“This was the one special lesson which the Angelical drew from the wilderness and the fathers, which came to him through S. Benedict, indeed, but rather as a principle of _quies_ than of exertion. In the desert athletes, and those who followed them, he found that principle operative, and almost military in its chivalrous readiness to combat and spill blood in defence of truth. It lent to him what it exhibits in them also—breadth of view, largeness, moral freedom, stubborn courage, generosity of heart, expansion of mind, and an electric light of intellect, which bear about them a touch of the Eastern world. How could the Angelical read Anthony’s life, or follow Athanasius in his exiles, or see Basil so heroically rigid in his defence of right, or hear, in imagination, Gregory Theologus pouring out a stream of polished eloquence, without being impressed by truth’s grace and music; how could he watch S. Chrysostom, all on fire with his love of God and with his discriminating sympathy for men, or think of the ascetic Jerome, battling single‐handed in the wilderness, or perusing his Scripture in the cave; how could he dwell in spirit with S. Ambrose or S. Gregory the Great, or follow the career of the passionate, emotional, splendid S. Augustine, without expanding in heart and mind towards all that is best and greatest—all that is most noble and most fair in the majestic character of God’s tenderly‐cherished saints? “Had he not known them so intimately, great as he was, his mind would have been comparatively cramped, his character most probably would have been less imperial in its mould, and there would have been less of that oriental mightiness about his intellectual creations, which now reminds one of those vast monuments of other days, which still are the marvel of travellers in the East, and the despair of modern engineers.” (II., pp. 523‐5.)