again forgot the request; and was at last obliged to say to his guest: "Enter and find yourself what you seek, for I cannot keep the image of what you ask for sufficiently long stamped on my brain to do what you desire."

Tauler, in narrating this story, unintentionally describes his own character. In every one of his sermons, he chooses a text and a subject. This was required by circumstances and by his audience. But the moment he enters the cell of his contemplation, he forgets text and everything else, and mounts into the realms of sublimity where he loses himself in that supreme unity after which his heart is always aspiring. The moment he begins to fly, he forgets the course he must take. With one stroke of her wings, his intellect finds her love, and then soars in her natural element, with plumes unruffled. Far above modes and forms of earth, she stretches out her broad wings in the cerulean vault of her beloved repose. If any should then ask him about some ordinary detail, he would certainly answer like the recluse above mentioned: "Enter yourself, and find what you are inquiring after. I cannot keep the image of material or minor things long enough in my mind to fulfil your request."

Tauler is continually citing Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. In fact, these two great men are at home in the same latitudes. The sermons of Tauler are to the works of the Areopagite what a treatise of applied mathematics is to one on theoretical mathematics. Tauler, like St. Dionysius, dwells in the interior of the soul, that secret and deep abode, the name of which he is ever seeking without finding, and which he ends by calling ineffable as God himself.

"It is in this recess of the soul," he preaches, "that the divine word

speaks. This is why it is written, 'In the midst of silence, a secret word was spoken to me.' Concentrate then, if thou canst, all thy powers; forget all those images with which thou hast filled thy soul. The more thou forgettest creatures, the more thou wilt become fit and ready to receive that mysterious word. Oh! if thou couldst of a sudden become ignorant of all things, even of thy own life, like St. Paul, when he said, 'Was I in the body or out of the body? I know not, God knows it.'" ... "Natural animation was suspended in him, and for this reason his body lost none of its powers during the three days which he passed without eating or drinking. The same happened to Moses when he fasted forty days on the mountain, without suffering from such long abstinence, finding himself as strong at the end as at the beginning."

The desire of Tauler that his hearers should become Christian children, ignorant or forgetful of everything in sublime ecstasy, shows plainly the nature of his charity. He wished for them absolute perfection, contemplative and active, transfiguration, transport, exactness, total accomplishment of truth, and the plenitude of all heavenly things. The atmosphere in which he lived favored his hopes and helped the efficacy of his teaching. He declares that in the monastery when a soul is suddenly called to some interior consideration, it can leave the choir in the midst of the exercises, and plunge itself unseen into the abyss of meditation to which God draws it. He also affirms that when friars pass several days in ecstasy, they have no reason to be disturbed at any irregularity of theirs which may result from such an accident, provided they obey the rule again, when they become masters of themselves. Thus the prodigious transports of true asceticism are ever

strengthening; while those of false mysticism enervate the soul. Hence it is that Tauler, though he is always speaking of ravishments, never loses the character of force, and of that austerity which is the sign of God and the test of true contemplation. "Where then does God act without a medium? In the depths, in the essence of the soul? I cannot explain; for the faculties cannot apprehend a being without an image. They cannot, for instance, conceive a horse under the species of a man. It is precisely because all images come from without to the soul, that the mystery is hidden from it; and this is a great blessing. Ignorance plunges the soul into admiration. She seeks to comprehend what is taking place in her; she feels that there is something; but she knows not what it is. The moment we know the cause of anything, it has no longer any charm for us. We leave it to run after some other object; always thirsting for knowledge, and never finding the rest which we seek. This knowledge, full of ignorance and obscurity, fixes our attention on the divine operations within us. 'The mysterious and hidden word' of which Solomon writes, is working in our minds." (Sermons.)

Many men of genius, from the beginning of the world, have studied the human soul, and many are illustrious for the profundity of their psychological researches. Yet compared to the great mystical writers, those philosophers are mere children. Merely human psychology skims over the surface of the soul, only analyzing its relations to the interior world. They are ignorant of the phenomena which take place in the secret recesses of the mind. The great light, the incarnate Word, alone can throw its rays into those abysses. It is remarkable that those who study the soul for curiosity, merely

to find out, and consecrate their life to such investigations, discover very little. While those who care nothing for simple science, but who act virtuously, obey and glorify the Lord, see all things properly. Instead of aiding vision to peer into the soul's penetralia, curiosity dims the light. Simplicity is the best torch in those catacombs. Simplicity, commissioned by God, penetrates into the abysses of the soul, with the audacity of a child sent by its father.

The interior and extraordinary efforts by which Tauler rose to the height of contemplation, gave him, though he knew it not, an astounding knowledge of the resistance which man makes to man and to God; of our combats, defeats, and victories; and of those artifices by which we veil from ourselves our true situation during the battle. The rounds by which the soul ascends are counted, and yet the ladder of perfection has no summit.

