stamp of his soul.

First of all, his fate is confused with that of the dying Empire. He
witnessed, if not the utter disappearance, at least the gradual swooning
away of that admirable thing called the Roman Empire, image of Catholic
unity. Well, we are the wreckage of the Empire. Usually, we turn away with
contempt from those wretched centuries which underwent the descents of the
Barbarians. For us, that is the Lower-Empire, a time of shameful decadence
which deserves nothing but our scorn. However, it is out of this chaos
and this degradation that we have arisen. The wars of the Roman republic
concern us less than the outlawry of the Barbarian chiefs who separated our
Gaul from the Empire, and without knowing it, prepared the dawn of France.
After all, what are the rivalries of Marius and Sylla to us? The victory of
Aetius over the Huns in the plains of Chalons concerns us a good deal more.
Further, it is unfair to the Lower-Empire to view it only as a time of
feebleness and cowardice and corruption. It was also an epoch of immense
activity, prolific of daring and high-flying adventurers, some of them
heroic. Even the most degenerate of the last Emperors never lost the
conviction of Roman majesty and grandeur. Unto the very end, they employed
all the ruses of their diplomacy to prevent the Barbarian chiefs from
imagining themselves anything else but vassals of the Empire. Honorius, at
bay in Ravenna, persisted in refusing Alaric the title of commander of the
_Cohortes Urbanae_, even though his refusal were to lead to the sack of Rome
and imperil his own life.

Simply by his fidelity to the Empire, Augustin shews himself one like
ourselves--a Latin of Occitania. But still closer resemblances draw him
near to us. His time was very like our own time. Upon even a slight
familiarity with his books we recognize in him a brother-soul who has
suffered, felt, thought, pretty nearly like us. He came into an ending