No More Learning

It will be remembered that the
Mæcenas of Thagaste had taken up warmly the plan of a lay monastery which
Augustin and his friends had lost their heads over, and he had promised
to subscribe a large sum. Augustin's retreat was a first step towards
realizing this plan in a new shape. Romanianus, no doubt, approved of
it. In any case, he asked Augustin to keep on giving lessons to his son
Licentius. Another young man, Trygetius, begged for the same favour.
Augustin therefore did not intend to give up his employment altogether. He
had changed, for the present at least, from a Government professor into a
private one.

This meant that he had a certain living. All he wanted now was a shelter.
A friend, a colleague, the grammarian Verecundus, graciously offered him
this. Verecundus thus repaid a favour which Augustin had quite recently
done him. It was at Augustin's request that Nebridius, who was a friend of
both, agreed to take over the classes of the grammarian, who was obliged
to go away. Although rich, full of talent, and very eager for peace and
solitude, Nebridius, simply out of good-nature, was willing to take the
place of Verecundus in his very modest employment. One cannot too much
admire the generosity and kindliness of these ancient and Christian
manners. In those days, friendship knew nothing of our narrow and shabby
egoisms.

Now Verecundus owned a country house just outside Milan, at Cassicium. He
suggested to Augustin to spend the vacation there, and even to live there
permanently with all his people, on condition of looking after the property
and keeping it up.

Attempts have been made to find traces of this hospitable dwelling where
the future monk of Thagaste and Hippo bade farewell to the world. Cassicium
has disappeared. The imagination is free to rebuild it fancifully in any
part of the rich country which lies about Milan. Still, if the youthful
Licentius has not yielded too much to metaphor in the verses wherein he
recalls to Augustin "Departed suns among Italian mountain-heights," it is
likely that the estate of Verecundus lay upon those first mountain-slopes
which roll into the Brianza range. Even to-day, the rich Milanese have
their country houses among those hills.

To Augustin and his companions this flourishing Lombardy must have seemed
another promised land. The country, wonderfully fertile and cultivated,
is one orchard, where fruit trees cluster, and, in all ways, deep streams
wind, slow-flowing and stocked with fish. Everywhere is the tremor of
running water--inconceivably fresh music for African ears. A scent of mint
and aniseed; fields with grass growing high and straight in which you
plunge up to the knees. Here and there, deeply engulfed little valleys
with their bunches of green covert, slashed with the rose plumes of the
lime trees and the burnished leaves of the hazels, and where already the
northern firs lift their black needles. Far off, blended in one violet
mass, the Alps, peak upon peak, covered with snow; and nearer in view,
sheer cliffs, jutting fastnesses, ploughed through with black gorges which
make flare out plainer the bronze-gold of their slopes. Not far off, the
enchanted lakes slumber. It seems that an emblazonment fluctuates from
their waters, and writhing above the crags which imprison them drifts
athwart a sky sometimes a little chill--Leonardo's pensive sky of shadowed
amethyst--again of a flushed blue, whereupon float great clouds, silken
and ruddy, as in the backgrounds of Veronese's pictures. The beauty of the
light lightens and beautifies the over-heavy opulence of the land.

And wherever the country house of Verecundus may be placed, some bit of
this triumphal landscape will be found. As for the house itself, Augustin
has said enough about it for us to see it fairly well. It was no doubt one
of those old rustic buildings, inhabited only some few months of the year,
in the warmest season, and for the rest of the time given over to the
frolics of mice and rats. Without any pretence to architectural form, it
had been enlarged and renovated simply for the greater convenience of those
who lived there. There was no attempt at symmetry; the main door was not in
the middle of the building, and there was another door on one of the sides.
The sole luxury of this country house was perhaps the bath-houses. These
baths, however simple they might be, nevertheless reminded Augustin of
the decoration of gymnasiums. Does this mean that he found there rich
pavements, mosaics, and statues? These were quite usual things in Roman
villas. The Italians have always had, at all periods, a great fondness
for statues and mosaics. Not very particular about the quality, they made
up for it by the quantity. And when they could not treat themselves to
the real thing, it was good enough to give themselves the make-believe in
painting. I can imagine easily enough Verecundus' house, painted in fresco
from top to bottom, inside and out, like those houses at Pompeii, or the
modern Milanese villas.

