Childish trash enough it seems. Yet may not possibly some disciple of that modern school of moralists, which teaches that happiness is not, or should not be man's highest and ultimate aim, see in this assertion of the superiority of "sanctification" to "blessedness," one of the many instances in which Rome's pettifogging formalism and unspiritual materialism have fossilised a lofty thought into a low absurdity? Be this as it may, Raymond of Capua was never in Rome's hierarchy "more than blessed." This "Beato Raimondo" was "in the world" Raimondo delle Vigne, great-grandson of Pietro delle Vigne, the celebrated Chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II., who right royally rewarded his life-long services by putting his eyes out. Raymond his great-grandson was a Dominican monk; and became[2] twenty-fourth general of the order, in 1578, at the time when a schism in the Church, divided between two popes, produced a corresponding schism in all the monastic orders. Raymond governed that portion of the Dominican fraternity which recognised the Pope, subsequently acknowledged by the Church as the true one. Having been sent, in 1367, to preside over the Dominican convent in Siena, he was there by divine[3] intervention, say the learned historians of the literature of the order, appointed confessor and confidant to St. Catherine. The superior sanctity of the penitent was however soon made manifest. For when Siena was ravaged by a pestilence, in 1372, and Prior Raymond having caught it, while ministering to the sick, lay dying, he was miraculously restored to health by the prayers of St. Catherine. The General of the Dominicans, as he shortly afterwards became, was a man of mark, moreover, beyond the limits of his own Society; for he was employed on several missions and negotiations by the Pope. With such qualifications and opportunities, he certainly would seem to have been the most competent person imaginable to give the world an account of his saintly penitent's career. This he has done in a work often reprinted, and most recently at Milan, in two good-sized octavo volumes, in 1851. The "Life of Saint Catherine of Siena, the Seraphic spouse of Jesus Christ" forms volumes nine and ten of an "Ecclesiastical Library," brought out at a very cheap rate, as a means of supplying the people of Italy in the nineteenth century with wholesome and profitable mental food. [Sidenote: POPULAR LITERATURE.]