NATIONAL STYLE 187 



devolved upon barbarian chiefs, never again to be reunited 

 with the patrimony of his elder son Arcadius. In the year 

 395, the three builders-up of Latin Christianity, Ambrose, 

 Jerome, Augustine, were still alive. Augustine, the youngest, 

 had recently been consecrated Bishop of Hippo. Jerome was 

 finishing his translation of the Bible in a monastery at 

 Bethlehem. Ambrose, the great Archbishop of Milan, who, 

 five years earlier, repulsed Theodosius from the doors of his 

 cathedral, reminding the lord of the terraqueous globe that 

 Christ was above Caesar, had two more years to live. These 

 three men are justly reverenced as fathers and founders of 

 Latin Christendom. Their work was destined to endure for 

 better or for worse, deepening and defining that intellectual 

 separation of West from East, of Eoman from Byzantine 

 ways of thought, which showed itself politically in the par- 

 tition of the Empire between the two heirs of Theodosius. 



Thus no period of time was more pregnant for the future 

 of the Occidental races than the close of the fourth century 

 after Christ. The waning lights of paganism mingle with 

 the waxing lights of Christendom. Classical civility comes 

 to an end ; the stuff of the modern world is prepared by the 

 intrusion of barbaric tribes and northern hordes into the 

 comity of nations. Claudian, the last pagan poet of the 

 classical type, celebrates the apotheosis of Christian Theo- 

 dosius in voluble hexameters. Ambrose, at the same 

 moment, invents hymns for the Church at Milan in rhythms 

 which already demand rhyme, and need only the addition 

 of rhyme to be mediaeval. 'Quantum flevi in hymnis et 

 canticis ecclesiaa tuae ! ' writes Augustine of these sacred 

 songs, with a touch of emotion which is wholly modern. 

 Jerome, adapting the Latin tongue to Oriental thought and 

 imagery, creates a new instrument of verbal utterance in the 

 prose of the Vulgate. 



The Vulgate is undoubtedly the chief monument of the 

 mental transformation I am tracing. This resurrection of a 

 new organ of style for we can hardly call it less from 

 the grave where Cicero and Tacitus and Livy lay embalmed, 

 is one of the most singular phenomena in history. Too 



