plunged anew into the world, avoided all intercourse with the monks, and followed the light of that ideal beauty even into the jaws of hell.(264) Anecdotes of this kind, circulated among the monks, contributed to heighten the feelings of terror with which they regarded all communication with the other sex. But to avoid such communication was sometimes very difficult. Few things are more striking, in the early historians of the movement we are considering, than the manner in which narratives of the deepest tragical interest alternate with extremely whimsical accounts of the profound admiration with which the female devotees regarded the most austere anchorites, and the unwearied perseverance with which they endeavoured to force themselves upon their notice. Some women seem in this respect to have been peculiarly fortunate. St. Melania, who devoted a great portion of her fortune to the monks, accompanied by the historian Rufinus, made, near the end of the fourth century, a long pilgrimage through the Syrian and Egyptian hermitages.(265) But with many of the hermits it was a rule never to look upon the face of any woman, and the number of years they had escaped this contamination was commonly stated as a conspicuous proof of their excellence. St. Basil would only speak to a woman under extreme necessity.(266) St. John of Lycopolis had not seen a woman for forty-eight years.(267) A tribune was sent by his wife on a pilgrimage to St. John the hermit to implore him to allow her to visit him, her desire being so intense that she would probably, in the opinion of her husband, die if it were ungratified. At last the hermit told his suppliant that he would that night visit his wife when she was in bed in her house. The tribune brought this strange message to his wife, who that night saw the hermit in a dream.(268) A young Roman girl made a pilgrimage from Italy to Alexandria, to look upon the face and obtain the prayers of St. Arsenius, into whose presence she forced herself. Quailing beneath his rebuffs, she flung herself at his feet, imploring him with tears to grant her only request—to remember her, and to pray for her. “Remember you!” cried the indignant saint; “it shall be the prayer of my life that I may forget you.” The poor girl sought consolation from the Archbishop of Alexandria, who comforted her by assuring her that, though she belonged to the sex by which dæmons commonly tempt saints, he doubted not the hermit would pray for her soul, though he would try to forget her face.(269) Sometimes this female enthusiasm took another and a more subtle form, and on more than one occasion women were known to attire themselves as men, and to pass their lives undisturbed as anchorites. Among others, St. Pelagia, who had been the most beautiful, and one of the most dangerously seductive actresses of Antioch, having been somewhat strangely converted, was appointed by the bishops to live in penance with an elderly virgin of