"Kempis Tom, Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come" Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist version of John Wesley Among those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the "De Imitatione Christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book--being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound--I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity that, I freely grant to M Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original _was_ Latin. But, however that may have been, if it is possible that M Michelet [Footnote: "_If M. Michelet can be accurate_"--However, on consideration, this statement does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has absolutely _specified_ sixty in a separate dissertation, _soixante traductions_ among those even that have not escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to be thirty. As to mere editions, not counting the early MSS. for half a century before printing was introduced, those in Latin amount to 2000, and those in French to 1000. Meantime it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularity so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not have existed except in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any Protestant land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this slender rill of Scripture truth so passionately welcome.] can be accurate in saying that there are no less than sixty French versions (not editions, observe, but separate versions) existing of the "De Imitatione," how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the fifteenth century! Excepting the Bible, but excepting _that_ only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction. It is the most marvellous bibliographical fact on record.