The Life of Saint Theresa. By the Author of "Devotions
Before and After Holy Communion." (Macmillan.)—A saint distinguished by good-sense is happy in finding a biographer endowed with the same gift. " Good-sense," indeed, must be understood in a sense very differ- ent from that which it bears in the mouth of the religiously respectable Philistine, who makes a zealous Churchwarden, or active Chairman of a religious society. Sharp austerities, which were anything but a play- ing at disipline, were St. Theresa's constant practice ; and she kept the vow of poverty with a rigour which startled the prudence of her spiritual counsellors. And her intellect, too, was of the mystical order. But for all that, she was practical ; she knew the world, as well as the cloister, and what the hearts of men and women are in both. And she had, one of her biographers remarks, what nearly every one in that age lacked, "pity." It is quite probable that she did more than any one person, or, indeed, any set of persons, to keep Spain in the old Catholic paths. The literature that has gathered round her name is of no small extent. She was herself an author of no mean repute. And she left behind her a copious record of her outward and inward life. Hence the materials for her biography are abundant, so abundant that they re- quire much skill to deal with them properly. This the author of tho volume before us possesses. Any biography is a difficult task ; the biography of a Spanish saint, removed from us not by three centuries only, but by the strongest diversities of habit and thought, is such ifi an especial degree. It has been admirably performed in the volume before us.
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