§ 178. AUGUSTINE. 99S
tions. His latest controversial works against the Scmi-Pulagians, written in a gentle spirit, date from the same period. He bore the duties of his office alone till his seventy-second year, when his people unanimously elected his friend Heracliua to be his assistant and successor.
The evening of his ]ife was troubled by increasing infii'mi ties of body and by the unspeakable wretchedness which the barbarian Yandals spread over his country in their victorious invasion, destroying cities, villages, and churches, without mercy, and even besieging the fortified city of Hippo.' Yet he faithfully persevered in his work. The last ten days of his life he spent in close retirement, in prayers and tears and repeated reading of the penitential Psalms, which he had caused to be written on the wall over his bed, that he might have them always before his eyes. Thus with an act of penance he closed liis life. In the midst of the terrors of the siege and the despair of his people he could not suspect what abundant seed he had sown for the future.
In the third month of the siege of Hippo, on the 28th of August, 430, in tlie seventy-sixth year of his age, in full poe^ session of his faculties, and in the presence of many friends and pupils, he passed gently and happily into that eternity to which he had so long aspired. " O how wonderful," wrote he in his Meditations,^ " how beautiful and lovely are the dwellings of Thy house, Almighty God ! I burn with longing to behold Thy beauty in Thy bridal-chamber. . . . O Jerusalem, holy city of God, dear bride of Christ, my heart loves thee, my soul has already long sighed for thy beauty ! . . . The King of kings Himself is in the midst of thee, and His children are within thy walls. There are the hymning choirs of angels, the fellowship of heavenly citizens. There is the wedding-feast of all who from this sad earthly pilgrimage have reached thy joys. There is the far-seeing choir of the prophets ; there the number of the twelve apostles ; there the triumphant army of innumerable martyrs and holy confessors.
' Possidius, c. 28, gives a vivid picture of the ravages of the Vandals, ffhicb have become proverbial. Comp. also Gibbon, ch. xxxiii. ' I freely combine several passages.
096 THIRD PE«IOD. A.D 311-590.
Full and perfect love there reigns, for God is all in all. Thej love and praise, they praise and love Him evermore. . . Blessed, perfectly and foi-ever blessed, shall I too be, if, vvhei. oiy poor body shall be dissolved, ... I may stand before my King and God, and see Him in His glory, as He Himself hath deigned to promise: ' Father, I will that they also whom Thor hast given Me be with Me where I am ; that they may beholc. My glory which I had with Thee before the world was.' ' This aspiration after the heavenly Jerusalem found grand ex pression in the hymn De gloria et gaudiis Paradisi :
"Ad perennis vitse fontem mens sativit arida,"
which is incorporated in the Meditations of Augustine, and the idea of which originated in part with him, though it waa not brought into poetical form till long afterwards by Peter Damiani.'
He left no will, for in his voluntary poverty he had no earthly property to dispose of, except his library; this lie bequeathed to the church, and it was fortunately preserved from the depredations of the Arian barbarians."
Soon after his death Hippo was taken and destroyed by the Yandals.' Africa was lost to the Romans. A few de-
' Comp. Daniel: Thesaurus hymnol. i. p. 116 sqq., and iv. p. 20J< sq., and § 116, above (p. 593, note 1).
' Possidius says. Vita, c. 31: " Testaraentum nullum fecit, quia unde faceret, pauper Dei non habuit. Ecclesiaj bibliothecam omncsque codices diligentcr posteria custodiendos semper jubebat."
' The inhabitants escaped to tlie sea. There appears no bishop of Hippo after Augustine. In tlie seventh century the old city was utterly destroyed by the Arabians, but two miles from it Bona was built out of its ruins. Comp. Tillomont, xiii. 945, and Gibbon, ch. xxxiii. Gibbon says, that Bona, " in the sixteenth century, contained about three hundred families of industrious, but turbulent manufacturers. The adjacent territory is renowned for a pure air, a fertile soil, and plenty of exquisite fruits." Since the French conquest of Algiers, Bona was rebuilt in 1832, and ia gradually assuming a French aspect. It is now one of the finest tovrns in Algeria, the key to the province of Constantine, has a public garden, several schools, considerable commerce, and a population of over 10,000 of French, Moors, and Jews, the great majority of whom are foreigners. The relics of St. Augustine have beer recently transferred from Pavia to Bona. See the letters of abbe Sibour to Poujou at sur la translation de la relique de saint Augustin de Pavie ;\ llipponc, in Poujon lat's Hisloire de saint Augustin, torn. L p. 413 sqq.