338 
THE HOLY LAND. 
CHAP, both the Greek and the Catholic churches Ions; 
VIII. . 
' after the time of Constantine: and Helena, whether 
the daughter of a British Prmce \ or of an mn- 
keeper at Drepanum^, cannot be supposed to 
have possessed attainments beyond the age in 
which she lived, or the circumstances of her 
origin. That she was amiable, — that she merited, 
by her virtues, her exalted station, has not been 
disputed ; but her transactions in PalcBstine bear 
the stamp of dotage and infirmity. Few things, 
considering her sex and the burthen of her years, 
have occurred more extraordinary than was her 
journey to the Holy Land, and its consequences. 
Whatsoever might have been her mental endow- 
ments, her bodily energies, at a season of life^ 
when human strength is said to be " but labour 
and sorrow," were superior to the weight of age, 
and to the fatigues of a pilgrimage sufficient to 
wood among the Laplanders. The account given of it hy Scheffer 
proves it to have been the trunk of a tree, having at one end an acci- 
dental similitude of the human head. S&e Scheffer' s Hist, of Lapl. 
p. 103. Land. 1704. 
(1) " Filia fuit unius Britanniae Reguli, Coel nomine." Quaresmii 
Eluc. T. S. torn. II. p. 424. 
(2) " T^i" iroXiv A^i'^avov, 'EKivo^oXiv rhu finri^a rif^uv, TT^ocfviyo^ivz, Op- 
pidum Drepanum, matrem honorans, Helenopolim adpellavit." Nice- 
2>horus Callistus, lib. vii. c. 49. Paris, 1630. 
(3) " Paulo ante mortem, quam octogesimum setatis agens oppetebat, 
stud iter fecit." Theodoret. lib. i. cap. 18. Paris, 1642. 
