Sir John's style is a little difficult sometimes, especially when he
treats in detail of his friend's mystical experience, but he has a
certain power of word-painting (unusual at his date) in matters both of
nature and of grace, and it is only when he has been unduly trite or
obscure that I have ventured, with a good deal of regret, to omit his
observations. All such omissions, however, as well as peculiar
difficulties of statement or allusion, have been dealt with in
foot-notes.

With regard to the function of the book, at any rate since its first
translation into French, it is probably safe to conjecture that it may
have been used at one time for reading aloud in the refectory. I am led
to make this guess from observing its division into chapters, and the
quasi-texts appended to each. These texts are of all sorts, though all
are taken from the Book of Psalms; but their application to the matter
that follows is sometimes fanciful, frequently mystical, and
occasionally trite.

If the book receives any sympathy from English readers--(an eventuality
about which I have my doubts)--I shall hope, at some future date, to
edit others of the MSS. still reposing in the little room under the roof
between the _Piazza Navona_ and the _Piazza Colonna_ in Rome, to which I
have been generously promised free access.

I must express my gratitude to the Superior of the Order of ---- (to
whose genius, coupled with that of another, I dedicate this book), for
giving me permission to edit his MS.; to Dom Robert Maple, O.S.B., for
much useful information and help in regard to the English mystics; and
to Mme. Germain who has verified references, interpreted difficulties,