BY THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 25 



gaining sway. Christianity gradually diffused itself; and, 

 as where it was received as the religion of the state, its bene- 

 ficent action on the lower classes of the people favoured 

 the general cause of civil freedom, so also did it render 

 man's contemplation of nature more enlarged and free. 

 The forms of the Olympic gods no longer fixed the eyes of 

 men : the fathers of the church proclaimed, in their aestheti- 

 cally correct, and often poetically imaginative language, 

 that the Creator shews himself great no less in inanimate 

 than in living nature ; in the wild strife of the elements as 

 well as in the silent progress of organic development. But 

 during the gradual dissolution of the Koman Empire, 

 vigour of imagination, and simplicity and purity of diction, 

 declined more and more, first in the Latin countries, and 

 afterwards in the Greek or eastern portion of the empire. 

 A predilection for solitude, for saddened meditation, and 

 for an internal absorption of mind, seems to have influenced 

 simultaneously both the language itself and the colouring of 

 the style. 



Where a new element appears to develop itself suddenly 

 and generally in the feelings of men, we may almost always 

 trace earlier indications of a deep-seated germ existing pre- 

 viously in detached and solitary instances. The softness 

 of Mirmiermus ( 43 ) has often been called a sentimental 

 direction of the mind. The ancient world is not abruptly 

 separated from the modern ; but changes in the religious 

 sentiments and apprehensions of men, in their tenderest moral 

 feelings, and in the particular mode of life of those who 

 influence the ideas of the masses, gave a sudden predomi- 

 nance to that which previously escaped notice. 



The tendency of the Christian mind was to shew the 



