far excelled him, as well as in energy and moral self-control ; and, doubtless to his own credit, he closed his public career at the age at which his uncle's began ; but he entirely lacked the clear, sound common sense of his great predecessor, and that practical statesmanship, which discerns the wants of the age, and acts according to them. He had more uncommon sense than common sense, and the latter is often even more important than the former, and indispensable to a good practical statesman. But his greatest fault as a ruler was his utterly false position towards the paramount question of his time : that of religion. This was the cause of that complete failure which made his reign as trackless as a meteor. The ruling passion of Julian, and the soul of his short but most active, remarkable, and in its negative results instructive reign, was fanatical love of the pagan religion and bitter hatred of the Christian, at a time when the former had already for- ^ In the Misopogon (from ixta-eco and iniyaiu, the beard-hater, i. e. hater of bearded philosophers), his witty apology to the refined Antioehians for his philosophical beard, p. 338 sq., he boasts of this cynic coarseness, and describes, with great com- placence, his long nails, his ink-stained hands. Ids rough, uncombed beard, inhabited (horribile dictu) by certain Si-qpia. It should not be forgotten, however, that con- temporary writers give him the credit of a strict chastity, which raises liim far above most heathen princes, and which furnishes another proof to the involuntary influence of Christian asceticism upon his life. Libanius asserts in his panegyric, that Julian, before his brief married life, and after the death of his wife, a sister of Constantius, never knew a woman ; and Mamertinus calls his leetulus, "Vestalium toris purior."' Add to this the testimony of the honest Ammianus Marcellinus, and the silence of Christian antagonists. Comp. Gibbon, c. xxii. note 50 ; and Carwithen and Lyall : Hist, of the Chr. Ch., etc. p. 54. On the other hand, the Christians accused him cf all sorts of secret crimes ; for instance, the butchering of boys and girls (Gregor. Orat. iii. p. 91, and Theodor. iii. 26, 27), which was probably an unfounded inference from his fanatical zeal for bloody sacrifices and divinations. § 4. JULIAJJ THE APOSTATE. 47 ever given up to the latter the reins of government in the world. He considered it the great mission of his life to restore the worship of the gods, and to reduce the religion of Jesus lirst to a contemptible sect, and at last, if possible, to utter ex- tinction from the earth. To this he believed himself called by the gods themselves, and in this faith he was confirmed by theurgic arts, visions, and dreams. To this end all the means, which talent, zeal, and power could command, were applied ; and the failure must be attributed solely to the intrinsic folly and