Ambrose, or of St. Jerome, or of St. Augustine; it would be very easy to mistake a chapter in the life of one holy missionary or nun for a chapter in the life of another. 20 An almsgiving here, an instance of meekness there, a severity of penance, a round of religious duties,--all these things humble me, instruct me, improve me; I cannot desire anything better of their kind; but they do not necessarily 25 coalesce into the image of a person. From such works I do but learn to pay devotion to an abstract and typical perfection under a certain particular name; I do not know more of the real Saint who bore it than before. Saints, as other 30 men, differ from each other in this, that the multitude of qualities which they have in common are differently combined in each of them. This forms one great part of their personality. One Saint is remarkable for fortitude; not that he has not other heroic virtues by _concomitance_, 5 as it may be called, but by virtue of that one gift in particular he has won his crown. Another is remarkable for patient hope, another for renunciation of the world. Such a particular virtue may be said to give form to all the rest which are 10 grouped round it, and are molded and modified by means of it. Thus it is that often what is right in one would be wrong in another; and, in fact, the very same action is allowed or chosen by one, and shunned by another, as being 15 consistent or inconsistent with their respective characters,--pretty much as in the combination of colors, each separate tint takes a shade from the rest, and is good or bad from its company. The whole gives a meaning to the parts; but it 20 is difficult to rise from the parts to the whole. When I read St. Augustine or St. Basil, I hold converse with a beautiful grace-illumined soul, looking out into this world of sense, and leavening it with itself; when I read a professed life of him, 25 I am wandering in a labyrinth of which I cannot find the center and heart, and am but conducted out of doors again when I do my best to penetrate within.