There was no attempt at ornamental gardens at Cassicium. The surroundings
must have been kitchen-garden, grazing-land, or ploughed fields, as in
a farm. A meadow--not in the least the lawns found in front of a large
country house--lay before the dwelling, which was protected from sun and
wind by clumps of chestnut trees. There, stretched on the grass under the
shade of one of these spreading trees, they chatted gaily while listening
to the broken song of the brook, as it flowed under the windows of the
baths. They lived very close to nature, almost the life of field-tillers.
The whole charm of Cassicium consisted in its silence, its peace, and,
above all, its fresh air. Augustin's tired lungs breathed there a purer air
than in Milan, where the humid summer heat is crushing. His soul, yearning
for retirement, discovered a retreat here in harmony with his new desires,
a country solitude of which the Virgilian grace still appealed to his
literary imagination. The days he passed there were days of blessedness for
him. Long afterwards he was deeply moved when he recalled them, and in an
outburst of gratitude towards his host, he prayed God to pay him his debt.
"Thou wilt recompense him, O Lord, on the day of the resurrection of the
just. . . . For that country house at Cassicium where we found shelter in Thee
from the burning summer of our time, Thou wilt repay to Verecundus the
coolness and evergreen shade of Thy paradise. . . . "

That was an unequalled moment in Augustin's life. Following immediately
upon the mental crisis which had even worn out his body, he seems to be
experiencing the pleasure of convalescence. He slackens, and, as he says
himself, he rests. His excitement is quenched, but his faith remains
as firm as ever. With a cairn and supremely lucid mind he judges his
condition; he sees clearly all that he has still to do ere he becomes a
thorough Christian. First, he must grow familiar with the Scripture, solve
certain urgent questions--that of the soul, for example, its nature and
origin--which possessed him just then. Then he must change his conduct,
alter his ways of thought, and, if one may so speak, disinfect his mind
still all saturated with pagan influences: a delicate work--yes, and an
uneasy, at times even painful, which would take more than one day.

After twenty centuries of Christianity, and in spite of our claim to
understand all things, we do not yet realize very well what an abyss
lies between us and paganism. When by chance we come upon pagan traces
in certain primitive regions of the South of Europe, we get muddled, and
attribute to Catholicism what is but a survival of old abolished customs,
so far from us that we cannot recognize them any more. Augustin, on the
contrary, was right next to them. When he strolled over the fields and
through the woods around Cassicium, the Fauns and woodland Nymphs of the
old mythology haunted his memory, and all but stood before his eyes. He
could not take a walk without coming upon one of their chapels, or striking
against a boundary-mark still all greasy from the oil with which the
superstitious peasants had drenched it. Like himself, the old pagan land
had not yet quite put on the Christ of the new era. He was like that Hermes
Criophorus, who awkwardly symbolized the Saviour on the walls of the
Catacombs. Even as the Bearer of Rams changed little by little into the
Good Shepherd, the Bishop of Hippo emerged slowly from the rhetorician
Augustin.

He became aware of it during that languid autumn at Cassicium--that autumn
heavy with all the rotting of summer, but which already promised the
great winter peace. The yellow leaves of the chestnuts were heaped by the
roadside. They fell in the brook which flowed near the baths, and the
slowed water ceased to sing. Augustin strained his ears for it. His soul
also was blocked, choked up by all the deposit of his passions. But he knew
that soon the chant of his new life would begin in triumphal fashion, and
he said over to himself the words of the psalm: _Cantate mihi canticum
novum_--"Sing unto me a new song. "

Unfortunately for Augustin, his soul and its salvation was not his only
care at Cassicium: he had a thousand others. So it shall be with him
throughout his life. Till the very end he will long for solitude, for the
life in God, and till the end God will charge him with the care of his
brethren. This great spirit shall live above all by charity.

