rior orders, of that great group of religious
houses which she founded and administered for so many years. And the
literature into which she puts all those years is literature of the first
water. A thousand times I have been reminded of Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza as I read Teresa's account of her journeys, and of the people, and
of the escapades, and of the entertainments she met with. Yes, quite as
good as Cervantes! yes, quite as good as Goldsmith!--I have caught myself
exclaiming as I read and laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks. This
is literature, this is art without the art, this is literary finish
without the labour: and all laid out to the finest of all uses, to tell
of the work of God, and of all the enterprises, providences, defeats,
successes, recompenses, connected with it. The _Foundations_ is a
Christian classic even in Woodhead's and Dalton's and David Lewis's
English, what must it then be to those to whom Teresa's exquisite Spanish
is their mother-tongue!

If Vaughan had but read _The Foundations_, which he is honest enough to
confess he had only glanced at in a French translation, it would surely
have done something to make him reconsider the indecent and disgraceful
attack which he makes on Teresa. His chapter on Teresa is a contemptuous
and a malicious caricature. Vaughan has often been of great service to
me, but if I had gone by that misleading chapter, I would have lost weeks
of most intensely interesting and spiritually profitable reading.
Vaughan's extravagant misrepresentation of Teresa will henceforth make me
hesitate to receive his other judgments till I have read the books
myself. I shall not tarry here to controvert Vaughan's utterly
untruthful chapter on Teresa, I shall content myself with setting over
against it Crashaw's exquisite _Hymn_ and _Apology_, and especially his
magnificent _Flaming Heart_.

Teresa's _Way of Perfection_ is a truly fine book: full of freshness,
suggestiveness, and power. So much so, that I question if William Law's
_Christian Perfection_ would ever have been written, but that Teresa had
written on that same subject before him. I do not say that Law
plagiarised from Teresa, but some of his very best passages are plainly
inspired by his great predecessor. You will thank me for the following
eloquent passage from Mrs. Cunninghame Graham, which so felicitously
characterises this great book, and that in language such as I could not
command. 'To my