The gospel, so merciful to sinners, vents all its wrath on the Scribes and Pharisees. All its charity is for external enemies; all its severity for interior enemies. Jesus Christ used the whip once in his life to show men in what direction his indignation was turned. We have Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery on the one hand; the money-changers of the Temple, the Scribes and Pharisees on the other. There is a line of fire separating sinners from the accursed. All Catholic doctrine, all ascetical tradition, is but the echo of Christ's mercy and Christ's anger. Tauler teaches like all the great doctors, in this respect.

He reprobates exterior practices which are devoid of charity, as the works of hell, most hateful to the Holy Spirit. The fixedness of his ideas gives a singular solemnity to his repetitions. On every page his hatred of works done without interior life

writings of such sophists and falsifiers of history as Buckle and Draper. It substitutes genuine philosophy and history for the base metal of counterfeiters. It exhibits truthfully what Christianity—that is, the Catholic Church, which is concrete, real Christianity-has done in creating the civilization whose benefits we are now enjoying. The translator's preface furnishes so interesting a sketch of M. Ozanam's life and literary career, that we are sure of giving a great gratification to our readers by transferring the greater portion of it to our pages.

"A few words may be said as to the career of the author, Frederic Ozanam, whose name has not yet become widely known in this country. He was born August 23d, 1813, at Milan, where his father, who had fallen into poverty, was residing and studying medicine. His mother, whose maiden name had been Marie Nantas, was daughter to a rich Lyonnese merchant, and it was to that city that his parents returned in 1816. The father obtained there a considerable reputation as a doctor, and died from the effects of an accident in 1837. His son pursued his studies at Paris with great success, and was destined for the bar. He took a prominent place in the thoughtful and religious party among the students, and his published letters show how he became identified with the movement set on foot by Lacordaire and others. He was especially distinguished, however, by the foundation of an association of benevolence, called the Society of St. Vincent of Paul, which from its small beginnings in Paris spread over France, and has at the present time its conferences, composed of laymen, in all the larger towns of Europe. M. Ozanam showed, even during his student life, a leaning toward literary pursuits, and a distaste for the profession of the bar, to which he was destined; but he joined the bar of Lyons, obtained some success as an advocate, and was chosen in 1839 as the first occupant of the professional chair of Commercial Law, which had just been established in that city. The courses of lectures given by him were well attended, the lectures themselves were eloquent and learned, and M. Ozanam seems to have preferred inculcating the science of jurisprudence to practising in the courts. But in the course of the following year, 1840, he obtained an appointment which was still more suitable to his talent, the Professorship of Foreign Literature at Paris, and which gave him a perfect opportunity for the cultivation of his

favorite pursuit, the philosophy of history. Shortly after his appointment, M. Ozanam married, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the duties of his calling; in travelling, partly for the sake of health and pleasure, partly to gain information which might be woven into his lectures; and in visits to his many friends, chiefly those who had taken an active part with him in upholding the interests of religion in France. He never entered upon active political life, though he offered himself upon a requisition of his fellow-townsmen as representative of Lyons in the National Assembly of 1848. In politics M. Ozanam was a decided liberal, in religion a fervent Catholic. His letters show a great dislike of any alliance between the church and absolutism, and a conviction that religion and an enlightened democracy might flourish together. He wrote in the Correspondant, which embodied the newer ideas, and was frequently animadverted upon by the Univers, which represented the more conservative party in church and state. His more important works were developed from lectures delivered at the Sorbonne; and his scheme was to embrace the history of civilization from the fall of the Roman Empire to the time of Dante. But failing health, although much was completed, did not allow him entirely to achieve the great object which he had originally conceived when a mere boy; and the touching words in which he expressed his resignation to an early death, when his already brilliant life promised an increase of success, and his cup of domestic happiness was entirely full, may be found among his published writings. M. Ozanam seems to have continued his literary labors as long as rapidly increasing weakness would permit, but after a stay in Italy, which did not avail to restore his broken health, he reached his native country only to die, September 8th, 1853, in the fortieth year of his age, and the heyday of a bright and useful career. He was lamented by troops of friends, old and young, rich and poor-the latter indeed being under especial obligations to his memory. His friend, M. Ampère, became his literary executor, and undertook the task of giving his complete works to the public, for which end a subscription was quickly raised among those who had known and respected him at Lyons and elsewhere. From the lectures which he had completed and revised, from reports of others, and his own manuscript notes, an edition of his complete works was formed in nine volumes, comprising La Civilisation au Cinquième Siècle, Etudes Germaniques, Les Poëtes Franciscains, Dante et la Philosophie