With the King, however, it was different. By the exigencies of his
vocation he was unable to live the properly contemplative life;
solitude, an essential to that life, was impossible to him: but he had
done what he could by asceticism and the habit of recollection; and,
further, his soul had been naturally one of those which had the
necessary endowments of the contemplative.

The purgative, illuminative and unitive stages had therefore been
confused, and had come upon him simultaneously, though gradually; and
this as was to be expected, had resulted in intense suffering. There was
for him no gradation by which he passed slowly upwards from detachment
to union. Richard Raynal's words to him had coincided with the
struggling emergence of his own soul on to the higher plane; and he had
opened his spiritual eyes on to a terrible future for which he had had
but little preparation. The result had been a kind of paralysis of his
whole nature, and henceforward the rest of his life, Sir John
maintains, had been darkened by his first definite experience in the
mystical region. If indeed this King was none other than Henry the
Sixth, Sir John's explanation is an interesting commentary on that
melancholy personage. Richard then, according to this hypothesis,
found joy in his contemplation because he had been trained to look for
it; and Henry had found sorrow because he had been overwhelmed by the
suddenness of the revelation and his men unpreparedness. Sir John adds
that it is difficult to know which of the two lives would be more
pleasing to God Almighty.

As regards his whole statement I feel it is impossible to say more than
to quote the opinion of a modern mystic to whom I submitted the
original; which was to the effect that it contains a little nonsense, a
good deal of truth, and a not intolerable admixture of superstition. He