Between the time when Philon astonished the orthodox money-getting Hebrews of the Jews' quarter by his daring adoption of Plato's Logos, and the day when poor old Proclus--his once handsome and strong frame wasted by fasting and Pythagorean austerities--died, a drivelling old man, in sight of the groves of the Academe and the tomb of Plato, not far from whom he himself was to lie, many a busy generation had trodden the halls of the Museum of Alexandria. All that time the strife of words had never ceased, in the lecture-hall, in the gardens of the departed Ptolemies, round the banquet-table where the professors were feasted at the state's expense. All that time the fame of Alexandria had gathered to her Museum the young generations that succeeded each other in the patrician homes and wealthy burghs of Syria, Greece, and Italy. They came in crowds, with their fathers' money in their purses, to be made learned by those of whose exploits report had told so much. Some came with an earnest purpose. To the young medical student, the Alexandrian school of anatomy and the Alexandrian diploma (in whatever shape it was given)--not to mention the opportunity of perusing the works of the immortal Hippocrates in forty substantial rolls of papyrus--were worth all the expense of a journey from Rome or Edessa. To the lawyer, the splendid collections of laws, from those of the Pentateuch to those of Zamolxis the Scythian, were treasures only to be found in the library where the zeal of Demetrius Phalerius and the munificence of Ptolemy Philadelphus had placed them. But the vast majority of the youth who flocked to the Museum came with no other purpose than the very general one of finishing their education and fitting themselves for the world. With these, the agreeable arts of poetry and polite literature were in far greater request than law, medicine, astronomy, or geography. If they could get a sight of the popular poet of the hour in his morning meditation under the plane-trees of the gardens, or could crush into a place in the theatre when he recited his new "Ode to the Empress's Hair;" or if they attended the lecture of the most fashionable exponent of the myths of the Iliad, and clapped him whenever he introduced an allusion to the divine Plato, it was considered a very fair morning's work, and might be fitly rewarded by a boating party to Canopus in the afternoon, or a revel far into the night in any of those thousand palaces of vice {37} with which luxurious Alexandria was so well provided. And yet there is no doubt that the young men carried away from their university a certain education and a certain refinement--an education which, though it taught them to relish the pleasures of intellect, in no wise disposed them to forego the enjoyments of sense; and a refinement which, while imparting a graceful polish to the mind, was quite compatible with the deepest moral depravity. Pagans as they were, they were the fairest portion of