At the house of Verecundus he was not only the head, but he had a complete
country estate to direct and supervise. Probably all the guests in the
house helped him. They divided the duties. The good Alypius, who was used
to business and versed in the twisted ways of the law, took over the
foreign affairs--the buying and selling, probably the accounts also. He was
continually on the road to Milan. Augustin attended to the correspondence,
and every morning appointed their work to the farm-labourers. Monnica
looked after the household, no easy work in a house where nine sat down to
table every day. But the Saint fulfilled her humble duties with touching
kindness and forgetfulness of self: "She took care of us," says Augustin,
"as if we had all been her children, and she served us as if each of us had
been her father. "

Let us look a little at these "children" of Monnica. Besides Alypius, whom
we know already, there was the young Adeodatus, the child of sin--"my son
Adeodatus, whose gifts gave promise of great things, unless my love for
him betrays me. " Thus speaks his father. This little boy was, it seems,
a prodigy, as shall be the little Blaise Pascal later: "His intelligence
filled me with awe"--_horrori mihi erat illud ingenium_--says the father
again. What is certain is that he had a soul like an angel. Some sayings
of his have been preserved by Augustin. They are fragrant as a bunch of
lilies.

The other members of the family are nearer the earth. Navigius, Augustin's
brother, an excellent man of whom we know nothing save that he had a bad
liver--the icterus of the African colonist--and that on this account he
abstained from sweetmeats. Rusticus and Lastidianus, the two cousins,
persons as shadowy as the "supers" in a tragedy. Finally, Augustin's
pupils, Trygetius and Licentius. The first, who had lately served some time
in the army, was passionately fond of history, "like a veteran. " Although
his master in some of his Dialogues has made him his interlocutor, his
character remains for us undeveloped. With Licentius it is different. This
son of Romanianus, the Mæcenas of Thagaste, was Augustin's beloved pupil.
It is easy to make that out. All the phrases he devotes to Licentius have a
warmth of tone, a colour and relief which thrill.

This Licentius comes before us as the type of the spoiled child, the son of
a wealthy family, capricious, vain, presuming, unabashed, never hesitating
if he sees a chance to have a joke with his master. Forgetful, besides,
prone to sudden fancies, superficial, and rather blundering. With all
that, the best boy in the world--a bad head, but a good heart. He was a
frank pagan, and I believe remained a pagan all his life, in spite of the
remonstrances of Augustin and those of the gentle Paulinus of Nola, who
lectured him in prose and verse. A great eater and a fine drinker, he
found himself obliged to do penance at St. Monnica's rather frugal table.
But when the fever of inspiration took hold of him, he forgot eating and
drinking, and in his poetical thirst he would would have drained--so his
master says--all the fountains of Helicon. Licentius had a passion for
versifying: "He is an almost perfect poet," wrote Augustin to Romanianus.
The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk to the father
of a wealthy pupil, especially if he is your benefactor. At Cassicium,
under Augustin's indulgent eyes, the pupil turned into verse the romantic
adventure of Pyramus and Thisbe. He declaimed bits of it to the guests
in the house, for he had a fine loud voice. Then he flung aside the
unfinished poem and suddenly fell in love with Greek tragedies of which,
as it happened, he understood nothing at all, though this did not prevent
him from boring everybody he met with them. Another day it was the Church
music, then quite new, which flung him into enthusiasm. That day they heard
Licentius singing canticles from morning till night.

In connection with this, Augustin relates with candid freedom an anecdote
which to-day needs the indulgence of the reader to make it acceptable. As
it gives light upon that half-pagan, half-Christian way of life which was
still Augustin's, I will repeat it in all its plainness.

