The ancient biographer Peter de Natalibus thus describes the last hours of Jerome: As Jerome's death drew near, he commanded that he should be laid on the bare ground and covered with sackcloth, and calling the brethren around him, he spoke sweetly to them, and exhorted them in many holy words, and with tears received the blessed Eucharist. And sinking backwards again on the earth, his hands crossed on his heart, he sang the _Nunc Dimittis_, which being finished, suddenly a great light as of the noonday sun shone round about him, within which light angels innumerable were seen by the bystanders in shifting motion. And the voice of the Saviour was heard inviting him to heaven, and the holy doctor answered that he was ready. And after an hour that light departed, and Jerome's spirit with it. And at that very hour Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was sitting in his cell meditating a treatise on the beatific vision, and had begun an epistle to Jerome, consulting him on that mystery, when an ineffable light with a fragrant odour filled his cell, and a voice came to him therefrom, reproving him of presumption for deeming that, while yet in the flesh, he could comprehend the eternal beatitude. And Augustine demanding who spoke to him, the voice answered, "Jerome's soul, to whom thou writest, for I am this very hour loosed from the flesh, and on my way to heaven." And after Augustine had asked him many questions concerning the joys of heaven, the angelic nature, and the Blessed Trinity, and Jerome had answered thereto, the light and the voice departed. ST. JEROME'S EPISTLES.