he loved the best." "To this day," I quote this fact from M. de
Montalembert's work, "the Cypriots, confounding in their memories
legends of good and of evil, the victories of the soul and the
triumph of the senses, give to the ruins of one of those strong
castles built by the Lusignans, which command their isle, the double
name of the Castle of St. Hilarion, and the Castle of the God of
Love." But how intense must have been the longing for solitude
which drove the old man to travel on foot from Syria to the Egyptian
desert, across the pathless westward waste, even to the Oasis and
the utmost limits of the Egyptian province; and then to Sicily, to
the Adriatic, and at last to a distant isle of Greece. And shall we
blame him for that longing? He seems to have done his duty
earnestly, according to his own light, towards his fellow-creatures
whenever he met them. But he seems to have found that noise and
crowd, display and honour, were not altogether wholesome for his own
soul; and in order that he might be a better man he desired again
and again to flee, that he might collect himself, and be alone with
Nature and with God. We, here in England, like the old Greeks and
Romans, dwellers in the busy mart of civilized life, have got to
regard mere bustle as so integral an element of human life, that we
consider a love of solitude a mark of eccentricity, and, if we meet
any one who loves to be alone, are afraid that he must needs be
going mad: and that with too great solitude comes the danger of too
great self-consciousness, and even at last of insanity, none can
doubt. But still we must remember, on the other hand, that without
solitude, without contemplation, without habitual collection and re-
collection of our own selves from time to time, no great purpose is
carried out, and no great work can be done; and that it is the
bustle and hurry of our modern life which causes shallow thought,
unstable purpose, and wasted energy, in too many who would be better