the seashore's thundering, showers, heat, snow, frost, forest and
breeze, night, day, praise Thee throughout the ages.'[19]

He speaks of Christ as the sun that never sets, never is obscured by
clouds, the flower of David, of the root of Jesse; of the eternal
Fatherland where the whole ground is fragrant with beds of purple
roses, violets, and crocuses, and slender twigs drop balsam.

St Jerome united Christian genius, as Ebert says, with classic
culture to such a degree that his writings, especially his letters,
often shew a distinctly modern tone,[20] and go to prove that
asceticism so deepened and intensified character that even literary
style took individual stamp.[21] But the most perfect representative,
the most modern man, of his day was Augustine.

As Rousseau's _Confessions_ revealed the revolutionary genius of the
eighteenth century, Augustine's opened out a powerful character,
fully conscious of its own importance, striving with the problems of
the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of its own
passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to a
glowing faith, and he described the process in characteristic and
drastic similes from Nature, which are scarcely suitable for
translation. He said on one occasion:

For I burned at times in my youth to satiate myself with deeds of
hell, and dared to run wild in many a dark love passage.... In
the time of my youth I took my fill passionately among the wild
beasts, and I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves
beneath the shade; and my beauty consumed away and I was
loathsome in Thy sight, pleasing myself and desiring to please