it is an important document in the history of early Christian education for girls. He gave similar advice in his Letter to Gaudentius, regarding the education of her daughter Pacatula. Both letters are pervaded by the ascetic spirit of the age and of the monastic East. Læta later followed Saint Jerome's advice, sending Paula to a nunnery near Bethlehem, where she finally became abbess of a nunnery founded there by her grandmother.

Thus must a soul be educated which is to be a temple of God. It must learn to hear nothing and to say nothing but what belongs to the fear of God. It must have no understanding of unclean words, and no knowledge of the world's songs. Its tongue must be steeped while still tender in the sweetness of the Psalms. Boys with their wanton thoughts must be kept from Paula: even her maids and female attendants must be separated from worldly associates. For if they have learned some mischief they may teach more.

Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of ivory and called each by its proper name. Let her play with these, so that even her play may teach her something. And not only make her grasp the right order of the letters and see that she forms their names into a rhyme, but constantly disarrange their order and put the last letters in the middle and the middle ones at the beginning that she may know them all by sight as well as by sound.

Moreover, so soon as she begins to use the style upon the wax, and her hand is still faltering, either guide her soft fingers by laying your hand upon hers, or else have simple copies cut upon a tablet; so that her efforts confined within these limits may keep to the lines traced out for her and not stray outside of these. Offer prizes for good spelling and draw her onwards with little gifts such as children of her age delight in.

And let her have companions in her lessons to excite emulation in her, that she may be stimulated when she sees them praised. You must not scold her if she is slow to learn, but must employ praise to excite her mind, so that she may be glad when she excels others and sorry when she is excelled by them. Above all you must take care not to make her lessons distasteful to her, lest a dislike for them conceived in childhood may continue into her maturer years. The very words which she tries bit by bit to put together and pronounce ought not to be chance ones, but names specially fixed upon and heaped together for the purpose, those for example of the prophets or the apostles or the list of patriarchs from Adam downwards, as it is given by Matthew and Luke. In this way while her tongue will be well trained, her memory will be likewise developed.

Again, you must choose for her a master of approved years, life, and learning. A man of culture will not, I think, blush to do for a kins

woman or a high-born virgin what Aristotle did for Philip's son when, descending to the level of an usher,' he consented to teach him his letters. Things must not be despised as of small account in the absence of which great results can not be achieved. The very rudiments and first beginnings of knowledge sound differently in the mouth of an educated man and of an uneducated. Accordingly you must see that

the child is not led away by the silly coaxing of women to form a habit of shortening long words or of decking herself with gold and purple. Of these habits one will spoil her conversation and the other her character. She must not therefore learn as a child what afterwards she will have to unlearn.

The eloquence of the Gracchi is said to have been largely due to the way in which from their earliest years their mother spoke to them. Hortensius became an orator while still on his father's lap. Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness? An unused jar long retains the taste and smell of that with which it was first filled. Grecian history tells us that the imperious Alexander, who was lord of the whole world, could not rid himself of the tricks of manner and gait which in his childhood he had caught from his governor Leonidas. We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear unattainable. Paula's nurse must not be intemperate, or loose, or given to gossip. Her bearer must be respectable, and her foster-father of grave demeanor....

Let her very dress and garb remind her to Whom she is promised. Do not pierce her ears or paint her face, consecrated to Christ, with white lead or rouge. Do not hang gold or pearls about her neck or load her head with jewels, or by reddening her hair make it suggest the fires of Gehenna. . . .

When Paula comes to be a little older and to increase like her Spouse in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man, let her go with her parents to the temple of her true Father, but let her not come out of the temple with them. Let them seek her upon the world's highway amid the crowds and the throng of their kinsfolk, and let them find her nowhere but in the shrine of the Scriptures, questioning the prophets and apostles on the meaning of that spiritual marriage to which she is vowed. Let her imitate the retirement of Mary whom Gabriel found alone in her chamber. . . .

And let it be her daily task to bring you the flowers which she has culled from Scripture. Let her learn by heart so many verses from the Greek, and let her be instructed in the Latin also. For, if the tender lips are not from the first shaped to this, the tongue is spoiled by a foreign accent and its native speech debased by alien elements. You must yourself be her mistress, a model on which she may form her 1 A term much used in England for an assistant teacher.

childish conduct. Never either in you or in her father let her see what she can not imitate without sin. Remember both of you that you are the parents of a consecrated virgin, and that your example will teach her more than your precepts.

Flowers are quick to fade, and a baleful wind soon withers the violet, the lily, and the crocus. Let her never appear in public unless accompanied by you. Let her never visit a church or a martyr's shrine unless with her mother. Let no young man greet her with smiles, no dandy with curled hair pay compliments to her. If our little virgin goes to keep solemn eves and all-night vigils, let her not stir a hair's breadth from her mother's side.

