John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1577"

Louisa May Alcott - "Marjorie's Three Gifts"

David Starr Jordan - "The Philosophy of Despair"

Brander Matthews (Editor) - "Poems of American Patriotism"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia




'Ah, you recollect that?--and how the barbarian papas used to
grumble, till I had to crucify one or two, eh? That was something
like life! I love those out-of-the-way stations, where nobody asks
questions: but here one might as well live among the monks in
Nitria. Here comes Canidia! Ah, the answer? Hand it here, my queen
of go-betweens!'

Orestes read it--and his countenance fell.

'I have won?'

'Out of the room, slaves! and no listening!'

'I have won then?'

Orestes tossed the letter across to him, and Raphael read--

'The immortal gods accept no divided worship; and he who would
command the counsels of their prophetess must remember that they
will vouchsafe to her no illumination till their lost honours be
restored. If he who aspires to be the lord of Africa dare trample
on the hateful cross, and restore the Caesareum to those for whose
worship it was built--if he dare proclaim aloud with his lips, and
in his deeds, that contempt for novel and barbarous superstitions,
which his taste and reason have already taught him, then he would
prove himself one with whom it were a glory to labour, to dare, to
die in a great cause. But till then--'

And so the letter ended.

'What am I to do?'

'Take her at her word.'

'Good heavens! I shall be excommunicated! And--and--what is to
become of my soul?'

'What will become of it in any case, my most excellent lord?'
answered Raphael blandly.

'You mean--I know what you cursed Jews think will happen to every
one but yourselves. But what would the world say? I an apostate!
And in the face of Cyril and the populace! I daren't, I tell you!'

'No one asked your excellency to apostatise.'

'Why, what? What did you say just now?'

'I asked you to promise. It will not be the first time that
promises before marriage have not exactly coincided with performance
afterwards.'

'I daren't--that is, I won't promise. I believe, now, this is some
trap of your Jewish intrigue, just to make me commit myself against
those Christians, whom you hate.'

'I assure you, I despise all mankind far too profoundly to hate
them. How disinterested my advice was when I proposed this match to
you, you never will know; indeed, it would be boastful in me to tell
you. But really you must make a little sacrifice to win this
foolish girl. With all the depth and daring of her intellect to
help you, you might be a match for Romans, Byzantines, and Goths at
once. And as for beauty--why, there is one dimple inside that
wrist, just at the setting on of the sweet little hand, worth all
the other flesh and blood in Alexandria.'

'By Jove! you admire her so much, I suspect you must be in love with
her yourself. Why don't you marry her? I'll make you my prime
minister, and then we shall have the use of her wits without the
trouble of her fancies. By the twelve Gods! If you marry her and
help me, I'll make you what you like!'

Raphael rose and bowed to the earth.

'Your serene high-mightiness overwhelms me. But I assure you, that
never having as yet cared for any one's interest but my own, I could
not be expected, at my time of life, to devote myself to that of
another, even though it were to yours.'

'Candid!'

'Exactly so; and moreover, whosoever I may marry, will be
practically, as well as theoretically, my private and peculiar
property .... You comprehend.'

'Candid again.'

'Exactly so; and waiving the third argument, that she probably might
not choose to marry me, I beg to remark that it would not be proper
to allow the world to say, that I, the subject, had a wiser and
fairer wife than you, the ruler; especially a wife who bad already
refused that ruler's complimentary offer.'

'By Jove! and she has refused me in good earnest! I'll make her
repent it! I was a fool to ask her at all! What's the use of
having guards, if one can't compel what one wants? If fair means
can't do it, foul shall! I'll send for her this moment!'

'Most illustrious majesty--it will not succeed. You do not know
that woman's determination. Scourges and red-hot pincers will not
shake her, alive; and dead, she will be of no use whatsoever to you,
while she will be of great use to Cyril.'

'How?'

'He will be most happy to make the whole story a handle against you,
give out that she died a virgin-martyr, in defence of the most holy
catholic and apostolic faith, get miracles worked at her tomb, and
pull your palace about your ears on the strength thereof.'

'Cyril will hear of it anyhow: that's another dilemma into which you
have brought me, you intriguing rascal! Why, this girl will be
boasting all over Alexandria that I have offered her marriage, and
that she has done herself the honour to refuse me!'

'She will be much too wise to do anything of the kind; she has sense
enough to know that if she did so, you would inform a Christian
populace what conditions she offered you, and, with all her contempt
for the burden of the flesh, she has no mind to be lightened of that
pretty load by being torn in pieces by Christian monks; a very
probable ending for her in any case, as she herself, in her
melancholy moods, confesses!'