It happened, then, one evening after dinner, that Licentius went out and
took his way to a certain mysterious retreat, and there he suddenly began
singing this verse of the Psalm: "Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause
Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. " As a matter of fact, he had
hardly sung anything else for a long time. He kept on repeating this verse
over and over again, as people do with a tune they have just picked up. But
the pious Monnica, who heard him, could not tolerate the singing of such
holy words in such a place. She spoke sharply to the offender. Upon this
the young scatter-brains answered rather flippantly:

"Supposing, good mother, that an enemy had shut me up in that place--do you
mean to say that God wouldn't have heard me just the same? "

The next day he thought no more about it, and when Augustin reminded him,
he declared that he felt no remorse.

"As far as I am concerned," replied the excellent master, "I am not in the
least shocked by it. . . . The truth is, that neither that place, which has
so much scandalized my mother, nor the darkness of night, is altogether
inappropriate to this canticle. For whence, think you, do we implore God
to drag us, so that we may be converted and gaze upon His face? Is it not
from that jakes of the senses wherein our souls are plunged, and from that
darkness of which the error is around us? . . . "

And as they were discussing that day the order established by Providence,
Augustin made it a pretext to give a little edifying lecture to his pupil.
Having heard the sermon to the end, the sharp Licentius put in with sly
maliciousness:

"I say, what a splendid arrangement of events to shew me that nothing
happens except in the best way, and for our great good! "

This reply gives us the tone of the conversation between Augustin and
his pupils. Nevertheless, however free and merry the talks might be, the
purpose was always instructive, and it was always substantial. Let us not
forget that the Milanese rhetorician is still a professor. The best part of
his days was devoted to these two youths who had been put under his charge.
As soon as he had settled the business of the farm, talked to the peasants,
and given his orders to the workmen, he fell back upon his business of
rhetorician. In the morning they went over Virgil's _Eclogues_ together. At
night they discussed philosophy. When the weather was fine they walked in
the fields, and the discussion continued under the shade of the chestnut
trees. If it rained, they took refuge in the withdrawing-room adjoining the
baths. Beds were there, cushions, soft chairs convenient for talking, and
the equal temperature from the vapour-baths close at hand was good for
Augustin's bronchial tubes.

There is no stiffness in these dialogues, nothing which smacks of the
school. The discussion starts from things which they had under the eyes,
often from some slight accidental happening. One night when Augustin could
not sleep--he often suffered from insomnia--the dispute began in bed, for
the master and his pupils slept in the same room. Lying there in the dark,
he listened to the broken murmur of the stream. He was trying to think out
an explanation of the pauses in the sound, when Licentius shifted under the
bedclothes, and reaching out for a piece of stick lying on the floor, he
rapped with it on the foot of the bed to frighten the mice. So he was not
asleep either, nor Trygetius, who was stirring about in his bed. Augustin
was delighted: he had two listeners. Immediately he put this question: "Why
do those pauses come in the flow of the stream? Do they not follow some
secret law? . . . " They had hit upon a subject for debate. During many days
they discussed the order of the world.

Another time, as they were going into the baths, they stopped to look
at two cocks fighting. Augustin called the attention of the youths "to
a certain order full of propriety in all the movements of these fowls
deprived of reason. "

"Look at the conqueror," said he. "He crows triumphantly. He struts and
plumes himself as a proud sign of victory. And now look at the beaten one,
without voice, his neck unfeathered, a look of shame. All that has I know
not what beauty, in harmony with the laws of nature. . . . "

New argument in favour of order: the debate of the night before is started
rolling again.

For us, too, it is well worth while to pause on this little homely scene.
It reveals to us an Augustin not only very sensitive to beauty, but very
attentive to the sights of the world surrounding him. Cockfights were still
very popular in this Roman society at the ending of the Empire. For a long
time sculptors had found many gracious subjects in the sport. Reading this
passage of Augustin's, one recalls, among other similar designs, that
funeral urn at the Lateran upon which are represented two little boys, one
crying over his beaten cock, while the other holds his tenderly in his
arms and kisses it--the cock that won, identified by the crown held in its
spurs.

