We cannot have studied the lives of the saints without observing, that while infinitely generous of His graces to all His faithful servants, their almighty Lord from time to time chooses certain individuals among them as recipients of a more than ordinary measure of His liberality. We read of a privileged few, to whom He is lavish of what may be termed exceptional marks of His love. These chosen souls, He inundates with celestial gifts,--revealing glimpses of His glory and beauty, transforming them into Himself, so as in a manner to divinize them, and even sometimes imparting visible external marks of their sublime spiritual exaltation. It would seem as if He desired to manifest to men in their persons, the immensity of His goodness, the infinitude of His condescension, and the magnificence of His riches. They are the specially favoured among the favoured: they form a class apart, in which God, wonderful in all His saints, is wonderful surpassingly. In that exceptional class, suited as it would seem to us rather for angels than for mortals, a place was destined in the divine designs for the subject of our history, Marie Guyart, but before those all-gracious designs could be realized, certain preliminaries were needed. To the thoroughly purified soul alone it belongs to fly without impediment to God, as the needle flies to the magnet, and admirable, nay wonderful as was the interior purity to which this-singularly favoured being had attained; it had yet to undergo further processes of refinement before she should be disposed for the privilege awaiting her. Our Lord continued therefore to draw her more and more forcibly to the perfection of the virtue, revealing to her in the meantime, that when it had reached the required degree, a great, but as yet unspecified grace would be her reward. To stimulate her zeal, He gave her a vision, of a soul free from even the slightest shadow of defect, and the sight was one so entrancing, so enrapturing, that she said, if men could only see it, they would willingly renounce all things for the bare enjoyment of the glorious spectacle. Charmed with the celestial beauty of such a soul, and thirsting ever more to share its happy privilege of flying to God without hindrance or delay, she was carefully on her guard against the most trivial imperfection, and when betrayed into one, never desisted, until by sighs and prayers she had obtained forgiveness, which she knew by the cessation of reproach of conscience.