Equally unfair it seems to us is the notice of St. Brigitta—­in our eyes a beautiful and noble figure.  A widow she, too—­and what worlds of sorrow are there in that word, especially when applied to the pure deep-hearted Northern woman, as she was—­she leaves her Scandinavian pine-forests to worship and to give wherever she can, till she arrives at Rome, the centre of the universe, the seat of Christ’s vicegerent, the city of God, the gate of Paradise.  Thousands of weary miles she travels, through danger and sorrow—­and when she finds it, behold it is a lie and a sham! not the gate of Paradise, but the gate of Sodom and of hell.  Was not that enough to madden her, if mad she became?  What matter after that her “angel dictated discourses on the Blessed Virgin,” “bombastic invocations to the Saviour’s eyes, ears, hair?”—­they were at least the best objects of worship which the age gave her.  In one thing she was right, and kept her first love.  “What was not quite so bad, she gives to the world a series of revelations, in which the vices of popes and prelates are lashed unsparingly and threatened with speedy judgment.”  Not quite so bad?  To us the whole phenomenon wears an utterly different aspect.  At the risk of her life, at the risk of being burned alive—­ did anyone ever consider what that means?—­the noble Norse-woman, like an Alruna maid of old, hurls out her divine hereditary hatred of sin and filth and lies.  At last she falls back on Christ Himself, as the only home for a homeless soul in such an evil time.  And she is not burnt alive.  The hand of One mightier than she is over her, and she is safe under the shadow of His wings till her weary work is done and she goes home, her righteousness accepted for His sake:  her folly, hysterics, dreams—­call them by what base name we will—­ forgiven and forgotten for the sake of her many sorrows and her faithfulness to the end.

But whatever fault we can find with these sketches, we can find none with Mr. Vaughan’s reflections on them: 

What a condemning comment on the pretended tender mercies of the Church are those narratives which Rome delights to parade of the sufferings, mental and bodily, which her devotees were instructed to inflict upon themselves!  I am reminded of the thirsting mule, which has, in some countries, to strike with his hoof among the spines of the cactus, and drink, with lamed foot and bleeding lips, the few drops of milk which ooze from the broken thorns.  Affectionate, suffering natures came to Rome for comfort; but her scanty kindness is only to be drawn with anguish from the cruel sharpness of asceticism.  The worldly, the audacious, escape easily; but these pliant excitable temperaments, so anxiously in earnest, may be made useful.  The more dangerous, frightful, or unnatural their performances, the more profit for their keepers.  Men and women are trained by torturing processes to deny their nature, and then they are exhibited to bring grist to the