"Some were seated under the shade of an arbor formed of stakes covered with the branches of the vine; we were stretched upon the green turf embalmed with the perfume of flowers. The conversation was sweet, cheerful, pleasant; moreover (and this was far more agreeable), there was no question either of power or tributes; no word which could compromise, nor person who could be compromised. Whosoever could in good terms relate an interesting history, was sure to be listened to with earnestness. Nevertheless, no continuous narration was made, because gaiety frequently interrupted the discourse. Tired at length of this long repose, we desired to do something else. We soon separated into two bands, according to ages; one party loudly demanded the game of tennis, the others a table and dice. For myself, I was the first to give the signal for tennis, because I love it,

1 Philimathius.

2 Bishop of Lyons, towards the end of the fourth century. His fête is celebrated on the 2d of September.

as you know, as much as books. On the other side, my brother Dominicius, a man full of kindness and cheerfulness, seized the dice, shook them, and struck with his dice-box, as if he had sounded a trumpet, to call players to him. As to us, we played a good deal with the crowd of scholars, so as to reanimate by this salutary exercise the vigor of our limbs stiffened by too long repose. The illustrious Philimathius himself, as says the poet of Mantua,

"Ausus et ipse manu juvenum tentare laborem,"

constantly mixed with the players at tennis. He succeeded very well at it when he was younger, but now, as he was often driven from the middle, where people were standing, by the shock of some running player; as at other times, if he entered the arena, he could neither make way nor avoid the ball, and as frequently overthrown, he only raised himself with pain from the unlucky fall, he was the first to leave the scene of the game, heaving sighs, and very much heated: this exercise had swollen the fibres of the liver, and he experienced poignant pains. I left off at once, charitably to cease at the same time as he, and thus save our brother from feeling embarrassed at his fatigue. We then seated ourselves again, and soon he was forced to ask for water to bathe his face; they brought him some, and at the same time a napkin covered with hair, which had been washed and was by chance suspended from a cord, held by a pulley before the foldingdoor of the house of the porter. While he leisurely dried his cheeks, he said to me: I wish you would dictate for me a quatrain upon the cloth that has rendered me this office.' 'Be it so,' I answered. But,' added he, 'let my name be contained in these verses.' I replied, that what he asked was feasible. 'Well!' he replied, dictate them.' 'I then said to him, with a smile: 'Know, however, that the muses will soon be irritated if I attempt to meddle with their choir amidst so many witnesses.' He then answered very briskly, and yet with politeness (for he is of great readiness of imagination and an inexhaustible fund of wit): Rather take care, lord Solius, that Apollo does not become far more irritated, if you attempt to seduce his dear pupils in secret and alone.' You may imagine the applause excited by this prompt and wellturned answer. Then, and without further delay, I called his secretary, who was there already, tablets in hand, and I dictated to him a quatrain to this effect:

6

"Another morning, whether in going out of the hot bath, or when the chase has heated his brow, may the handsome Philimathius still find this linen to dry his dripping face, so that the water may pass from his forehead into this fleece as into the throat of a drinker!'

"Scarcely had your Epiphanius written these verses when they announced to us that the hour was come when the bishop came forth, when we immediately arose."

Sidonius was then bishop, and doubtless many of those who accompanied him to the tomb of Saint Just and to that of the consul Syagrius, who participated with him in the celebration of divine service, and at the game of tennis, in the chanting of the psalms, and in the taste of trifling verses, were bishops like him.

It

We are now at the end of the first question which we laid down; we have considered the social state of civil and religious, Roman and Christian Gaul, at the fifth century. remains for us to study the moral state of the same epoch, the idears, the doctrines, the sentiments which agitated it; in a word, the internal and intellectual life of men. This will form the subject of the next lecture.

FOURTH LECTURE.

Object of the lecture-What must be understood by the moral state of a society-Reciprocal influence of the social state upon the moral state, and of the moral state upon the social state-At the fourth century, civil Gaulish society alone possessed institutions favorable to intellectual development-Gaulish schools-Legal situation of the professors-Religious society has no other mediums of development and influence than its ideas--Still one languishes, and the other prospers-Decline of the civil schools-Activity of the Christian Society-Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, and Saint Paulin of Nola— Their correspondence with Gaul-Foundation and character of monasteries in Gaul-Causes of the difference of the moral state of the two societies-Comparative view of the civil literature and the Christian literature in the fourth and fifth centuries-Inequality of the liberty of mind in the two societies—Necessity for religion lending its aid to studies and letters.

BEFORE entering into the examination of the moral state of Gaulish society at the end of the fourth and at the commencement of the fifth century, I must be allowed to say a few words as to the nature of this part of my task. These words, moral state, have, in the eyes of some people, a somewhat vague appearance. I would wish to determine their meaning with precision. Moral sciences, now-a-days, are accused of a want of exactitude, of perspicuity, of certainty; they are reproached as not being sciences. They should, they may be sciences, just the same as physical sciences, for they also exercise themselves upon facts. Moral facts are not less real than others: man has not invented them: he discovered and named them; he takes note of them every moment of his life; he studies them as he studies all that surrounds him, all that comes to his intelligence by the interposition of his senses. Moral sciences have, if the expression be allowed, the same matter as other sciences; they are, then, not by any means condemned by their nature to be less precise or less certain. It is more difficult, I grant, for them to arrive at exactitude, perspicuity, precision. Moral facts are, on the one hand, more extended and more exact, and, on the other, more profoundly concealed, than physical facts; they are at once more complex in their development, and more simple in

their origin. Hence arises a much greater difficulty of observing them, classifying them, and reducing them to a science. This is the true source of the reproaches of which the moral sciences have often been the subject. Mark their singular fate they are evidently the first upon which the human race occupied itself; when we go back to the cradle of societies, we everywhere encounter moral facts, which, under the cloak of religion or of poetry, attracted the attention, and excited the thought of men. And yet, in order to succeed in thoroughly knowing them, scientifically knowing them, all the skill, all the penetration, and all the prudence of the most practised reason is necessary. Such, therefore, is the state of moral sciences, that they are at once the first and the last in the chronological order; the first, the necessity which works upon the human mind; the last, that it succeeds in elevating to the precision, clearness, and certainty, which is the scientific character. We must not, therefore, be astonished nor affrighted by the reproaches which they have incurred; they are natural and legitimate: let it be known that neither the certainty nor the value of the moral sciences are in the least affected by them; and thence let this useful lesson be drawn, that, in their study, in the observation and description of moral facts, it is necessary, if possible, to be still more nice, exact, attentive, and strict, than in anything else. Profiting by the lesson, I commence by determining with precision, what I intend to convey by these words-the moral state of society.

We have hitherto been occupied with the social state of Gaul, that is, the relations of men among themselves, and their external and natural condition. This done, the social relations described, are the facts, whose aggregate constitutes the life of an epoch, exhausted? Certainly not: there remains to be studied the internal, the personal state of men, the state of souls, that is, on one side, the ideas, doctrines, the whole intellectual life of man; on the other, the relations which connect ideas with actions, creeds with the determinations of the will, thought with human liberty.

This is the two-fold fact which constitutes, in my opinion, the moral state of a society, and which we have to study in the Gaulish society of the fifth century.

According to a very general opinion, I might dispense with insisting long upon this inquiry. It has often been said that the moral state depends upon the social state, that the rela