His Family Were Suffering.

He did not ask to be sent to them because he had nothing to give them. He could get employment in New York, and soon would earn enough to bridge over their necessities. He had called at a newspaper office in Boston to ascertain where he could find a charitable Irish society to help him, and was informed that "there was such a society in existence, but that it was charitable only in name." The man found his way to the keeper of the silver key eventually, and his immediate wants were supplied, and he was given transportation to New York. Before the train rolled out of the depot, he informed the member of the Society, who was seeing him off, that he had paid another visit to the newspaper office, and informed the people there that they had been misinformed; that "The Charitable Irish Society was charitable not only in name, but in deed, and in a direction, too, not covered by other charities of a private nature." He felt it a duty incumbent on him to correct the misapprehension, and, having done so, he bade them good day. This case is only one of many that might be cited. Among the presidents of the Society were some of the best known descendants of Irishmen in Boston. The presidents for the last fifty years are as follows:

For several years past the subject of erecting a suitable building in which the Society should have a meeting place of its own, with rooms for reading and social purposes for young men of the present and coming generations, and also small halls for other Society meetings, has been under consideration. The project seemed visionary till this year, when a committee was appointed to raise a fund for the purpose. This committee has given the subject most careful consideration, and intends by means of a series of entertainments this winter, to establish a foundation on which to build a fund for the erection of the structure proposed. When the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary is about to be observed, it is intended to invite President Cleveland to be the Society's guest, and the occasion will, without doubt, be one of great interest.

Interest:—Savings Banks.

The Catholic Review: Interest to be at all justifiable ought to consider a number of elements, which in the case of most of our Catholic churches in great cities like New York, Boston, Brooklyn or Philadelphia, are largely in favor of the church corporations. Lucrum cessans will justify interest; but just now where else can a gain of four-and-half per cent. be combined with absolute safety. Damnum emergens justifies interest; but in the present condition of affairs, with bank presidents looking for investments at two per cent., and telling depositors that the mere safe keeping of their deposits is interest enough, where does the loss of profit arise? "Danger of the investment" justifies interest; but is it not ridiculous to say that any bank imperils money lent to a Catholic church in New York or Brooklyn on a first mortgage? The fact is, such an investment is only equalled in security by a United States bond; it may not be as easily negotiable, but it is just as safe. It ought to cost very little more.

Priests to whom the second of January and first of July are sad days, and who for weeks and even months previous are persecuted by the necessity of begging from and irritating their congregations by painful appeals for money to pay these dreadful interests, have asked the Catholic Review again and again to draw popular attention to the high rate that is charged for such loans. We do so. But having done our duty in this respect, we think we ought to add that it belongs to themselves to deal effectively with the whole question, the very outside limits of which we can only touch upon. Six per cent., that some of them pay, would pay for many a Catholic teacher in a parochial school. How are they to secure a reduction? We think a business-like and amicable discussion of the whole question would convince the banks that property such as a church is entitled to consideration not accorded to private or business property. We do not now refer to motives of charity or religion, but of pure business. No doubt some bankers will say, at first, that "the thing cannot be done." Well, the example of the Trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, is a good one. When their demand for a just reduction was, as we think, foolishly, refused, they had no difficulty in transferring their mortgage. If half a dozen strong churches took up the question, they would, we predict, bring all opponents to time. It is worth talking over. Still more, it is worth acting upon. Many a church that is now paying six per cent. could employ six additional teachers if it had to pay only three per cent. interest.

Bay State Faugh-a-Ballaghs.[1]
III.
THE SECOND IRISH MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT—THE TWENTY-EIGHTH TO THE FRONT—ANOTHER CHAPTER ABOUT OUR RACE IN THE WAR OF THE UNION.

"To the troops (the Irish Brigade) commanded by General Meagher, was principally committed the desperate task of bursting out of the town of Fredericksburg and forming under the withering fire of the Confederate batteries, to attack Marye's Heights, towering immediately in their front. Never at Fontenoy, Albuera or at Waterloo was more undaunted courage displayed by the sons of Erin than during those six frantic dashes which they directed against the almost impregnable position of their foe.... The bodies which lie in dense masses within forty yards of the muzzles of Colonel Walton's guns are the best evidence what manner of men they were who pressed on to death with the dauntlessness of a race which has gained glory on a thousand battle-fields, and never more richly deserved it than at the foot of Marye's Heights on the 13th day of December, 1862."

Of this brigade of five regiments the Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts Volunteers, Colonel Richard Byrnes, was the second Irish regiment raised in Massachusetts in defence of the Union in 1861. The tribute above quoted is the testimony of the war correspondent of the London Times, the files of which are to be found in our Boston Athenæum. He was the famous Dr. Russell, the Crimean and other wars' correspondent of the London Thunderer. He should surely be a judge of heroic service and undaunted bravery. He was an eye-witness, as was the writer of these lines, of what he speaks, and could with great truth form a personal knowledge of the facts, and with ocular proof depict the thrilling and tragic drama enacted on the bloody slopes of Fredericksburg, Va., on that midwinter day. The nature of the ground on the left bank of the Rappahannock afforded ample views of the scenes being enacted on the other side, and it requires no difficult stretch of the imagination or of the sympathies of humanity to enter into the feelings of men, who, seeing this fearful havoc of their Federal comrades, awaited their turn for Burnside to order them, "his latest chance to try," across the ensanguined river. When the order did come for the fresh Irish troops, it was only to find themselves mingled in the slaughter with their prone dead and dying comrades from the old Bay State, the Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts, distinguishable by the fresh and natural sprigs of green with which they had on that fateful morning decorated their military caps, but which were now in too, too many cases, crimsoned with blood and brains, or embedded in the crushed skulls of the gallant heroes, who, only a few short hours before, so jauntily wore them.

