d and die. Amusing, too, her falling ill, and suffering under a
complication of disorders, especially if those disorders were the
fruit of combined grief and widowhood. Amusing also her betaking
herself to violent devotion! In the first place, if devotion be a
good thing, could she have too much of it? If it be the way to make
people good (as is commonly held by all Christian sects), could she
become too good? The more important question which springs out of
the fact we will ask presently. "She has rapturous consolations and
terrific temptations." Did the consolations come first, and were the
temptations a revulsion from "spiritual" exaltation into "spiritual"
collapse and melancholy? or did the temptations come first, and the
consolations come after, to save her from madness and despair?
Either may be the case; perhaps both were: but somewhat more of care
should have been taken in expressing so important a spiritual
sequence as either case exhibits.

It is twelve years and more since we studied the history of the "B.
Angela de Foligni," and many another kindred saint; and we cannot
recollect what were the terrific temptations, what was the floor of
hell which the poor thing saw yawning beneath her feet. But we must
ask Mr. Vaughan, has he ever read Boccaccio, or any of the Italian
novelists up to the seventeenth century? And if so, can he not
understand how Angela de Foligni, the lovely Italian widow of the
fourteenth century, had her terrific temptations, to which, if she
had yielded, she might have fallen to the lowest pit of hell, let
that word mean what it may; and temptations all the more terrific
because she saw every widow round her considering them no temptations
at all, but yielding to them, going out to invite them in the most
business-like, nay, duty-like, way? What if she had "rapturous
consolations"? What if she did pour out to One who was worthy not of
less but of more affection than she offered in her passionate
southern heart, in language which in our colder northerns would be
mere hypocrisy, yet which she had been taught to believe lawful by
that interpretation of the Canticles which (be it always remembered)
is common to Evangelicals and to Romanists? What if even, in reward
for her righteous belief, that what she saw all widows round her
doing was abominable and to be avoided at all risks, she were
permitted to enjoy a passionate affection, which after all was not
misplaced? There are