'What will you have me do then?'

'Simply nothing. Let the prophetic spirit go out of her, as it
will, in a day or two, and then--I know nothing of human nature, if
she does not bate a little of her own price. Depend on it, for all
her ineffabilities, and impassibilities, and all the rest of the
seventh-heaven moonshine at which we play here in Alexandria, a
throne is far too pretty a bait for even Hypatia the pythoness to
refuse. Leave well alone is a good rule, but leave ill alone is a
better. So now another bet before we part, and this time three to
one. Do nothing either way, and she sends to you of her own accord
before a month is out. In Caucasian mules? Done? Be it so.'

'Well, you are the most charming counsellor for a poor perplexed
devil of a prefect! If I had but a private fortune like you, I
could just take the money, and let the work do itself.'

'Which is the true method of successful government. Your slave bids
you farewell. Do not forget our bet. You dine with me to-morrow?'

And Raphael bowed himself out.

As he left the prefect's door, he saw Miriam on the opposite side of
the street, evidently watching for him. As soon as she saw him, she
held on her own side, without appearing to notice him, till he
turned a corner, and then crossing, caught him eagerly by the arm.

'Does the fool dare!'

'Who dare what?'

'You know what I mean. Do you suppose old Miriam carries letters
without taking care to know what is inside them? Will he
apostatise? Tell me. I am secret as the grave!'

'The fool has found an old worm-eaten rag of conscience somewhere in
the corner of his heart, and dare not.'

'Curse the coward! And such a plot as I had laid! I would have
swept every Christian dog out of Africa within the year. What is
the man afraid of?'

'Hell-fire.'

'Why, he will go there in any case, the accursed Gentile!'

'So I hinted to him, as delicately as I could; but, like the rest of
the world, he had a sort of partiality for getting thither by his
own road.'

'Coward! And whom shall I get now? Oh, if that Pelagia had as much
cunning in her whole body as Hypatia has in her little finger, I'd
seat her and her Goth upon the throne of the Caesars. But--'

'But she has five senses, and just enough wit to use them, eh?'

'Don't laugh at her for that, the darling! I do delight in her,
after all. It warms even my old blood to see how thoroughly she
knows her business, and how she enjoys it, like a true daughter of
Eve.'

'She has been your most successful pupil, certainly, mother. You
may well be proud of her.'

The old hag chuckled to herself a while; and then suddenly turning
to Raphael-

'See here! I have a present for you;' and she pulled out a
magnificent ring.

'Why, mother, you are always giving me presents. It was but a month
ago you sent me this poisoned dagger.'

'Why not, eh?--why not? Why should not Jew give to Jew? Take the
old woman's ring!'

'What a glorious opal!'

'Ah, that is an opal, indeed! And the unspeakable name upon it; just
like Solomon's own. Take it, I say! Whosoever wears that never
need fear fire, steel, poison, or woman's eye.'

'Your own included, eh?'

'Take it, I say!'and Miriam caught his hand, and forced the ring on
his finger. 'There! Now you're safe. And now call me mother again.
I like it. I don't know why, but I like it. And--Raphael Aben-
Ezra--don't laugh at me, and call me witch and hag, as you often do.
I don't care about it from any one else; I'm accustomed to it. But
when you do it, I always long to stab you. That's why I gave you
the dagger. I used to wear it; and I was afraid I might be tempted
to use it some day, when the thought came across me how handsome
you'd look, and how quiet, when you were dead, and your soul up
there so happy in Abraham's bosom, watching all the Gentiles frying
and roasting for ever down below. Don't laugh at me, I say; and
don't thwart me! I may make you the emperor's prime minister some
day. I can if I choose.'

'Heaven forbid!' said Raphael, laughing.

'Don't laugh. I cast your nativity last night, and I know you have
no cause to laugh. A great danger hangs over you, and a deep
temptation. And if you weather this storm, you may be chamberlain,
prime minister, emperor, if you will. And you shall be--by the four
archangels, you shall!'

And the old woman vanished down a by-lane, leaving Raphael utterly
bewildered.

