“I copy for thee a passage from Hilary’s _Life of the Holy Honoratus, Bishop of Arles_. ‘Great,’ he writes, ‘O illustrious Honoratus, is thy glory. Thy merit did not need to be proved by signs and wonders. Thy life, full of virtues, presented a perpetual miracle. Many miracles and signs indeed we saw, but of these thou thoughtest little. Greater to thee was the joy that Christ Himself should acknowledge thy merits and virtues than that men should observe thy miracles. _Peace also has her martyrs_, and thou, whilst thou didst remain in the body, wast a perpetual witness and martyr for Christ.’” The next letter of Marius was from Marseilles. “I am more at home here than since I left thee, with the Presbyter Salvian, his wife Palladia, and their daughter Auspiciola; at home and cheerful. Not that Salvian is an optimist, or takes a cheerful view of the world or of the Church. But he dares to look at things as they are. One feels, with him, no longer dancing on a crust of ice above an abyss of dark waters. Although the change is scarcely more than that of clinging to the side of a precipice at the edge of an abyss, there _is_ the rock to cling to. In short, I have come out of that stifling artificial atmosphere and breathe again. Salvian says of our Rome, ‘Our own vices alone have conquered us;’ and to see that, if our Rome could indeed see it, would be to repent and live. “He compares us with the barbarians in a way which recalls Tacitus and his Teutons, perhaps idealizing the barbarians, but scarcely, I fear, caricaturing the Romans. ‘You Romans and Christians and Catholics,’ he writes, ‘are defrauding your brothers, are grinding the faces of the poor, are frittering away your lives over the impure and heathenish spectacles of the amphitheatre; you are wallowing in licentiousness and drunkenness. The barbarians meanwhile, heathens or heretics though they may be, and however fierce towards us, are just and fair in their dealings with one another. The men of the same clan, and following the same king, love one another with true affection. The impurities of the theatre are unknown amongst them. Many of their tribes are free from the taint of drunkenness, and among all, except the Alans and the Huns, chastity is the rule.’ “His own home is like a monastery for austerity and regularity of life. His wife and daughter consecrate themselves to a religious life, and all the household are devoted to the service of the poor. He is a presbyter, but he is revered far and wide for his learning, secular and sacred; his counsel is sought by the highest and the lowest, and he has been called a teacher of bishops (_Magister Episcoporum_).