Augustin is always very close to these humble realities. Every moment
outside things start up in the dialogues between the master and his
pupils. . . . They are in bed on a rainy night in November. Gradually, a vague
gleam rests on the windows. They ask each other if that can be the moon, or
the break of day. . . . Another time, the sun rises in all its splendour, and
they decide to go into the meadow and sit on the grass. Or else, the sky
darkens and lights are brought in.
Or again, it is the appearance of
diligent Alyphis, just come back from Milan. . . .

In the same way as he notes these light details in passing, Augustin
welcomes all his guests into his dialogues and admits them to the debate:
his mother, his brother, the cousins, Alypius between his business
journeys, down to the child Adeodatus. He knew the value of ordinary good
sense, the second-sight of a pure heart, or of a pious soul strengthened by
prayer. Monnica used often to come into the room when they were arguing,
to let them know that dinner was ready, or for something of the kind. Her
son asked her to remain. Modestly she shewed her astonishment at such an
honour.

"Mother," said Augustin, "do you not love truth? Then why should I blush
to give you a place among us? Even if your love for truth were only
half-hearted, I ought still to receive you and listen to you. How much more
then, since you love it more than you love me, _and I know how much you
love me_. . . . Nothing can separate you from truth, neither fear, nor pain
of whatever kind it be--no, nor death itself. Do not all agree that this
is the highest stage of philosophy? How can I hesitate after that to call
myself your disciple? "

And Monnica, utterly confused by such praise, answered with affectionate
gruffness:

"Stop talking! You have never told bigger lies. "

Most of the time these conversations were simply dialectic games in the
taste of the period, games a little pedantic, and fatiguing from subtilty.
The boisterous Licentius did not always enjoy himself. He was often
inattentive; and his master scolded him. But all the same, the master
understood how to amuse his two foster-children while he exercised their
intelligence. At the end of one discussion he said to them laughing:

"Just at this hour, the sun warns me to put the playthings I had brought
for the children back in the basket. . . . "

Let us remark in passing that this is the last time, before those
centuries which are coming of universal intellectual silence or arid
scholasticism--the last time that high questions will be discussed in this
graceful light way, and with the same freedom of mind. The tradition begun
by Socrates under the plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, is ending
with Augustin under the chestnuts of Cassicium.

And yet, however gay and capricious the form, the substance of these
dialogues, "On the Academics," "On Order," and "On the Happy Life," is
serious, and even very serious. The best proof of their importance in
Augustin's eyes is, that after taking care to have them reported in
shorthand, he eventually published them. The _notarii_ attended these
discussions and let nothing be lost. The rise of the scrivener, of the
notary, dates from this period. The administration of the Lower-Empire was
frightfully given to scribbling. By contact with it, the Church became so
too. Let us not press our complaints about it, since this craze for writing
has procured for us, with a good deal of shot-rubbish, some precious
historical documents. In Augustin's case, these reports of his lectures at
Cassicium have at least the value of shewing us the state of soul of the
future Bishop of Hippo at a decisive moment of his life.

For these _Dialogues_, although they look like school exercises, reveal the
intimate thoughts of Augustin on the morrow of his conversion. While he
seems to be refuting the Academics, he is fighting the errors from which
he, personally, had suffered so long. He clarified his new ideal. No; the
search for truth, without hope of ever reaching it, cannot give happiness.
And genuine happiness is only in God. And if a rhythm is to be found in
things, then it is necessary to make the soul rhythmic also and so enable
it to contemplate God. It is necessary to still within it the noise of the
passions. Hence, the need of inward reformation, and, at a final analysis,
of asceticism.

