the verge of insanity. The reality of her inspiration and her genius are proved by the force with which her human sympathies, and moral dignity, and intellectual vigour triumphed over these diseased hallucinations of the cloister, and converted them into the instruments of effecting patriotic and philanthropic designs. There was nothing mean or thaumaturgical about her supernatural environments. Whatever we may think of the wisdom of her public policy with regard to the Crusades and to the Papal Sovereignty, it is impossible to deny that a holy and high object possessed her from the earliest to the latest of her life-that she lived for ideas greater than self-aggrandisement or the saving of her soul, for the greatest, perhaps, which her age presented to an earnest Catholic. The abuses to which the indulgence of temperaments like that of St Catherine must in many cases have given rise, are obvious. Hysterical women and half-witted men, without possessing her abilities and understanding her objects, beheld unmeaning visions, and dreamed childish dreams. Others won the reputation of sanctity, by obstinate neglect of all the duties of life and of all the decencies of personal cleanliness. Every little town in Italy

could show its saints like the Santa Fina of whom San Gemignano boasts a girl who lay for seven years on a backboard till her mortified flesh clung to the wood; or the San Bartolo, who, for hideous leprosy, received the title of the Job of Tuscany. Children were encouraged in blasphemous pretensions to the special power of heaven, and the nerves of weak women were shaken by revelations in which they only half believed. The exaggerated, but instructive pictures of the Abbé show how the trade of miracles is still carried on, and how in the France of our days, when

intellectual vigour has been separated from old forms of faith, such vision-mongering undermines morality, encourages ignorance, and saps the force of individuals. But St Catherine must not be confounded with those sickly shams and make-believes. Her enthusiasms were real: they were proper to her age; they inspired her with unrivalled self-devotion and unwearied energy; they connected her with the political and social movements of her country.

Many of the supernatural events in St Catherine's life were founded on a too literal acceptation of biblical metaphors. The Canticles, perhaps, inspired her with the belief in a mystical marriage. An enigmatical sentence of St Paul's suggested the stigmata. When the saint bestowed her garment upon Christ in the form of a beggar, and gave him the silver cross of her rosary, she was but realising his own words: "Inasmuch as ye shall do it unto the least of these little ones, ye shall do it unto me." Charity, according to her conception, consisted in giving to Christ. He had first taught this duty; he would make it the test of all duty at the last day. Catherine was charitable for the love of Christ. She thought less of the beggar than of her Lord. How could she do otherwise than see the aureole about his forehead, and hear the voice of him who had declared, "Behold, I am with you, even to the end of the world." Happy times when the eye of love was still unclouded, when men could see beyond the phantoms of this world, and stripping off the accidents of matter, gaze upon the spiritual and eternal truths that lie beneath! Heaven lay around them in that infancy of faith; nor did they greatly differ from the saints and founders of the Church — from Paul, who saw the vision of the Lord; or Magdalen, who

cried, "He is risen!"

An age accustomed to veil thought in symbols, easily reversed the process and discerned essential qualities beneath the common or indifferent objects of the outer world. It was therefore Christ whom St Christopher carried in the shape of a child; Christ whom Fra Angelico's Dominicans received in pilgrim's garb at their convent gate; Christ with whom, under a leper's loathsome form, the flower of Spanish chivalry was said to have shared his couch.

In all her miracles it will be noticed that St Catherine showed no originality. Her namesake of Alexandria had already been proclaimed the spouse of Christ. St Francis had already received the stigmata; her other visions were such as had been granted to all fervent mystics; they were the growth of current religious ideas and unbounded faith. It is not as an innovator in religious ecstasy, or as the creator of a new kind of spiritual poetry, that we admire St Catherine. Her inner life was simply the foundation of her character, her visions were a source of strength to her in times of trial; but the means by which she moved the hearts of men belonged to that which she possessed in common with all leaders of mankind-enthusiasm, eloquence, the charm of a gracious nature, and the will to do what she designed. She founded no religious order, like St Francis or St Dominic, her predecessors, or Ignatius, her successor. Her work was a woman's work-to make peace, to succour the afflicted, to strengthen the Church, to purify the hearts of those around her, not to rule or organise. When she died she left behind her a memory of love more than of power, the fragrance of an unselfish and gentle life, the echo of sweet and earnest words: her place is in the heart of the humble;

children belong to her sisterhood, and the poor crowd her shrine on festivals.

Catherine died at Rome on the 29th of April 1380, in her thirty-third year, surrounded by the most faithful of her friends and followers; but it was not until 1461 that she received the last honour of canonisation from the hands of Pius II., Æneas Sylvius, her countryman. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was perhaps the most remarkable man that Siena has produced. Like St Catherine, he was one of a large family; twenty of his brothers and sisters perished in a plague. The licentiousness of his early life, the astuteness of his intellect, and the worldliness of his aims, contrast with the singularly disinterested character of the saint on whom he conferred the highest honours of the Church. But he accomplished by diplomacy and skill what Catherine had begun. If she was instrumental in restoring the Popes to Rome, he ended the schism which had clouded her last days. She had preached a crusade; he lived to assemble the armies of Christendom against the Turks, and died at Ancona, while it was still uncertain whether the authority and enthusiasm of a pope could steady the wavering counsels and uncertain wills of kings and princes. The middle ages were still vital in St Catherine; Pius II. belonged by taste and genius to the new period of Renaissance. The hundreds of the poorer Sienese who kneel before St Catherine's shrine prove that her memory is still alive in the hearts of her fellow-citizens; while the gorgeous library of the cathedral, painted by the hand of Pinturicchio, records the pride and splendour of the greatest of the Piccolomini. But honourable as it was for Pius to fill so high a place in the annals of his city; to have left it as a poor adventurer, to return to it first as bishop, then as pope;

to have a chamber in its mother church adorned with the pictured history of his achievements for a monument -yet we cannot but feel that the better part remains with St Catherine, whose prayer is still whispered by children on their mother's knee, and whose relics are kissed daily by the simple and devout.

Some of the chief Italian painters have represented the incidents of St Catherine's life and of her mystical experience. All the pathos and beauty which we admire in Sodoma's "St Sebastian," at Florence, are surpassed by his fresco of St Catherine receiving the stigmata. This is one of two subjects painted by him on the walls of her chapel in San Domenico. The tender devotion, the sweetness, the languor, and the grace which he commanded with such admirable mastery, are all combined in the figure of the saint falling exhausted into the arms of her attendant nuns. Soft undulating lines rule the composition; yet dignity of attitude and feature prevails over mere loveliness. Another of Siena's greatest masters, Beccafumi, has treated the same subject with less pictorial skill and dramatic effect, but with an earnestness and simplicity that are very touching. Colourists always liked to introduce the sweeping lines of her white robes into their compositions. Fra Bartolommeo, who showed consummate art by tempering the masses of white drapery with mellow tones of brown or amber, painted one splendid picture of the marriage of St Catherine, and another in which he represents her prostrate in adoration before the mystery of the Trinity. His gentle and devout soul sympathised with the spirit of St Catherine. The fervour of her devotion belonged to him more truly than the leonine power which he unsuccessfully attempted to express in his large figure

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