gentleness, and charity; Lactantius, skilful Christian philosopher,
ingenious and possessing insinuating subtlety; Saint Hilarius, an ardent
polemist, impetuous and torrential; Saint Ambrose, exalted, wise, serene,
very well read, very "Roman," who may be styled the Cicero of
Christianity; Saint Jerome, ardent, impassioned, possessing lively
sensibility, an animated and seductive imagination, who--excluding all
idea of scandal--suggests what is purest and most beautiful in Jean
Jacques Rousseau; finally, that great doctor and noble philosopher of
the Church, Saint Augustine.

SAINT AUGUSTINE.--Saint Augustine is pre-eminently a philosopher, a man
who analysed ideas and saw all that they contained, their first principle
and their trend as well as their ultimate consequences. He was in
addition a great orator; he was also a historian, or at least a
philosopher of history, in his _City of God_; finally, he was a poet
at heart and imbued with the most exquisite sensibility in his immortal
_Confessions_. Probably he was the most extraordinary man of the
world of antiquity.

CHRISTIAN POETS.--Christianity even had its poets: Commodian, Juvencus,
the impassioned and skilful Prudentius, St. Paulinus of Nola. None were
very prominent, all possessed lively sentiment, such as Chateaubriand
evinced, for what is profoundly poetic in Christianity.

SECULAR POETS.--The last mundane poets were more brilliant than those of
Christianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminate
grace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyric
poet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptive
talent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritable
eloquence and maintained a continual brilliance which is fatiguing