It is a fine instance of the way in which the ever-unfolding present is constantly lighting up the past.

Julian and his party were the Ultramontanes of their day in matters of religion, and the Romantics in matters of literature.

Those radical innovators and reformers, the Christians, were marching from conquest to conquest, over the old faith, making no concealment of their revolutionary aims and intentions to wipe out the past as speedily as possible.

The conservatives of those times, after long despising the reformers, passed easily to fearing them and hating them as their success became threatening.

"The attachment to paganism," says Neander, "lingered especially in many of the ancient and noble families of Greece and Rome." Old families, or new rich ones who wished to be thought old, would be sure to take up the cause of ancestral wisdom as against modern innovation.