his affections." "I bore about," says he, "a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me; yet, where to repose it, I found not. Not in calm groves, not in games and music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquetings, nor in the pleasures of the bed. and of the couch; nor, finally, in books of poesy-found it repose. All things looked ghastly, yea, the very light; whatever was not what he was, was revolting and hateful, except groaning and tears. For in these alone found I a little refreshment. But, when my soul was withdrawn from them, a huge load of misery weighed me down. I wondered," he adds, "that others, subject to death, did live,—since he, whom I loved as if he should never die, was dead. And I wondered yet more, that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friends, 'Thou half of my soul!' for I felt that my soul and his soul were 'one soul in two bodies;' and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live. halved."

In these hours of deep agony, he would whisper to his disquieted spirit, "Trust in

God!" But "she obeyed him not;" and "very rightly," for "that most dear friend whom she had lost, was, being man, both truer and better than that phantasm she was bid to trust in."

As yet, God was to him but a phantom,"his error was, his God." "To Thee, O Lord," says he, "my burdened soul ought to have been raised, for Thee to lighten: I knew it; but I neither could nor would; the more, since, when I thought of Thee, Thou wert not to me any solid or substantial thing; for Thou wert not Thyself, but a mere 'brightness.' If I offered to discharge my load thereon, that it might rest,-it glided through the void, and came rushing down again upon me; and I had remained to myself a hapless spot, where I could neither be, nor be from thence. For, whither should my heart flee from my heart? whither should I flee from myself? whither not follow myself?"

And, his God a phantom, his bereaved heart naturally went, for "restoration and refreshment," only to "the solaces of other friends." Blessed," says he, "whoso loveth Thee, and

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his friend in Thee; for he alone loses none dear to him, to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost." A bitter discipline was yet to teach him, that, "whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless towards its God, it is riveted upon sorrows, yea, though it is riveted upon things beautiful."

X.

"By what unseen and unsuspected arts

The serpent Error twines round human hearts!
Not all whose eloquence the fancy fills,
Musical as the chime of tinkling rills,
Weak to perform, though mighty to pretend,
Can trace his mazy windings to their end."

"PRIDE," says one, "is coiled as a poisonous worm about the foundations of the soul;" and its "death" is, to "wait as an almsman upon God." Augustine was now in his twenty seventh year; and, though "longing to stand and hearken to God," he "could not, for the voices of his own errors." "Through the weight of my pride," says he, "I was sinking into the lowest pit."

For a year or two back, he had been “meditating on the fair and the fit.'" "Do we love," he would say to his friends, "anything but the beautiful? What, then, is the beauti

ful? and what is beauty? What is it that attracts and wins us to the things we love?" At length "corporeal fictions,' "buzzing in the ears of his heart," came forth in "two or three books," which he dedicated to "Hierius, an orator of Rome."

This Roman he "knew not by face," but "loved for the fame of his learning, and for some words of his, which he had heard, and which pleased him." By birth a Syrian, Hierius had risen, after being "instructed in Grecian cloquence," into "a wonderful Latin orator, and one most learned in things pertaining unto philosophy." Aurelius, wishing to be "himself such," loved him "for the love of the orator's commenders, rather than for the things for which he was commended." "It was to me a great matter," says he, "that my discourse and labours should be known to that man; which should he approve, I were the more kindled; but, if he disapproved, my empty heart, void of Thy solidity, had been wounded. For so did I then lean upon the judgment of men, not upon Thine, O my God, in whom no man is deceived."