My task now is to describe some of those recluses who still live in the biographies of the saints and the traditions of the church.  Ducis, while reading of these hermits, wrote to a friend as follows:  “I am now reading the lives of the Fathers of the Desert.  I am dwelling with St. Pachomius, the founder of the monastery at Tabenna.  Truly there is a charm in transporting one’s self to that land of the angels—­one could not wish ever to come out of it.”  Whether the reader will call these strange characters angels, and will wish he could have shared their beds of stone and midnight vigils, I will not venture to say, but at all events his visit will be made as pleasant as possible.

In writing the life of Mahomet, Carlyle said, “As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of Mahomet I justly can.”  So, without distorting the picture that has come down to us, I mean to say all the good of these Egyptian hermits that the facts will justify.

The Hermits of Egypt

Egypt was the mother of Christian monasticism, as she has been of many other wonders.

Vast solitudes; lonely mountains, honey-combed with dens and caves; arid valleys and barren hills; dreary deserts that glistened under the blinding glare of the sun that poured its heat upon them steadily all the year; strange, grotesque rocks and peaks that assumed all sorts of fantastic shapes to the overwrought fancy; in many places no water, no verdure, and scarcely a thing in motion; the crocodile and the bird lazily seeking their necessary food and stirring only as compelled; unbounded expanse in the wide star-lit heavens; unbroken quiet on the lonely mountains—­a fit home for the hermit, a paradise to the lover of solitude and peace.

Of life under such conditions Kingsley has said:  “They enjoyed nature, not so much for her beauty as for her perfect peace.  Day by day the rocks remained the same.  Silently out of the Eastern desert, day by day, the rising sun threw aloft those arrows of light which the old Greeks had named ‘the rosy fingers of the dawn.’  Silently he passed in full blaze above their heads throughout the day, and silently he dipped behind the Western desert in a glory of crimson and orange, green and purple....  Day after day, night after night, that gorgeous pageant passed over the poor hermit’s head without a sound, and though sun, moon and planet might change their places as the years rolled round, the earth beneath his feet seemed not to change.”  As for the companionless men, who gazed for years upon this glorious scene, they too were of unusual character, Waddington finely says:  “The serious enthusiasm of the natives of Egypt and Asia, that combination of indolence and energy, of the calmest languor with the fiercest passions, ... disposed them to embrace with eagerness the tranquil but exciting duties of religious seclusion.”  Yes, here are the angels of Ducis in real flesh and blood.