le at Milan with Saint Ambrose. In Milan his mother
would willingly have continued in the African ritual--a Pagan
survival--carrying wine and food to the graves of the dead; but this
Saint Ambrose forbade, and she obeyed him for him "she did extremely
affect for the regard of my spirituall good."

From Milan his friend Alipius preceded him to Rome, and there "was
damnably delighted" with the gladiatorial combats, being "made drunk with
a delight in blood." Augustine followed him to Rome, and there lost the
girl of his heart, "so that my heart was wounded, as that the very blood
did follow." The lady had made a vow of eternal chastity, "having left
me with a son by her." But he fell to a new love as the old one was
departed, and yet the ancient wound pained him still "after a more
desperate and dogged manner."

_Haeret letalis arundo_!

By these passions his conversion was delayed, the carnal and spiritual
wills fighting against each other within him. "Give me chastity and
continency, O Lord," he would pray, "but do not give it yet," and perhaps
this is the frankest of the confessions of Saint Augustine. In the midst
of this war of the spirit and the flesh, "Behold I heard a voyce, as if
it had been of some boy or girl from some house not farre off, uttering
and often repeating these words in a kind of singing voice,

"_Tolle, Lege; Tolle, Lege_,
Take up and read, take up and read."

So he took up a Testament, and, opening it at random, after the manner of
his Virgilian lots, read:--

"Not in surfeiting and wantonness, not in causality and uncleanness,"
with what follows. "Neither would I read any further, neither was there
any cause why I should." Saint Augustine does not, perhaps, mean us to
understand (as his translator does), that he was "miraculously called."
He knew what was right perfectly well before; the text only clinched a
resolve which he has found it very hard to make. Perhaps there was a
trifle of superstition in the matter. We never know how superstitious we
are. At all events, henceforth "I neither desired a wife, nor had I any
ambitious care of any worldly thing." He told his mother, and Monica
rejoiced, believing that now her prayers were answered.

Such is the story of the conversion of Saint Augustine. It was the
maturing of an old purpose, and long deferred. Much stranger stories are
told of Bunyan and Colonel Gardiner. He gave up rhetoric; another man
was engaged "to sel