The sacking of Rome had afforded the Romans a pretence for accusing Christianity of being the cause of the ruin which had befallen the Empire, and for asserting that Christianity had been injurious to mankind. St. Augustine wrote his celebrated treatise to show the absurdity of this assertion, “and to prove, by historical facts, how much the world had been ameliorated by revelation.” Orosius wished to prove, from the history of the world, what Augustine had proved from the history of the Church, and the result was the great work for which he is famous. It is written on Christian lines and is in reality a defence of the Christian religion. Orosius undertook the work at the request of St. Augustine, to whom it is dedicated. King Alfred, in translating it into Anglo-Saxon, introduced much new matter. Here is a paragraph relating to the history of our own land:-- “The Romans gave Caius Julius (Cæsar) seven legions, to the end that he might wage war four years on the Gauls. When he had overcome them, he went into the island of Britain, and fought against the Britons, and was routed in the land, which was called Kentland, and they were routed. Their third battle was near the river, which is called Thames, near the ford called Wallingford. “After that battle the king came into his hands, and the townspeople that were in Cirencester, and afterwards all that were in the island.”[50] Another remarkable traveller who started out from Galicia was a woman. “Jerome had been the leader,” says Montalembert, “of that permanent emigration which, during the last years of the fourth century, drew so many noble Romans and Christians of the West towards Palestine and Egypt.” “In proportion,” he adds, “as souls were more penetrated with the truths of the faith, and gave themselves to the practice of Christian virtues, they experienced an attraction more and more irresistible towards the countries which were at once the cradle of the Christian religion and of monastic life. Then were seen beginning those pilgrimages which ended in the Crusades.” The writer has given us an account of many Romans, both men and women, who undertook pilgrimages to Palestine in the fourth century, but the story of Etheria--the illustrious Spanish lady who travelled to the Holy Land from distant Galicia about 385 A.D.,[51] and who wrote a book about her journey, the original manuscript of which is still in existence, quite escaped his notice. Florez, writing towards the end of the eighteenth century, believed that of this interesting lady no other record had been preserved than that which he found in the works of the Abbot Valerius, and which he published for the first time. Florez devoted several pages of his volume on Galicia to this plucky abbess, or nun, whichever she might be, because he felt sure that she was a native of that province. Long after his day the discovery of her own writings (in 1883), and the research of which she has since been the subject, has proved beyond all