98 



PREJUDICES WHICH HAVE RETARDED 



[Ch. V. 



of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger, and 

 resolved that Jambliclms, one of their number, should secretly 

 return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his com- 

 panions. The youth could no longer recognise the once 

 familiar aspect of his native country, and his surprise was 

 increased by the appearance of a large cross triumphantly 

 erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular 

 dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom 



of Decius as the current coin of 

 and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret 



medal 



empire 



mutual 



amazm 



discovery, that two centuries were 



almost 



from the rage of a pagan tyrant.' * 



This legend was received as authentic throughout the 

 Christian world before the end of the sixth century, and was 



Mahomet 



Koran 



metan 



i from Bengal to Africa who professed the Maho- 

 x. Some vestiges even of a similar tradition have 

 been discovered in Scandinavia. < This easy and universal 

 belief,' observes the philosophical historian of the Decline and 

 Fall, ' so expressive of the sense of mankind, may be ascribed 

 to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We imperceptibly 

 advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual, 

 but incessant, change of human affairs ; and even, in our 

 larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, 

 by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most 

 distant revolutions. But if the interval between two memo- 

 rable eras could be instantly annihilated ; if it were possible, 

 after a momentary slumber of two hundred years, to display 

 the new world to the eyes of a spectator who still retained a 

 lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise and Ins 

 reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a philoso- 



romance.'t 



f> 



i 



—The sources of prejudice hitherto considered 



* Gibbon, Decline and Eall, chap, xxxiii. 



f Id. Ibid. 













