The subject of the lecture, which was extempore, and delivered with much ease and perspicuity, was evidently not intended to recommend to his auditors, but rather to repel them from an ascetic and contemplative life. Saint Jerome was delineated as a noble fool, a curiosity in human nature, and was to be deplored as a sacrifice to perverted reason, by no means to be imitated. The true end of humanity was not to be attained by flying from city life, and burying one’s self in a desert for study and self-mortification; that end was rather to be attained in the busy city, than in the isolated existence of the wilderness; and so on. Such was the lecturer’s moral. But upon me his arguments made an impression considerably antithetical to that which he intended. I saw this warrior of the third century devoured by a burning thirst of light and knowledge, of purity for his whole being; saw him wander out, seeking the wells of life; saw him, separating from the agreeable circles of city existence, roam on amid catacombs and the tombs of martyrs; saw him seeing in Gaul, and on the Rhine, and there finding—Christianity. Saw him there, after being baptized, with his Bible under his arm, retire into the deserts of Syria, and there, in the burning sands of Chalsis, bury himself for a number of years, amid exegetic studies and severe deeds of penance. I heard him, even at the time that he, according to his own words, “watered his couch with his tears,” and while he was given over, and regarded as a fool by his friends, still reproach those friends for having chosen the worse part, that of the life of enjoyment in the city, and break forth in transport, “O! silent wildernesses, flower-strewn by Jesus Christ! O! wild solitudes, full of his spirit!” I saw him, after his conflict was accomplished, go forth out of the desert with his Bible, enter Rome publicly, and unsparingly chastise the crimes of the proud city. I saw the haughty ladies of Rome first start, then bow themselves to the severe judgment of the teacher; saw Marulla and Paula renounce the dissipated life of Rome, and follow the preacher; found convents and Christian institutions in accordance with his views; saw him grow in the combat with the spirit of the age, till he stood as a founder of the greatest power on earth—that of the Christian Church. The _fool_, who had buried himself in the sands of Syria, and done battle with himself during solitary days and nights. Ah! this fool, this glowing sun of the desert, as he now stood forth to view, through the veil of fifteen centuries, grew greater and greater in my eyes, till, finally, he expanded himself over the whole of Birmingham, with all its factories, workshops, steel-pens, and the like, as a colossus above an ant-hill.