A few other letters are recorded to have been written by her own hand, especially one to Pope Urban. But it is admitted, that the great bulk of the letters were written by her secretaries, of whom she seems to have kept three regularly employed, besides occasionally using the assistance of several other of her companions and disciples. A few of the letters are recorded to have been dictated by her, when in a state of trance or extasy; but there is nothing in either their matter or manner to distinguish them from the rest. Whatever may have been the true physical characteristics of these trances, it is perfectly clear, that the mind which dictated the letters in question, was pursuing the habitual tenor of its daily thoughts, neither obscured nor intensified by the condition of the body. They are neither more nor less argumentative, neither more nor less eloquent, than the others of the collection. And it seems strange, that the same state of abstraction from all bodily clog or guidance, which so often left her mind impressionable by visions and hallucinations having to her all the vivid reality of material events, should on other occasions have been compatible with the conduct of mental operations, in no respect differing from those of her ordinary waking state. But it is to be observed, that the authority on which it is stated, that these letters were dictated by the Saint in a state of extasy, is only that of her amanuenses; and that, admitting them to have been of perfect good faith in the matter, nothing is more probable, than that, all agape, as they were ever for fresh wonders, and evidences of Saintship, any trifling circumstance, such as long continuance in the same attitude, or closed eyes, may have been considered sufficient evidence of trance. [Sidenote: HER LITERARY MERITS.] The very high reputation, and that not altogether of a pietistic or ecclesiastical nature, which this large mass of writings has enjoyed for several centuries has appeared to the present writer an extremely singular fact. It will justify him however in occupying some pages, and the reader's attention with a translation[28] of one of the most esteemed of the collection. Be it what it may, it can hardly be otherwise than interesting to any reader to see a specimen of compositions, said to have produced so widely spread and important results, and praised by so many men of note; and the means, which it will give him of comparing his impressions of it with those of the writer, will in some degree lessen the diffidence with which the latter must express an opinion wholly at variance with so large a quantity of high authority.