But Augustin knew full well that these truths must be adapted to the
weakness of the two lads he was teaching, and also to the common run of
mankind. He has not yet in these years the uncompromising attitude which
ere long will give him a sterner virtue--an attitude, however, unceasingly
tempered by his charity and by the persistent recollections of his reading.
It was now that he shaped the rule of conduct in worldly morals and
education which the Christian experience of the future will adopt: "If you
have always order in your hearts," he said to his pupils, "you must return
to your verses. _For a knowledge of liberal sciences, but a controlled and
exact knowledge_, forms men who will love the truth. . . . But there are other
men, or, to put it better, other souls, who, although held in the body, are
sought for the eternal marriage by the best and fairest of spouses. For
these souls it is not enough to live; they wish to live happy. . . . But as
for you, go, _meanwhile_, and find your Muses! "

"Go and find your Muses! " What a fine saying! How human and how wise! Here
is clearly indicated the double ideal of those who continue to live in the
world according to the Christian law of restraint and moderation, and of
those who yearn to live in God. With Augustin the choice is made. He will
never more look back. These Dialogues at Cassicium are his supreme farewell
to the pagan Muse.




II

THE ECSTASY OF SAINT MONNICA


They stayed through the winter at Cassicium. However taken up he might be
by the work of the estate and the care of his pupils, Augustin devoted
himself chiefly to the great business of his salvation.

The _Soliloquies_, which he wrote then, render even the passionate tone of
the meditations which he perpetually gave way to during his watches and
nights of insomnia. He searched for God, moaning: _Fac me, Pater, quærere
te_--"Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father. " But still, he sought Him more as
a philosopher than as a Christian. The old man in him was not dead. He had
not quite stripped off the rhetorician or the intellectual. The over-tender
heart remained, which had so much sacrificed to human love. In those ardent
dialogues between himself and his reason, it is plain to see that reason
is not quite the mistress. "I love only God and the soul," Augustin states
with a touch of presumption. And his reason, which knows him well, answers:
"Do you not then love your friends? "--"I love the soul; how therefore
should I not love them? " What does this phrase, of such exquisite
sensibility, and even already so aloof from worldly thoughts--what does
it lack to give forth a sound entirely Christian? Just a slight change of
accent.

He himself began to see that he would do better not to philosophize so much
and to draw nearer the Scripture, in listening to the wisdom of that with
a contrite and humble heart. Upon the directions of Ambrose, whose advice
he had asked by letter, he tried to read the prophet Isaiah, because
Isaiah is the clearest foreteller of the Redemption. He found the book so
difficult that he lost heart, and he put it aside till later. Meanwhile,
he had forwarded his resignation as professor of Rhetoric to the Milan
municipality. Then, when the time was come, he sent to Bishop Ambrose
a written confession of his errors and faults, and represented to him
his very firm intention to be baptized. He was quietly baptized on the
twenty-fifth of April, during the Easter season of the year 387, together
with his son Adeodatus, and his friend Alypius. Alypius had prepared most
piously, disciplining himself with the harshest austerities, to the point
of walking barefoot on the frozen soil.

So now the solitaries of Cassicium are back in Milan. Augustin's two pupils
were gone. Trygetius doubtless had rejoined the army. Licentius had gone
to live in Rome. But another fellow-countryman, an African from Thagaste,
Evodius, formerly a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, came to join
the small group of new converts. Evodius, the future Bishop of Uzalis, in
Africa, and baptized before Augustin, was a man of scrupulous piety and
unquestioning faith. He talked of devout subjects with his friend, who,
just fresh from baptism, experienced all the quietude of grace. They spoke
of the community which St. Ambrose had either founded or organized at
the gates of Milan, and in comparison with a life so austere, Augustin
perceived that the life he had led at Cassicium was still stained with
paganism. He must carry out his conversion to the end and live as a hermit
after the manner of Antony and the solitaries of the Thebaid. Then it
occurred to him that he still owned a little property at Thagaste--a house
and fields. There they would settle and live in self-denial like the
monks. The purity of the young Adeodatus predestined him to this ascetic
existence. As for Monnica, who long since had taken the widow's veil, she
had to make no change in her ways to lead a saintly life in the company of
her son and grandson. It was agreed among them all to go back to Africa,
and to start as soon as possible.

