of the arrow, Persian or Christian, that cut across his fingers and pierced his side; and how he fainted as he tried to draw it out; and recovered, and called for his horse and armor; and fainted again; and was carried into a tent hastily run up for him:—­and of the scene there in the night, that made those who were with him think of the last scene in the life of Socrates; Julian dying, comforting his mourning officers; cheering them; talking to them quietly about the beauty and dignity of death, and the divinity of the Soul; then suddenly inquiring why Anatolius was not present,—­and learning that Anatolius had fallen,—­and (strange inconsistency!) the dying man breaking into tears of the death of his friend.—­And you will know of the hopeless march of the army back under ignominious Jovian, all Shah Sapor’s hard terms accepted;—­and the doom of the Roman Empire sealed.

That was the Man:  that is the record, outwardly, of a Soul fed upon the immensities of Vision.  Vision is the keynote of him:  the intense reality to him of the ever-beautiful compassionate Gods....  It is true there was a personality attached; and all his defenders since have found much in it that they wished had not been there.  A lack of dignity, it is said; a certain self-consciousness...  Well; he was very young; he died a very boy at thirty-two; he never attained to years of discretion:—­in a sense we may allow that much.  You say, he might very well have followd the reaonable conventions of life; and condescended, when emperor, not to dress as a philosopher of the schools.  So he might.  They laughed at his ways, at his garb, at his beard;—­ and he went the length of sitting up one night to write the Misopogon, a skit upon his personality.  Only philosophers wore beards in those days; it was thought most unsuitable in an emperor.  I do not know what the men of Antioch said about it; but he speaks of it as unkempt and,—­in the Gibbonistic euphemism,—­populous; indeed, names the loathsome cootie outright, which Gibbon was much too Gibbonish to do.  In the nature of things, this was a libel.

I read lately an article, I think by an Irish writer, on the eccentricities of youthful genius.  It often happens that a soul of really fine caliber, with a great work to do in the world, will waste a portion of his forces, at the outset, in fighting the harmless conventions.  But as his real self grows into mastery, all this disappears, and he comes to see where his battle truly lies.  Julian died before he had had time quite to outgow the eccentricities; but for all that, not before he had shown the world what the Soul in action is like.