Compared with his Confessions, St. Augustine's Letters have received but slight attention, even from many of his professed biographers, and for each edition of the one there have appeared, at a moderate estimate, several hundred editions, translations or studies of the other. Yet a man's autobiography gives only his own account and interpretation of him self and his deeds his letters, if they are genuine and spontaneous, show him directly, without the distor tion of his own explanations and self-justifications. The present selection, barely a quarter of Augustine's extant correspondence, contains, it is hoped, enough to exhibit the human interest of the man and his environment excluding almost all the lengthier letters, often of the bulk of minor treatises, and those solely or chiefly concerned with questions of doctrine, I have sought to present those which best reveal him in contact with the varied and busy life of his time.