EV. A little more sifting of these cases, Astrophel, and they would resemble that of the cataleptic female of Amiens, related by Petelin; who also professed to tell the spots of a card, _unseen_ by her. But it was discovered that the physician _glided it beneath the bedclothes_. Or that told by Bertrand, of another _ecstatic female_:—“While lying entranced in a chamber illuminated by a candle, her ring was removed from her finger by Monsieur Bertrand, and given to a person standing near him. She was asked who had her ring,—‘Mr. Eyre has it in his trowsers pocket.’ Mr. Bertrand exclaimed that she was wrong, for it was _not_ to Mr. Eyre the ring was given. The lady persisted in her statement, and, on immediate inquiry, it was found that the person who first was given the ring had secretly conveyed it to Mr. Eyre.” The pages of history are not deficient in these pretensions to miracle. From Ulrick Zwingle we learn that Thomas Aquinas, the evangelical doctor, professed, by intense thought, to throw himself into ecstacy; in which, strange visions and mysteries of another existence passed before him. Matthew Paris writes of a monk of Evesham, and of a certain _Sir Owen_, that, in one of these ecstacies, was favoured with an introduction into Saint Patrick’s purgatory. So the mad visionary, Jacob Bœhm, fell into many strange trances, and at last were revealed to him,—“The origin of nature; the formation of all things; and even divine principles and intelligent natures!” But the case of Santa Theresa, if we can but believe the testimony of so accomplished an hypocrite, presents phenomena far more remarkable than all these. “Her frame was naturally delicate, her imagination lively, and her mind, incapable of being fixed by trivial objects, turned with avidity to those which religion offered, the moment they were presented to her view. But, unfortunately, meeting with the writings of Saint Jerome, she became enamoured of the monastic life, and, quitting the line for which nature designed her, she renounced the most endearing ties, and bound herself by the irrevocable vow. Deep melancholy then seized on her, and increased to such a degree, that for many days she lay both motionless and senseless, like one who is in a trance. Her tender frame, thus shaken, prepared her for ecstacies and visions, such as it might appear invidious to repeat, were they not related by herself and by her greatest admirers. She tells us that, in the fervour of her devotion, she not only became insensible to every thing around her, but that her body was often _lifted up from the earth_, although she endeavoured to resist the motion. And Bishop Yessen relates in particular, that, when she was going to receive the _Eucharist_ at Avila, she was raised in a rapture higher than the grate, through which, as is usual in nunneries, it was presented to her. She often heard the voice of God, when she was recovered from a trance; but sometimes the