We have next the "Elegia," containing 110 lines in elegiac metre, which form a collection of moral maxims and examples borrowed from the personages and facts of sacred history.[49] Every second line is made to begin and end with the same clause, but used in different senses. The reader will probably agree with us in thinking that this style of composition is more likely to develop ingenuity than inspiration. After the "Elegia" is the truly beautiful hymn beginning with the words, "A solis ortus cardine," some portions of which are familiar to most of our readers. It is an abecedarian poem, the first stanza commencing with the first letter of the alphabet, A, the second with B, and so on through the letters. It contains 92 lines, or 23 stanzas, and details the leading facts of the life of Christ in language that is very terse and striking. The first seven stanzas are read by the Church in the Lauds of her greatest festival on Christmas Day; and the next four at first Vespers of the Epiphany, but in the first line for the latter feast the words-- Hostis Herodes impie Christum, are changed into-- Crudelis Herodes Deum Regem. It is noteworthy, too, that the Introit of the Mass of the Blessed Virgin--"Salve Sancta Parens enixa puerpera Regem," as well as several other expressions in the Divine Office, are borrowed from the _Carmen Paschale_ of Sedulius.[50] At the end of his poems the author adds a short epigrammatic prayer, in which he asks that the doctrines of the life of Christ, which he has written, may remain engraven in his heart, and so by doing the divine will he may secure a share in the joys of heaven.[51] We have two double acrostic poems, eloquent with the praises of the great Sedulius, one attributed to a certain Liberius, of whom nothing further is known, and the other to Belisarius, if that be the true reading, who in some MSS. is described as a scholastic--that is, master or professor of a school of rhetoric. According to other critics this Belisarius, who so highly eulogises our Sedulius, was no other than the great general, the saviour of the Roman Empire, who was driven by the ungrateful master whom he had served to beg his bread. What is most remarkable in these two poems, is that in both the acrostic represents our author as SEDULIUS ANTISTES. The latter term is usually applied, at least by Christian writers, only to bishops, and certainly goes to show that the poet was elevated to the episcopal dignity. Alcuin also attributes the hymn, "_A solis ortus cardine_" to the "Blessed Bishop Sedulius," and Sigebert of Gembloux (died A.D. 1112), seems to have been of the same opinion. Yet, in several MSS. he is spoken of simply as a priest, and even of those authors who describe him as a bishop none has determined his see.