to, then contemplated with curiosity, and afterwards believed in. People soon came to admire them, and from that moment imitating them was a natural consequence--in a few years the deserts were peopled with thousands of their disciples, who gave themselves up entirely to prayer and to manual labour. St. Anthony was the first of these Fathers of the desert who consented to tear himself away from the austere charms of this solitude, and come with a retinue of monks to reside in Alexandria, for the purpose of combating the Arians, and inducing them to recognise the decisions of the Council of Nice. After having won the admiration and respect of his adversaries by his brilliant arguments against the philosophers of the school of Alexandria, after holding his ground even against emperors, he retired to the desert, upon Mount Colzin, with his disciples Macarius and Amathas, and only left it to inspect the monasteries which he had founded, and which contained more than fifteen thousand cenobites. St. Athanasius, one of the most illustrious pupils of St. Anthony, continued to spread, by his discourses and his writings, the doctrines of his master. He went to reside at Rome in 340, with several eminent anchorites, and he then preached by example as well as by precept, and became the indefatigable promoter of monastic institutions in Western Europe. At the same period, St. Pachomius, who had founded in the Thebais the monastery of Tabennæ, compiled the first complete regulations that have been handed down to us for the use of the cenobites, in which manual labour as well as prayer was prescribed. Several celebrated doctors and fathers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome (Fig. 237), and St. Cyril, practised asceticism. [Illustration: Fig. 236*].--St. Anthony, a statuette in stone of the Third Century, belonging to a gentleman of Cambrai. This engraving, never before published, shows us what the holy doctors thought of the great anchorite of Egypt. He is treading underfoot the devil, who is represented by the unclean animal in the flames. The closed book signifies that, without any study, solely by hearing them read, he learnt the Holy Scriptures by heart; and St. Jerome testifies that he expounded them with wisdom. The triangular _tau_ is the Egyptian shape of the cross; the bell signifies the power of driving away the evil spirit.]