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 charms of the place—the bright sunshine, the clear atmosphere, and a soil so rich in flowers and fruits that "a man," says Ammianus, "might almost believe himself in another world"—there was the certainty of royal favour, of learned and congenial society, and (better than all) of a comfortable pension and a luxurious residence in or near the palace. For the further encouragement of literature, Ptolemy I. had founded and liberally endowed the "Museum" (or, as we should call it, "university"), with its porticos and lecture-rooms and dining-hall, and its library of 700,000 volumes—burnt when Alexandria was besieged by Cæsar. In connection with the library there grew up a school of grammarians and critics, whose lives were passed in the usual routine of a royal literary circle,—writing, publishing, dining together, talking scandal, and carrying on an incessant war of words.

In the learned world at Alexandria, some Jews founded a new system of philosophy by blending Judaism with Platonism. They sought for the deeper truth which they believed was hidden under every text of Scripture; intensifying all that was miraculous or supernatural, discarding the literal interpretation, and neglecting the ceremonial law as being merely the symbolism which veiled the truth. Philo headed this "mystical rationalism," tracing Plato's world of ideas back to Moses, but giving them a place in the Word of God as the plan of a building has a place in the mind of the builder. And, in language like that which Plato uses in the "Timæus," he describes how God, an invisible but ever-present