'Moses and the prophets! Does the old lady intend to marry me?
What can there be in this very lazy and selfish personage who bears
my name, to excite so romantic an affection? Well, Raphael Aben-
Ezra, thou hast one more friend in the world beside Bran the
mastiff; and therefore one more trouble--seeing that friends always
expect a due return of affection and good offices and what not. I
wonder whether the old lady has been getting into a scrape
kidnapping, and wants my patronage to help her out of it ....
Three-quarters of a mile of roasting sun between me and home! ....
I must hire a gig, or a litter, or some-thing, off the next stand
.... with a driver who has been eating onions .... and of course
there is not a stand for the next half-mile. Oh, divine aether! as
Prometheus has it, and ye swift-winged breezes (I wish there were
any here), when will it all be over? Three-and-thirty years have I
endured already of this Babel of knaves and fools; and with this
abominable good health of mine, which won't even help me with gout
or indigestion, I am likely to have three-and-thirty years more of
it....I know nothing, and I care for nothing, and I expect nothing;
and I actually can't take the trouble to prick a hole in myself, and
let the very small amount of wits out, to see something really worth
seeing, and try its strength at something really worth doing--if,
after all, the other side the grave does not turn out to be just as
stupid as this one .... When will it be all over, and I in
Abraham's bosom--or any one else's, provided it be not a woman's?'



CHAPTER V: A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA


In the meanwhile, Philammon, with his hosts, the Goths, had been
slipping down the stream. Passing, one after another, world-old
cities now dwindled to decaying towns, and numberless canal-mouths,
now fast falling into ruin with the fields to which they ensured
fertility, under the pressure of Roman extortion and misrule, they
had entered one evening the mouth of the great canal of Alexandria,
slid easily all night across the star-bespangled shadows of Lake
Mareotis, and found themselves, when the next morning dawned, among
the countless masts and noisy quays of the greatest seaport in the
world. The motley crowd of foreigners, the hubbub of all dialects
from the Crimea to Cadiz, the vast piles of merchandise, and heaps
of wheat, lying unsheltered in that rainless air, the huge bulk of
the corn-ships lading for Rome, whose tall sides rose story over
story, like floating palaces, above the buildings of some inner dock
--these sights, and a hundred more, made the young monk think that
the world did not look at first sight a thing to be despised. In
front of heaps of fruit, fresh from the market-boats, black groups
of glossy negro slaves were basking and laughing on the quay,
looking anxiously and coquettishly round in hopes of a purchaser;
they evidently did not think the change from desert toil to city
luxuries a change for the worse. Philammon turned away his eyes
from beholding vanity; but only to meet fresh vanity wheresoever
they fell. He felt crushed by the multitude of new objects, stunned
by the din around; and scarcely recollected himself enough to seize
the first opportunity of escaping from his dangerous companions.

'Holloa!' roared Smid the armourer, as he scrambled on to the steps
of the slip; 'you are not going to run away without bidding us good-
bye?'

'Stop with me, boy!' said old Wulf. 'I saved you; and you are my
man.'

Philammon turned and hesitated.

'I am a monk, and God's man.'

'You can be that anywhere. I will make you a warrior.'

'The weapons of my warfare are not of flesh and blood, but prayer
and fasting,' answered poor Philammon, who felt already that he
should have ten times more need of the said weapons in Alexandria
than ever he had had in the desert .... 'Let me go! I am not made
for your life! I thank you, bless you! I will pray for you, sir!
but let me go!'

'Curse the craven hound!' roared half a dozen voices. 'Why did you
not let us have our will with him, Prince Wulf? You might have
expected such gratitude from a monk.'

'He owes me my share of the sport,' quoth Smid. 'And here it is!'
And a hatchet, thrown with practised aim, whistled right for
Philammon's head--he had just time to swerve, and the weapon struck
and snapped against the granite wall behind.

'Well saved!' said Wulf coolly, while the sailors and market-women
above yelled murder, and the custom-house officers, and other
constables and catchpolls of the harbour, rushed to the place--and
retired again quietly at the thunder of the Amal from the boat's
stern--

'Never mind, my good follows! we're only Goths; and on a visit to
the prefect, too.'

'Only Goths, my donkey-riding friends!' echoed Smid, and at that
ominous name the whole posse comitatus tried to look unconcerned,
and found suddenly that their presence was absolutely required in an
opposite direction.

'Let him go,' said Wulf, as he stalked up the steps. 'Let the boy
go. I never set my heart on any man yet,' he growled to himself in
an under voice, 'but what he disappointed me--and I must not expect
more from this fellow. Come, men, ashore, and get drunk!'

Philammon, of course, now that he had leave to go, longed to stay--
at all events, he must go back and thank his hosts. He turned
unwillingly to do so, as hastily as he could, and found Pelagia and
her gigantic lover just entering a palanquin. With downcast eyes he
approached the beautiful basilisk, and stammered out some
commonplace; and she, full of smiles, turned to him at once.

'Tell us more about yourself before we part. You speak such
beautiful Greek--true Athenian. It is quite delightful to hear
one's own accent again. Were you ever at Athens?'

