I WOULD gladly, did space allow, give more biographies from among those
of the Egyptian hermits: but it seems best, having shown the reader
Antony as the father of Egyptian monachism, to go on to his great pupil
Hilarion, the father of monachism in Palestine. His life stands written
at length by St. Jerome, who himself died a monk at Bethlehem; and is
composed happily in a less ambitious and less rugged style than that of
Paul, not without elements of beauty, even of tragedy.