The canonised Saint, that most extraordinary product of the "ages of faith," highly interesting as a social, and perhaps more so still as a psychological phenomenon;—the feudal Châtelaine, one of the most remarkable results of the feudal system, and affording a suggestive study of woman in man's place;—the high-born and highly-educated Princess of a somewhat less rude day, whose inmost spiritual nature was so profoundly and injuriously modified by her social position;—the brilliant literary denizen of "La Bohème;"—the equally brilliant but large-hearted and high-minded daughter of the people, whose literary intimacies were made compatible with the strictest feminine propriety, and whom no princely connections, lay and ecclesiastical, prevented from daring to think and to speak her thought, and to meet with brave heart the consequences of so doing;—the popular actress, again a daughter of the people, and again in that, as is said, perilous walk in life, a model of correct conduct in the midst of loose-lived princesses;—the nobly-born adventuress, every step in whose extraordinary _excelsior_ progress was an advance in degradation and infamy, and whose history, in showing us court life behind the scenes, brings us among the worst company of any that the reader's varied journey will call upon him to fall in with;—the equally nobly-born, and almost equally worthless woman, who shows us that wonderful and instructive phenomenon, the Queen of a papal court;—the humbly born artist, admirable for her successful combination in perfect compatibility of all the duties of the home and the studio;—and lastly, the poor representative of the effeteness of that social system which had produced the foregoing types, the net result, as may be said, of the national passage through the various phases illustrated by them:—all these are curiously distinct manifestations of womanhood, and if any measure of success has been attained in the endeavour to represent them duly surrounded by the social environment which produced them, while they helped to fashion it, some contribution will have been made to a right understanding of woman's nature, and of the true road towards her more completely satisfactory social development. CONTENTS. ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. Born, 1347. Died, 1380. CHAPTER I. PAGE Her Birth-place 1 CHAPTER II. The Saint's Biographer 9 CHAPTER III. The Facts of the Case 18 CHAPTER IV. The Church View of the Case 32 CHAPTER V. St. Catherine as an Author 51 CHAPTER VI. Catherine's Letter to the King of France 67 CHAPTER VII. Dupe or Impostor? 77 CHAPTER VIII.