'When I was a child; I recollect--that is, I think--'

'What?' asked Pelagia eagerly.

'A great house in Athens--and a great battle there--and coming to
Egypt in a ship.'

'Heavens!' said Pelagia, and paused .... 'How strange! Girls, who
said he was like me?'

'I'm sure we meant no harm, if we did say it in a joke,' pouted one
of the attendants.

'Like me!--you must come and see us. I have something to say to you
.... You must!'

Philammon misinterpreted the intense interest of her tone, and if he
did not shrink back, gave some involuntary gesture of reluctance.
Pelagia laughed aloud.

'Don't be vain enough to suspect, foolish boy, but come! Do you
think that I have nothing to talk about but nonsense? Come and see
me. It may be better for you. I live in--' and she named a
fashionable street, which Philammon, though he inwardly vowed not to
accept the invitation, somehow could not help remembering.

'Do leave the wild man, and come,' growled the Amal from within the
palanquin. 'You are not going to turn nun, I hope?'

'Not while the first man I ever met in the world stays in it,'
answered Pelagia, as she skipped into the palanquin, taking care to
show the most lovely white heel and ankle, and, like the Parthian,
send a random arrow as she retreated. But the dart was lost on
Philammon, who had been already hustled away by the bevy of laughing
attendants, amid baskets, dressing-cases, and bird-cages, and was
fain to make his escape into the Babel round, and inquire his way to
the patriarch's house.

'Patriarch's house?' answered the man whom he first addressed, a
little lean, swarthy fellow, with merry black eyes, who, with a
basket of fruit at his feet, was sunning himself on a baulk of
timber, meditatively chewing the papyrus-cane, and examining the
strangers with a look of absurd sagacity. 'I know it; without a
doubt I know it; all Alexandria has good reason to know it. Are you
a monk?'

'Yes.'

'Then ask your way of the monks; you won't go far without finding
one.'

'But I do not even know the right direction; what is your grudge
against monks, my good man?'

'Look here, my youth; you seem too ingenuous for a monk. Don't
flatter yourself that it will last. If you can wear the sheepskin,
and haunt the churches here for a month, without learning to lie,
and slander, and clap, and hoot, and perhaps play your part in a
sedition--and--murder satyric drama--why, you are a better man than
I take you for. I, sir, am a Greek and a philosopher; though the
whirlpool of matter may have, and indeed has, involved my ethereal
spark in the body of a porter. Therefore, youth,' continued the
little man, starting up upon his baulk like an excited monkey, and
stretching out one oratorio paw, 'I bear a treble hatred to the
monkish tribe. First, as a man and a husband; .... for as for the
smiles of beauty, or otherwise,--such as I have, I have; and the
monks, if they had their wicked will, would leave neither men nor
women in the world. Sir, they would exterminate the human race in a
single generation, by a voluntary suicide! Secondly, as a porter;
for if all men turned monks, nobody would be idle, and the
profession of portering would be annihilated. Thirdly, sir, as a
philosopher; for as the false coin is odious to the true, so is the
irrational and animal asceticism of the monk, to the logical and
methodic self-restraint of one who, like your humblest of
philosophers, aspires to a life according to the pure reason.'

'And pray,' asked Philammon, half laughing, 'who has been your tutor
in philosophy?'

'The fountain of classic wisdom, Hypatia herself. As the ancient
sage--the name is unimportant to a monk--pumped water nightly that
he might study by day, so I, the guardian of cloaks and parasols, at
the sacred doors of her lecture-room, imbibe celestial knowledge.
From my youth I felt in me a soul above the matter-entangled herd.
She revealed to me the glorious fact, that I am a spark of Divinity
itself. A fallen star, I am, sir!' continued he, pensively,
stroking his lean stomach--'a fallen star!--fallen, if the dignity
of philosophy will allow of the simile, among the hogs of the lower
world--indeed, even into the hog-bucket itself. Well, after all, I
will show you the way to the Archbishop's. There is a philosophic
pleasure in opening one's treasures to the modest young. Perhaps
you will assist me by carrying this basket of fruit?' And the
little man jumped up, put his basket on Philammon's head, and
trotted off up a neighbouring street.

