relates with enthusiasm the case of a young man who had been designed by his father for the army, and who was lured away to a monastery.(289) The eloquence of St. Ambrose is said to have been so seductive, that mothers were accustomed to shut up their daughters to guard them against his fascinations.(290) The position of affectionate parents was at this time extremely painful. The touching language is still preserved, in which the mother of Chrysostom—who had a distinguished part in the conversion of her son—implored him, if he thought it his duty to fly to the desert life, at least to postpone the act till she had died.(291) St. Ambrose devoted a chapter to proving that, while those are worthy of commendation who enter the monasteries with the approbation, those are still more worthy of praise who do so against the wishes, of their parents; and he proceeded to show how small were the penalties the latter could inflict when compared with the blessings asceticism could bestow.(292) Even before the law of Justinian, the invectives of the clergy were directed against those who endeavoured to prevent their children flying to the desert. St. Chrysostom explained to them that they would certainly be damned.(293) St. Ambrose showed that, even in this world, they might not be unpunished. A girl, he tells us, had resolved to enter into a convent, and as her relations were expostulating with her on her intention, one of those present tried to move her by the memory of her dead father, asking whether, if he were still alive, he would have suffered her to remain unmarried. “Perhaps,” she calmly answered, “it was for this very purpose he died, that he should not throw any obstacle in my way.” Her words were more than an answer; they were an oracle. The indiscreet questioner almost immediately died, and the relations, shocked by the manifest providence, desisted from their opposition, and even implored the young saint to accomplish her design.(294) St. Jerome tells with rapturous enthusiasm of a little girl, named Asella, who, when only twelve years old, devoted herself to the religious life and refused to look on the face of any man, and whose knees, by constant prayer, became at last like those of a camel.(295) A famous widow, named Paula, upon the death of her husband, deserted her family, listened with “dry eyes” to her children, who were imploring her to stay, fled to the society of the monks at Jerusalem, made it her desire that “she might die a beggar, and leave not one piece of money to her son,” and, having dissipated the whole of her fortune in charities, bequeathed to her children only the embarrassment of her debts.(296) It was carefully inculcated that all money given or bequeathed to the poor, or to the monks, produced spiritual benefit to the donors or testators, but that no spiritual benefit sprang from money bestowed upon relations; and the more pious minds recoiled from disposing of their property in a