SCARCELY three centuries separate us from the saintly man to whom, in 1898, the Holy See awarded the supreme honour of canonisation. What Bourdaloue said of St Francis of Sales, may be applied with even greater justice to Peter Fourier. Here is a saint of our own day, whose ever-living example has still a marvellous power to inspire and touch us. And yet, as portrayed by his first biographers, he is in no sense modern. If viewed from a purely mental standpoint, he is in certain respects far behind the seventeenth century in the perspective of history. Many traits in his life remind us of St Bernard and St Francis of Assisi, of the founders and reformers of the religious orders which rendered the Middle Ages illustrious. And it was this that his disciples desired, for they sought for him rather the glory of the saint than the consideration of the world.