Page:Wives and mothers in the olden time.djvu/27

Rh Lateran, seemed thus to foretell who were to be the future successors of the Emperors.

This contrast, so triumphant to the Christians, was not the only one which struck the eyes of the people. Whilst from the East to the West the vigorous life of the Church, with her hierarchy of holy and powerful bishops, continually gained the day in the political struggles which the sons of Constantine foolishly evoked, Christianity itself gave birth to the noblest qualities and virtues in its followers, which were the more remarkable in Rome, side by side with the growing corruption which accelerated the decline and fall of Paganism and the Empire. The blood of the martyrs, which had been the seed of the Church, had likewise brought forth a generation of saints such as the world had never hitherto seen.

It was at this very time that Providence ordained the birth of a child who was destined to be one of the wonders of her age and century. Contemporary history and the text of St. Jerome s biography give us a minute account of the education which the little Paula received, and of the influences under which she was brought up. They combined the old Roman aristocratic spirit of the fourth century with the Christian feelings which existed in the holy families of the primitive Church; that is to say, the best condition for forming a soul to the practice of the highest virtue. There was a kind of natural affinity between these two spirits. The gravity of the old Roman manners was well allied with the austerity of the Christian virtues, and Catholic humility and sweetness happily corrected the pride and hardness of heart which were the characteristics of that patrician race.

A high sense of honour, a keen feeling of self-respect, the tradition of ancient customs all these things were inculcated on the little Paula from her earliest years,