34 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
the time of the sack by Alaric, complains that the lady has not 
kept him informed of the Italian situation: “To this last letter, 
just now received, I lose no time in promptly replying, because 
your Excellency’s agent has written me that he can send my letter 
without delay to Kome. By his letter we have been greatly dis¬ 
tressed, because he has [not] taken pains to acquaint us with the 
things which are taking place in the city or around its walls, so 
as to give us reliable information concerning that which we were 
reluctant to believe on the authority of vague rumors. In the 
letters which were sent to us previously by our brethren, tidings 
were given to us of events, vexatious and grievous, it is true, but 
much less calamitous than those of which we now hear. I am 
surprised beyond expression that my brethren the holy bishops 
did not write to me when so favorable an opportunity of sending 
a letter by your messengers occurred, and that your own letter 
conveyed to us no information concerning such painful tribula¬ 
tion as has befallen you,—tribulation which, by reason of the 
tender sympathies of Christian charity, is ours as well as yours. 
I suppose, however, that you deemed it better not to mention these 
sorrows, because you considered that this could do no good, or 
because you did not wish to make us sad by your letter. But in 
my opinion, it does some good to acquaint us even with such 
events as these: in the first place, because it is not right to be 
ready to ‘rejoice with them that rejoice,’ but refuse to ‘weep with 
them that weep;’ and in the second place because ‘tribulation 
worketh patience. ’ . . . Far be it, therefore, from us to refuse 
to hear even of the bitter and sorrowful things which befall those 
who are very dear to us!”^® 
If the just quoted letter imply a personal rather than a general 
sympathy, the sermons reveal Augustine’s attitude toward the suf¬ 
ferings of the commonwealth as a whole. However redolent of 
other-worldliness, the sermons numbered CV and CCXCVI in 
Migne^^ are thus redolent only as are the passages therein borrowed 
from the Book of Job. As the ultimate clinging to God of the 
man of Uz is the expression and fruit of the deepest anguish of 
soul for the loss of sons and daughters, of wealth and neighborhood 
repute, so St. Augustine’s recourse to God and to divine consola¬ 
tion suggests the agony of heart caused by the miseries of his 
country. “Be the world prosperous, be the world overturned: ‘I 
XCIX, in Goldbacher, op. cit., XXXIV and Pat. Lat., XXXIII. Tr. Cunning¬ 
ham. 
uPat. Lat. XXXVIII. 
