I come now to the second of the works enumerated above. _The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_ (_Die Spieghel der Ewigher Salicheit_) is, like all the writings of the mystic, a study of the joys of introversion, or of the return of man into himself, until he comes into touch with God. It was sent by the admirable doctor and eminent contemplator of the Green Valley “To the dear Sister Margaret van Meerbeke, of the convent of the Clares at Brussels, in the year of our Lord 1359.” In some manuscripts the work is entitled “Book of the Sacraments,” and it is indeed the poem of eucharistic love, above all distinctions and in the midst of the blinding effluence of God, where the soul seems to shake the pollen from its essence and to have an eternal foreknowledge. Here, as elsewhere, we would need, in order to realise even slightly these terrors of love, a language which has the intrinsic omnipotence of tongues which are almost immemorial. The Flemish dialect possesses this omnipotence, and it is possible that several of its words still contain images dating from the glacial epochs. Our author then had at his disposal one of the very oldest modes of speech, in which words are really lamps behind ideas, while with us ideas must give light to words. I am also disposed to believe that every language thinks always more than the man, even the man of genius, who employs it, and who is only its heart for the time being, and that this is the reason why an ignorant monk like this mysterious Ruysbroeck, was able, by gathering up his scanty forces in prayers so many centuries ago, to write works which hardly correspond to our senses in the present day. I translate from this book the following fragment:--