d to be eloquent, and even poetic,
unless our translation of it shall have entirely obscured its beauty.
After having described the proud and _philosophical_ suicides of ancient
Rome, he adds:--

There is another species of suicide more in credit in our
days, which is rather occasioned by the weakness and
impatience of men than by the violence of their passions, or
the eccentricity of their philosophies. This species of
suicide is so much the peculiar malady of our times, that we
are tempted to think that men are now for the first time
infected by it. But no; there exists a literature which has
already expressed this our state of restlessness and
disquietude, which has described men consuming with
melancholy in the midst of riotous joys, and seeking suicide
rather as the natural termination of their career than the
remedy of their evils. It is the literature of the fathers
of the church.

I find amongst the homilies of St Chrysostom a certain
Stagyra who was possessed by a demon. To be possessed by a
demon is certainly not a malady of our times; but yet we do
not wander from our theme. For the demon of Stagyra--it is
melancholy, despondency, or, in the much more powerful
expression of the Greek, it is _athumia_--exhaustion of all
energy, all vitality of the soul. This is the demon of
Stagyra. He is one of those sick and agitated souls who
think they belong to the selected portion of mankind,
because they want the energy of the vulgar; who contrive for
themselves pleasures and afflictions apart from the rest of
the world, and who (last trait of weakness and impatience)
at once despise and envy the simplicity and the calm of
those whom they call little souls. Stagyra, in order to
deliver his spirit from its disquietudes, had entered into a
monastery; but neither there did he find the peace and
lightness of heart which he craved; for man finds at first,
in solitude, that only which he brings to it. Stagyra
complains to the saint--and the complaint is curious, for it
indicates the knowledge of a cure for the evils which
torment him, and shows that Stagyra, like many other
patients, had neither resolution to support his disease, nor
to accept its remedy. 'You complain,' says St Chrysostom,
'that while you, with all your fasts, and vigils,