[1--An example of this is the late Canon Mackey's edition of the complete works of St.Francis of Sales, which has, unfortunately, to be completed without him.] There is good service to be done to the Church in England by this work of translation, and it is one in which grown-up girls, if they have been sufficiently trained, might give valuable help.

It must be borne in mind that not every book which is beautiful or useful in its own language, is desirable to translate.

Some depend so much upon the genius of the language and the mentality of their native country that they simply evaporate in translation; others appeal so markedly to national points of view that they seem anomalous in other languages, as a good deal of our present-day English writing would appear in French.

It has also to be impressed on translators that their responsibility is great; that it takes laborious persistence to make a really good translation, doing justice to both sides, giving the spirit of the author as well as his literal meaning, and not straining the language of the translation into unnatural forms to make it carry a sense that it does not easily bear.
The beauty of a translator's work is in the perfect accord of conscience and freedom, and this is not attained without unwearied search for the right word, the only right word which will give the true meaning and the true expression of any idea.

To believe that this right word exists is one of the delights of translating; to be a lover of choice and beautiful words is an attraction in itself, leading to the love of things more beautiful still, the love of truth, and fitness, and transparency; the exercise of thought, and discrimination, and balance, and especially of a quality most rare and precious in women--mental patience.