She must not single out one of her maids to make her a special favorite or a confidante. What she says to one all ought to know. Let her choose for a companion not a handsome well-dressed girl, able to warble a song with liquid notes, but one pale and serious, sombrely attired and with the hue of melancholy. Let her take as her model some aged virgin of approved faith, character, and chastity, apt to instruct her by word and by example.

She ought to rise at night to recite prayers and psalms; to sing hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to take her place in the line to do battle for Christ; and, lastly, to kindle her lamp and to offer her evening sacrifice. In these occupations let her pass the day, and when night comes let it find her still engaged in them. Let reading follow prayer with her, and prayer again succeed to reading. Time will seem short when employed on tasks so many and so varied.

Let her learn, too, how to spin wool, to hold the distaff, to put the basket in her lap, to turn the spinning wheel and to shape the yarn with her thumb. Let her put away with disdain silken fabrics, Chinese fleeces, and gold brocades; the clothing which she makes for herself should keep out the cold and not expose the body which it professes to cover. Let her food be herbs and wheaten bread, with now and then one or two small fishes. And that I may not waste more time in giving precepts for the regulation of her appetite, let her meals. always leave her hungry and able on the moment to begin reading or chanting. I strongly disapprove - especially for those of tender years of long and immoderate fasts in which week is added to week, and even oil and apples are forbidden as food. I have learned by experience that the ass toiling along the highway makes for an inn when it is weary. . . .

Let her treasures be not silks or gems, but manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures; and in these let her think less of gilding, and Babylonian parchment, and arabesque patterns, than of correctness and accurate punctuation. Let her begin by learning the Psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon. From the Preacher let her gain the habit of despising the world and its vanities. Let her

follow the example set in Job of virtue and patience. Then let her pass on to the Gospels, never to be laid aside when once they have been taken in hand. Let her also drink in with a willing heart the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. As soon as she has enriched the storehouse of her mind with these treasures, let her commit to memory the prophets, the heptateuch, the books of Kings and of Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all these she may safely read the Song of Songs, but not before: for, were she to read it at the beginning, she would fail to perceive that, though it is written in fleshly words, it is a marriage song of a spiritual bridal. And not understanding this she would suffer hurt from it. Cyprian's writings let her have always in her hands. The letters of Athanasius and the treatises of Hilary she may go through without fear of stumbling. Let her take pleasure in the works and wits of all in whose books a due regard for the faith is not neglected. But if she reads the works of others, let it be rather to judge them than to follow them.

You will answer, "How shall I, a woman of the world, living at Rome, surrounded by a crowd, be able to observe all these injunctions?" In that case do not undertake a burthen to which you are not equal. When you have weaned Paula as Isaac was weaned, and when you have clothed her as Samuel was clothed, send her to her grandmother and aunt; give up this most precious of gems, to be placed in Mary's chamber and to rest in the cradle where the infant Jesus cried. Let her be brought up in a monastery, let her be one amid companies of virgins, let her learn to avoid swearing, let her regard lying as sacrilege, let her be ignorant of the world, let her live the angelic life, while in the flesh let her be without the flesh, and let her suppose that all human beings are like herself.

CHAPTER V

NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE

THE Readings in this chapter deal with the period of the breakdown of the Roman authority in the provinces, and the barbarian deluge. From being on the defensive the Empire, after two centuries of resistance, finally fell before the repeated onslaughts of peoples who had gradually come to realize Roman weakness and barbarian strength. It was a period of great tribal movements, and when the movements were over and the different tribes had finally settled down within the boundaries of the old Empire, the old civilization had in large part vanished. To the Christian Church was left the task of preserving what remained and of building up a new civilization in western Europe. This required nearly a thousand years. The task confronting the Church was that of transforming the sixth-century barbarian into the civilized man of the fifteenth century, ready to begin anew the upward march of civilization. This long, weary thousand years covered the period known as the Middle Ages. Up to the eleventh century was a particularly difficult period; after that the tide began to turn.

The Readings given here, and in succeeding chapters, serve to illustrate the enormous problem facing the few constructive forces in this ancient society. Cæsar (46) and Tacitus (47) briefly describe the manners and the degree of civilization of the invading Germans. Dill (48) gives an interesting description of how the ancient world was shocked by the news that Rome had been taken and sacked by the barbarian Alaric, in 410 A.D., while the extract from Giry and Réville (49) pictures the passing of Roman towns as the barbarians came into control. Kingsley (50) writes with sympathetic pen of the invaders and what they brought into the ancient world. Reading 51 is a general form, much used in the Middle Ages, by which to grant privileges and immunities to churches, monasteries, and church officers, so that they might pursue their civilizing work unhampered by the barbarian chieftains. Number 52 is a specific grant to a monastery, by Charlemagne, of much the same privileges and immunities.