as a salutary warning to me. A lady of our
times, virtuous and well brought up, is neither so susceptible nor so
wanting in decorum as those matrons of whose adventures ancient history
is full.

The passage you cite from St. John Chrysostom is indeed worthy of
consideration; but it is not altogether applicable to the circumstances.
The great lady that in Of, Thebes, or Diospolis Magna, fell in love with
the favorite son of Jacob, was in all probability extremely handsome. By
such a supposition only can one comprehend the words of the saint, that
it was a greater miracle that Joseph should have passed through this
ordeal unscathed, than that the three young men whom Nebuchadnezzar
caused to be placed in the fiery furnace were not reduced to ashes!

As far as beauty is concerned, I confess frankly that I can not think
that the wife of the Egyptian prince, chamberlain of the palace of the
Pharaohs, or whatever else may have been his title, was in any degree
superior to Pepita Ximenez. But neither am I endowed with as many gifts
and excellences as was Joseph, nor is Pepita a woman without religion
and without decorum. And even were the circumstances such as he relates,
were all those horrors true, I can only account for the exaggerated
language of St. John Chrysostom by the fact that he lived in the corrupt
capital, half Gentile still, of the Lower Empire, in the midst of that
court whose vices he so harshly censures, and where even the Empress
Eudoxia herself gave an example of scandal and corruption.

But in our day, when the morality taught in the gospel has penetrated
more deeply into the strata of society, it seems to me an exaggeration
to think the chaste scorn of the son of Jacob any more miraculous than
the material incombustibility of the three young men of Babylon.

There is one point on which you touch in your letter that encourages and
pleases me greatly. You condemn, as is right, the exaggerated
sentimentality, and the tendency to be easily moved and to weep from
childish motives, from which I told you that I suffered at times; but,
since this disposition of soul, so necessary to combat, exists in me,
you rejoice that it does not affect my prayers and meditations, and
contaminate them. You recognize and praise in me the virile energy that
should animate the passions and the mind that seek to elevate themselves
to God.

The intelligence that strives to comprehend him must be a vigorous one;
the will that su