in similar cases, leave certain traditionary monuments of their own belief.[1] This, however, I by no means intend to urge.
When instances of those who fled, or were exiled to the East, or voluntarily settled there, are so numerous, it would be idle to weary the reader's attention, by entering into any lengthened detail. The names of Clemens of Alexandria, of Ignatius, Tertullian, and Origen, are conspicuous in the second and third centuries, with many others, who were in constant intercourse with the West; and the soft and yielding character of these times presented a plastic surface to every, even the slightest touch. In the early part of the fourth century the foundation of Constantinople,[2] which drew from Italy such a large population, would facilitate the interchange of literature; for it is not improbable that many of the Asiatics, driven from their settlements by the influx of the foreigners, would hasten to occupy the homes which the others had vacated. At all events, the new settlers in the East had friends and connexions in their fatherland, with whom it was natural, and even necessary, that there should be a certain intercourse. Towards the conclusion of the third century, when monachism was so vehemently propagated, and the East inundated with a restless class of men, who strolled about in pursuit of proselytes (not much unlike the errant-knights of a subsequent age), the position I have laid down is more clearly evinced. It would be doing injustice to my subject, if, in speaking of this singular fact, I used other language than that of the historian of the Roman empire. "The progress of the monks," says this philosophic writer, "was not less rapid, or universal, than that of Christianity itself. Every province, and at last, every city of the empire, was filled with their increasing multitude; and the bleak and barren isles, from Lerins to Lipari, that arise out of the Tuscan sea, were chosen by the Anachorets for the place of their voluntary exile. An easy and perpetual intercourse by sea and land connected the provinces of the Roman world; and the life of Hilarion displays the facility with which an indigent hermit of Palestine might traverse Egypt, embark for Sicily, escape to Epirus, and finally settle in the island of Cyprus. The Latin Christians embraced the religious institutions of Rome.
- ↑ There is in the British Museum, I understand, a Turkish MS. poem, of which Alexander the Great is the hero. It is said to have been written in the 14th century, if not earlier.
- ↑ I use this term, and one or two following, with some latitude. Gibbon calls the little town of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, "the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople:" and the extreme approximation of the two shores, the constant and easy intercourse from and before the time of Xerxes, &c., downward, not omitting the Asiatic population which has been so long naturalized there, sufficiently authorize the expression.
