rs. Going to Rome to teach rhetoric, he was
invited to Milan to lecture, and there was attracted by the
eloquent preaching of Bishop Ambrose. His whole current of
thought was changed, and the two became ardent friends. In
391, Augustine was ordained priest by Valerius, Bishop of
Hippo, whose colleague he was appointed in 395. At the age of
41, he was designated Bishop of Hippo, and filled the office
for 35 years, passing away in his 76th year, on August 28,
430, during the third year of the siege of Hippo by the
Vandals under Genseric. His numerous and remarkable works
stamp him as one of the world's transcendent intellects. His
two monumental treatises are the "Confessions" and "The City
of God."

_I.--Regrets of a Mis-spent Youth_

"Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised." My faith, Lord,
should call on Thee, which Thou hast given me by the incarnation of Thy
Son, through the ministry of the preacher, Ambrose. How shall I call
upon my God? What room is there within me, wherein my God can come?
Narrow is the house of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that it may be able to
receive Thee. Thou madest us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless
until they rest in Thee.

I began, as yet a boy, to pray to Thee, that I might not be beaten at
school; but I sinned in disobeying the commands of parents and teachers
through love of play, delighting in the pride of victory in my contests.
I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Unless forced, I did
not learn at all. But no one does well against his will, even though
what he does is good. But what was well came to me from Thee, my God,
for Thou hast decreed that every inordinate affection should carry with
it its own punishment.

But why did I so much hate the Greek which I was taught as a boy? I do
not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters,
but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first
lessons--reading, writing, and arithmetic--I thought as great a burden
and as vexatious as any Greek. But in the other lessons I learned the
wanderings of AEneas, forgetful of my own, and wept for the dead Dido
because she killed herself for love; while, with dry eyes, I endured my
miserable self-dying among these things, far from Thee, my God, my life.

Why, then, did I hate the Greek classics, full of like fictions to those
in Virgil? For Homer also curiously wove similar s