Thus, just after his baptism, Augustin shews but one desire: to bury
himself in a retreat, to lead a humble and hidden life, divided between the
study of the Scripture and the contemplation of God. Later on, his enemies
were to accuse him of having become a convert from ambition, in view of the
honours and riches of the episcopate. This is sheer calumny. His conversion
could not have been more sincere, more disinterested--nor more heroic
either: he was thirty-three years old. When we think of all he had loved
and all he gave up, we can only bow the head and bend the knee before the
lofty virtue of such an example.

In the course of the summer the caravan started and crossed the Apennines
to set sail at Ostia. The date of this exodus has never been made quite
clear. Perhaps Augustin and his companions fled before the hordes of the
usurper Maximus, who, towards the end of August, crossed the Alps and
marched on Milan, while the young Valentinian with all his Court took
refuge at Aquileia. In any case, it was a trying journey, especially in the
hot weather. When Monnica arrived she was very enfeebled. At Ostia they had
to wait till a ship was sailing for Africa. Propitious conditions did not
offer every day. At this period, travellers were at the mercy of the sea,
of the wind, and of a thousand other circumstances. Time did not count; it
was wasted freely. The ship sailed short distances at a time, skirting the
coasts, where the length of the stay at every point touched depended on the
master. On board these ships--feluccas hardly decked over--if the crossing
was endless and unsafe, it was, above all, most uncomfortable. People were
in no hurry to undergo the tortures of it, and spaced them out as much
as possible by frequent stoppages. On account of all these reasons, our
Africans made a rather long stay at Ostia. They lodged, no doubt, with
Christian brethren, hosts of Augustin or Monnica, in a tranquil house far
out of earshot of the cosmopolitan crowd which overflowed in the hotels on
the quay.

Ostia, situated at the mouth of the Tiber, was both the port and
bond-warehouse of Rome. The Government stores-ships landed the African oil
and corn there. It was a junction for commerce, the point where immigrants
from all parts of the Mediterranean disbarked. To-day there is only left
a wretched little village. But at some distance from this hamlet, the
excavations of archæologists have lately brought to light the remains of
a large town. They have discovered at the entrance a place of burial with
arcosol-tombs; and here perhaps the body of St. Monnica was laid. In this
place of graves they came upon also a beautiful statue injured--a funeral
Genius, or a Victory, with large folded wings like those of the Christian
angels. Further on, the forum with its shops, the guard-house of the
night-cohort, baths, a theatre, many large temples, arcaded streets paved
with large flags, warehouses for merchandise. There may still be seen,
lining the walls, the holes in which the ends of the amphoræ used to be
dropped to keep them upright. All this wreckage gives an idea of a populous
centre where the stir of traffic and shipping was intense.

And yet in this noisy town, Augustin and his mother found means to withdraw
themselves and join together in meditation and prayer. Amid this rather
vulgar activity, in a noise of trade and seafaring, a mystic scene develops
where the purified love of mother and son gleams upon us as in a light of
apotheosis. They had at Ostia a foretaste, so to speak, of the eternal
union in God. This was in the house where they had come on arrival. They
talked softly, resting against a window which looked upon the garden. . . .
But the scene has been made popular by Ary Scheffer's too well-known
painting. You remember it: two faces, pale, bloodless, stripped of flesh,
in which live only the burning eyes cast upward to the sky--a dense sky,
baffling, heavy with all the secrets of eternity. No visible object,
nothing, absolutely nothing, distracts them from their contemplation. The
sea itself, although indicated by the painter, almost blends into the
blue line of the horizon. Two souls and the sky--there you have the whole
subject.

