Many works are more correctly beautiful than this book of Ruysbroeck L’Admirable. Many mystics—Swedenborg and Novalis among others—are more potent in their influence, and more timely. It is very probable that his writings may but rarely meet the needs of to-day. Looking at him from another point of view, I know[ few more clumsy authors. He wanders off now and then into strange puerilities, and the first twenty chapters of The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, although they are perhaps a necessary preparation for what follows, contain little more than mild and pious commonplaces. Outwardly, at least, he has no order, no logic of the schools

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