with the pomps and vanities around him, he sought peace in the consolations of Christianity.  His ardent nature impelled him to embrace the ascetic doctrines which were so highly esteemed and venerated; he buried himself in the catacombs, and lived like a monk.  Then his inquiring nature compelled him to travel for knowledge, and he visited whatever was interesting in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, and especially Palestine, finally fixing upon Chalcis, on the confines of Syria, as his abode.  There he gave himself up to contemplation and study, and to the writing of letters to all parts of Christendom.  These letters and his learned treatises, and especially the fame of his sanctity, excited so much interest that Pope Damasus summoned him back to Rome to become his counsellor and secretary.  More austere than Bossuet or Fenelon at the court of Louis XIV., he was as accomplished, and even more learned than they.  They were courtiers; he was a spiritual dictator, ruling, not like Dunstan, by an appeal to superstitious fears, but by learning and sanctity.  In his coarse garments he maintained his equality with princes and nobles.  To the great he appeared proud and repulsive.  To the poor he was affable, gentle, and sympathetic; they thought him as humble as the rich thought him arrogant.

Such a man—­so learned and pious, so courtly in his manners, so eloquent in his teachings, so independent and fearless in his spirit, so brilliant in conversation, although tinged with bitterness and sarcasm—­became a favorite in those high circles where rank was adorned by piety and culture.  The spiritual director became a friend, and his friendship was especially valued by Paula and her illustrious circle.  Among those brilliant and religious women he was at home, for by birth and education he was their equal.  At the house of Paula he was like Whitefield at the Countess of Huntingdon’s, or Michael Angelo in the palace of Vittoria Colonna,—­a friend, a teacher, and an oracle.

So, in the midst of a chosen and favored circle did Jerome live, with the bishops and the doctors who equally sought the exalted privilege of its courtesies and its kindness.  And the friendship, based on sympathy with Christian labors, became strengthened every day by mutual appreciation, and by that frank and genial intercourse which can exist only with cultivated and honest people.  Those high-born ladies listened to his teachings with enthusiasm, entered into all his schemes, and gave him most generous co-operation; not because his literary successes had been blazed throughout the world, but because, like them, he concealed under his coarse garments and his austere habits an ardent, earnest, eloquent soul, with intense longings after truth, and with noble aspirations to extend that religion which was the only hope of the decaying empire.  Like them, he had a boundless contempt for empty and passing pleasures, for all the plaudits of the devotees to fashion; and he appreciated their