vi

AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK.

tiful words, after saying that Alexis was at length aggregated to the communion of the blessed: Quibuscum memor esto nostri qui te colimus, Alexi !"

14. Saint Adalbert, Bishop of Prague and Martyr, who has left some homilies on the subject of St. Alexis.

15. Joseph Assemani.

16. Paul de Barri, the Jesuit, who published a Life of Alexis, in the year 1661, at Avignon.

17. The Acts of Alexis at the Gesù, in Rome. 18. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, (July 17.) 19. Charles Bartholomew Piazza, in his Hemeralogio Romano, (July 17,) page 50.

20. Nicholas Doglione, De Rebus Venetis.

21. Arnoldus Raissius, in Hierogazophylacio Belgico, pages 45 and 453.

22. Donatus, the Jesuit, page 252, lib. iii.

23. St. Peter Damian.

24. Omphrius Panvinius.

25. Sebastian Fantoni Castrucci, History of Avignon, tome i. page 62.

26. Manuscript Breviary of Spire, 1478. 27. The Old Manuscript Roman Breviary. 28. Hyppolyte Helyot, History of the Monastic, Religious, and Military Orders, 8 vols. Paris, 1714.

29. Stephen Binet, the Jesuit, Compendium of the Lives of the principal Founders (Antwerp, 1634), page 231.

30. Nicholas Crusenius, Monasticum Augustinianum, page 146.

31. Miræus.

THE

LIFE AND TIMES

OF THE

ROMAN PATRICIAN ALEXIS.

CHAPTER I.

A WORD BEFOREHAND.

THERE is a man who writes in London a certain weekly work full of obscenity, horror, and abomination; the price of it is one penny. It has, of course, the most demoralizing effect on its readers, — who are, for the chief part, the chamber-maids of lodging-houses, the low artizans, the pensive and studious section of the pickpockets, certain unmentionable women (when disposed to unbend their minds), and all the embryo malefactors who are, or may be, hereafter, consigned to transportation and the rope.

Literature of this sort is not long-lived; it is like garbage, it defies preservation: it cannot be made to last; it rots, dies, is forgotten. But the effects of it remain; it

produces infection

it exhales a moral

malariar and wide; it corrupts the air; and, owing to its vile inebriations, it is inhaled by thousands of wretches:- they seek to forget their misery in regaling themselves with this literary decoction.

Now, one question: What is the position of the author of such a production? Whether he keeps his carriage, I know not; but I believe that, if he pleased, he might keep twenty. Perhaps £16,000 a-year are under his rough receipts. At all events it has been stated, I am credibly informed, that eighty thousand copies of his work are sold weekly. But say half that number. One question more: What are his acquirements? They are most ordinary. His chief talents consist of an intimate acquaintance with vice, as it is, and a lively idea of vice, as it might be.

Not to him has education or Providence accorded amplitude of intellect or the noble art of eloquent persuasion, knowledge or wisdom, literary inspiration or philosophy. Without pretending to transcendent talents, any man, conscious of ordinary powers and ordinary attainments, may well be forgiven for conceiving that he could easily write as clever a work; and, by similar means achieve a similar success. I believe you or I could achieve a greater.

The work, however, to which I now have the high privilege of bending my labours, promises not, in this mammon-worshipping age, so wide a circle of readers; it is the life of a glorious Saint, who flourished in the early part of the fifth century, when, around the decayed bulwarks of the Western Empire, the countless tribes of the North and of the East-the Visi-Goths, the Ostro-Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns-began to storm and rage, like a boundless ocean rolling against artificial embankments.

What degree of popularity and what term of existence this little book may meet, I cannot foresee; but at least I write it from good motives, and, bestowing on it my utmost pains, I commend it to the protection of that great and wonderful saint of whose life it treats, and who may easily, if he please, obtain for it a success, not often achieved by unworldly productions in a worldly age. Perhaps this hope will be realized.

You may occasionally hear, amid the din and uproar of the town, a strain of sweet and delicate music, soaring above the noise, and prevailing against the discord.

10

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE TIMES.

Under the reign of Theodosius, the most brilliant of all the later emperors, there lived at Rome a senator called Euphemian and his wife Aglais. They were half Greeks by extraction, as their names import, and had probably attended Theodosius from Constantinople in one of the expeditions which that lion-hearted prince conducted against the barbarians. This, however, is not clear; the Greek couple of whom we speak may have settled in Rome as early as the reign of Valens, who, after rewarding the services of the father of Theodosius by murdering him, was himself burnt to death in a tent at the battle of Adrianople.

According to certain historical accounts, Euphemian and Aglais enjoyed such wealth as would throw all our great ducal fortunes combined into the shade; and the senator's secretary, from his salary alone, might have accumulated more than Rothschild ever saved or ever made. The style in which Euphemian lived may be conceived from the alleged fact, that he had three thousand male servants in his town palace. But, then, it should be remembered that Rome was the capital of the Western Empire, and that she never was richer than at that day,