Julian's Mystical views seem in parts to be cognate with those of earlier and later systems based on Plato's philosophy, and especially perhaps on his doctrine of Love as reaching through the beauties of created things higher and higher to union with the Absolute Beauty above, Which is God--schemes of thought developed before her and in her time by Plotinus, Clement, Augustine, Dionysius "the Areopagite," John the Scot, Eckhart, the Victorines,[5] Ruysbroeck, and others. One does not know what her reading may have been, or with what people she may have conversed. Possibly the learned Austin Friars that were settled close to St Julian's in Conisford may have lent her books by some of these writers, or she may have been influenced through talks with a Confessor, or with some of the Flemish weavers of Norwich, with whom Mystical views were not uncommon. Yet the Mysticism of the "Revelations" is peculiarly of the English type. Less exuberant in language than Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, Julian resembles him a little in her blending of practical sense with devotional fervour; but the writer to whom she seems, at any rate in some of her phrases, most akin is Walter Hilton, her contemporary.[6] Hilton, however, is very rich in quotations from the Bible, while Julian's only direct quotations from any book--beyond her reference to the legend of St Dionysius--are one that belongs to Christ: "I thirst" (xvii.), and two that belong to the soul: "Lord, save me: I perish!" "Nothing shal depart me from the charite of Criste" (xv.). (And indeed these three are a fit embodiment of the Christian Faith as seen in her "Revelations.") But Julian, while perhaps more speculative than either of these typical English Mystics, is thoroughly a woman. Lacking their literary method of procedure, she has a high and tender beauty of thought and a delicate bloom of expression that are her own rare gifts--the beauty of the hills against skies in summer evenings, of an orchard in mornings of April. Again and again she stirs in the reader a kind of surprised gladness of the simple perfection wherewith she utters, by few and adequate words, a thought that in its quietness convinces of truth, or an emotion deep in life. Of a little child it has been said: "He thought great thoughts simply," and Julian's deepness of insight and simplicity of speech are like the Child's.[7] "For ere that He made us He loved us, and when we were made we loved Him" (liii.). "I love thee, and thou lovest me, and our love shall not be disparted in two" (lxxxii.). "_Thou art my Heaven._" "I had liefer have been in that pain till Doomsday than have come to Heaven otherwise than by Him." "Human is the vehemence," says a writer on Julian's "Revelations," of that reiterated exclusion of all other paths to joy. 'Me liked,' she says, 'none other heaven.' Once again she touches the same octave, condensing in a single phrase which has