It is living poetry congealed in abstract thought. The attitude of the
characters, majestically seated, instead of leaning on the window-ledge,
has, in Scheffer's picture, I know not what touch of stiffness, of slightly
theatrical. And the general impression is a cold dryness which contrasts
with the lyric warmth of the story in the _Confessions_.

For my part, I always thought, perhaps on the testimony of the picture,
that the window of the house at Ostia opened above the garden in view of
the sea. The sea, symbol of the infinite, ought to be present--so it seemed
to me--at the final conversation between Monnica and Augustin. At Ostia
itself I was obliged to give up this too literary notion; the sea is not
visible there. No doubt at that time the channel was not so silted up as it
is to-day. But the coast lies so low, that just hard by the actual mouth of
the Tiber, the nearness of the sea can only be guessed by the reflection of
the waves in the atmosphere, a sort of pearly halo, trembling on the edge
of the sky. At present I am inclined to think that the window of the house
at Ostia was very likely turned towards the vast melancholy horizon of the
_Agro Romano_. "We passed through, one after another," says Augustin, "all
the things of a material order, unto heaven itself. " Is it not natural to
suppose that these things of a material order--these shapes of the earth
with its plantations, its rivers, towns, and mountains--were under their
eyes? The bleak spectacle which unrolled before their gaze agreed, at all
events, with the disposition of their souls.

This great desolate plain has nothing oppressive, nothing which retains
the eyes upon details too material. The colours about it are pale and
slight, as if on the point of swooning away. Immense sterile stretches,
fawn-coloured throughout, with here and there shining a little pink, a
little green; gorse, furze-bushes by the deep banks of the river, or a few
_boschetti_ with dusty leaves, which feebly stand out upon the blondness
of the soil. To the right, a pine forest. To the left, the undulations of
the Roman hills expire into an emptiness infinitely sad. Afar, the violet
scheme of the Alban mountains, with veiled and dream-like distances, shape
indefinitely against the pearl light, limpid and serene, of the sky.

Augustin and Monnica, resting on the window-ledge, looked forth. Doubtless
it was towards evening, at the hour when southern windows are thrown open
to the cool after a burning day. They looked forth. "We marvelled," says
Augustin, "at the beauty of Thy works, O my God! . . . " Rome was back there
beyond the hills, with its palaces, its temples, the gleam of its gilding
and its marbles. But the far-off image of the imperial city could not
conquer the eternal sadness which rises from the _Agro_. An air of funeral
loneliness lay above this plain, ready to be engulfed by the creeping
shadows. How easy it was to break free of these vain corporeal appearances
which decomposed of themselves! "Then," Augustin resumes, "we soared with
glowing hearts still higher. " (He speaks as if he and his mother were risen
with equal flight to the vision. It is more probable that he was drawn
up by Monnica, long since familiar with the ways of the spirit, used to
visions, and to mystic talks with God. . . . ) Where was this God? All the
creatures, questioned by their anguished entreaty, answered: _Quære super
nos_--"Seek above us! " They sought; they mounted higher and higher: "And
so we came to our own minds, and passed beyond them into the region of
unfailing plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of
truth. . . . And as we talked, and we strove eagerly towards this divine
region, _by a leap with the whole force of our hearts, we touched it for
an instant_. . . . Then we sighed, we fell back, and left there fastened the
first fruits of the Spirit, and heard again the babble of our own tongues,
this mortal speech wherein each word has a beginning and an ending. "

"We fell back! " The marvellous vision had vanished. But a great silence was
about them, silence of things, silence of the soul. And they said to each
other:

"If the tumult of the flesh were hushed; hushed these shadows of earth,
sea, sky; suppose this vision endured, and all other far inferior modes of
vision were taken away, and this alone were to ravish the beholder, and
absorb him, and plunge him in mystic joy, so that eternal life might be
like this moment of comprehension which has made us sigh with Love--might
not that be the fulfilment of 'Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord'? Ah,
when shall this be? Shall it not be, O my God, when we rise again among the
dead. . . ?