Philammon followed, half contemptuous, half wondering at what this
philosophy might be, which could feed the self-conceit of anything
so abject as his ragged little apish guide; but the novel roar and
whirl of the street, the perpetual stream of busy faces, the line of
curricles, palanquins, laden asses, camels, elephants, which met and
passed him, and squeezed him up steps and into doorways, as they
threaded their way through the great Moon-gate into the ample street
beyond, drove everything from his mind but wondering curiosity, and
a vague, helpless dread of that great living wilderness, more
terrible than any dead wilderness of sand which he had left behind.
Already he longed for the repose, the silence of the Laura--for
faces which knew him and smiled upon him; but it was too late to
turn back ow. His guide held on for more than a mile up the great
main street, crossed in the centre of the city, at right angles, by
one equally magnificent, at each end of which, miles away, appeared,
dim and distant over the heads of the living stream of passengers,
the yellow sand-hills of the desert; while at the end of the vista
in front of them gleamed the blue harbour, through a network of
countless masts.

At last they reached the quay at the opposite end of the street; and
there burst on Philammon's astonished eyes a vast semicircle of blue
sea, ringed with palaces and towers....He stopped involuntarily; and
his little guide stopped also, and looked askance at the young monk,
to watch the effect which that grand panorama should produce on him.

'There!--Behold our works! Us Greeks!--us benighted heathens! Look
at it and feel yourself what you are, a very small, conceited,
ignorant young person, who fancies that your new religion gives you
a right to despise every one else. Did Christians make all this?
Did Christians build that Pharos there on the left horn--wonder of
the world? Did Christians raise that mile-long mole which runs
towards the land, with its two drawbridges, connecting the two
ports? Did Christians build this esplanade, or this gate of the Sun
above our heads? Or that Caesareum on our right here? Look at
those obelisks before it!' And he pointed upwards to those two
world-famous ones, one of which still lies on its ancient site, as
Cleopatra's Needle. 'Look up! look up, I say, and feel small--very
small indeed! Did Christians raise them, or engrave them from base
to point with the wisdom of the ancients? Did Christians build that
Museum next to it, or design its statues and its frescoes--now,
alas! re-echoing no more to the hummings of the Attic bee? Did they
pile up out of the waves that palace beyond it, or that Exchange? or
fill that Temple of Neptune with breathing brass and blushing
marble? Did they build that Timonium on the point, where Antony,
worsted at Actium, forgot his shame in Cleopatra's arms? Did they
quarry out that island of Antirrhodus into a nest of docks, or cover
those waters with the sails of every nation under heaven? Speak!
Thou son of bats and moles--thou six feet of sand--thou mummy out of
the cliff caverns! Can monks do works like these?'

'Other men have laboured, and we have entered into their labours,'
answered Philammon, trying to seem as unconcerned as he could. He
was, indeed, too utterly astonished to be angry at anything. The
overwhelming vastness, multiplicity, and magnificence of the whole
scene; the range of buildings, such as mother earth never, perhaps,
carried on her lap before or since, the extraordinary variety of
form-the pure Doric and Ionic of the earlier Ptolemies, the barbaric
and confused gorgeousness of the later Roman, and here and there an
imitation of the grand elephantine style of old Egypt, its gaudy
colours relieving, while they deepened, the effect of its massive
and simple outlines; the eternal repose of that great belt of stone
contrasting with the restless ripple of the glittering harbour, and
the busy sails which crowded out into the sea beyond, like white
doves taking their flight into boundless space?--all dazzled,
overpowered, saddened him .... This was the world .... Was it not
beautiful? .... Must not the men who made all this have been--if
not great .... yet .... he knew not what? Surely they had great
souls and noble thoughts in them! Surely there was something
godlike in being able to create such things! Not for themselves
alone, too; but for a nation--for generations yet unborn .... And
there was the sea .... and beyond it, nations of men innumerable
.... His imagination was dizzy with thinking of them. Were they
all doomed--lost? .... Had God no love for them?

At last, recovering himself, he recollected his errand, and again
asked his way to the archbishop's house.

'This way, O youthful nonentity!' answered the little man, leading
the way round the great front of the Caesareum, at the foot of the
obelisks.

Philammon's eye fell on some new masonry in the pediment, ornamented
with Christian symbols.

'How? Is this a church?'

'It is the Caesareum. It has become temporarily a church. The
immortal gods have, for the time being, condescended to waive their
rights; but it is the Caesareum, nevertheless. This way; down this
street to the right. There,' said he, pointing to a doorway in the
side of the Museum, 'is the last haunt of the Muses--the lecture-
room of Hypatia, the school of my unworthiness. And here,' stopping
at the door of a splendid house on the opposite side of the street,
'is the residence of that blest favourite of Athene--Neith, as the
barbarians of Egypt would denominate the goddess--we men of
Macedonia retain the time-honoured Grecian nomenclature .... You
may put down your basket.' And he knocked at the door, and
delivering the fruit to a black porter, made a polite obeisance to
Philammon, and seemed on the point of taking his departure.