18 OCTOBER 1940, Page 24

THE life of St. Vincent de Paul is well documented

and un- dramatic, except for a rather mysterious period as a slave in Tunis. Mr. Maynard, apart from a few personal eccentricities, tells the story of this simple and practical saint with admirable clarity. He was a man who grew unsensationally into sanctity, hindered as much as helped by the pious women who sur- rounded him. He lived at a time as brutal and apparently as hopeless as our own, and his biography reads appositely today. " The patient persistence with which he went forward in the gathering gloom is perhaps the highest mark of his heroic sanctity. . . . Because of the crumbling world, he trusted in God."