Col. Richard Byrnes.

"Why should we be sad, boys, whose business it is to die!" sung Wolfe at Quebec. The strain was melancholy and its vein mercenary. It was not the business of these gallant citizen soldiers to die. They should have lived to see a country restored to peace and greatness as a proof of their patriotism, valor and sacrifices. "But," says Dr. Russell in another part of his Fredericksburg letter to the London Times, "that any mortal men could have carried the position before which they were wantonly sacrificed, defended as it was, it seems to me idle for a moment to believe." And these valiant, adopted citizens of the Republic hesitated not to obey the cruel order to charge and charge again and again up to those impregnable works with a fortitude and persistence that could not possibly be expected from troops who adopted the trade of soldier and "whose business it was to die."[2]

On another occasion, General Hancock said of a charge in which the Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts participated: "I have never seen anything so splendid." He was a judge of what a good charge consisted. Great credit is most justly due to Colonel Richard Byrnes, of whom a most excellent likeness is herewith presented, and of whom the writer will have something more to say before he finishes a brief record of this famed Irish-American Regiment.

The evidences of fine discipline and military bearing given by the first Irish regiment, the Ninth Infantry, organized in Massachusetts, and which, when it went to the front sustained so admirably those earlier promises to the great satisfaction of the national and state authorities, prompted the latter to form a second similar corps. Accordingly Gov. Andrew and Gen. Schouler consulted with the Right Rev. Bishop Fitzpatrick of the Boston diocese and Mr. Patrick Donahoe with this view. The outlook was favorable and the state officials received patriotic and most cheerful assurances from these and other Irish-American gentlemen taken into counsel on the subject. The authority of the general government was at once secured and the formation of the Faugh-a-Ballaghs, to be numbered the Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers, was speedily begun. An announcement appeared in The Pilot stating that on September 28, 1861, the war office sanctioned the formation of the regiment to be commanded by Colonel Thomas T. Murphy of the Montgomery Guard of New York, and accordingly recruiting was begun with head-quarters at 16 Howard Street, Boston. An address was issued which spiritedly set forth that for this Irishmen and sons of Irishmen, should rally forth for their country's cause, "now that Governor Andrew has been granted authority to raise another Irish regiment.... This is to afford an opportunity to all those whose allegiance, patriotism and home welfare all combine to enlist their sympathies for the country of their adoption and the safety and protection of the Union; to unite one and all to uphold its integrity and render it inviolable for future ages. Signed Patrick Donahoe and Dr. W. M. Walsh." Among the gentlemen authorized to recruit for it, were Messrs. Alexander Blaney of Natick, Florence Buckley of South Natick, E. H. Fitzpatrick of New Bedford, Owen E. Neale of Fitchburg, S. W. Moore of Marlboro', C. W. Judge of Haverhill and Daniel O'Donovan of the same locality, Martin Kirwin of Lawrence, A. A. Griffin of East Cambridge, John Riley of Worcester, Paul Eveny of Salem, and Lieutenant Ed. F. O'Brien of Burlington, Vt.

The nucleus of the Faugh-a-Ballaghs was rendezvoused at Camp Cameron, Cambridge, where the good, pious and patriotic Rev. Father Manasses Dougherty of St. Peter's Church, Concord Avenue, ministered to the spiritual and many of the temporal wants of the sick and the well until a regular chaplain was assigned to the command. Many a gallant soldier who, shortly afterwards, sank into a bloody grave, recalled with love and veneration the tender and manly ministrations of this dear Soggarth Aroon. A chaplain of the regiment, Father McMahon, is now the bishop of the diocese of Hartford, Conn. Among the first acts of Company A, Captain William Mitchell commanding, was to pass, by a unanimous vote, the resolve: "That in consideration of the untiring zeal and patriotic feelings of Mr. Patrick Donahoe in prompting and aiding the organization of the Second Irish Massachusetts Regiment (the Twenty-Eighth) this company will, hereafter, be known and called the Donahoe Guard." This paragraph was further supplemented with the assurance from the company to the patriotic gentleman whom they had named as patron, that their conduct as soldiers and Irishmen in the field would never give cause of disgrace to the name they had thus, with so much hearty unanimity, voted to assume. Here let us for the close of this chapter leave the "boys," many of whom are looking forward to a glorious future in which the fate of their native Ireland is romantically blended. How often have they thrilled with martial fervor, as they read or heard Thomas Davis's Fontenoy, that famed Fontenoy, which would have been a Waterloo,

"Were not those exiles ready then, fresh, vehement and true."

Ah, yes, they will learn the science of war and if fate reserves them in the glorious fight for the Union, their practical knowledge, their tested courage will then be used by the grace of the God of Hosts to help free their native land.

Capital and Labor: Philosophy of "Strikes."

What the land question was to the agricultural population of Ireland, the labor question is to the toiling masses of the United States—who, in one or another form of manufacturing industry, in mines and shops, or public employment, are honestly striving to "earn their bread by the sweat of their brow."

In the case of the Irish people the question was one of life and death, or, what was practically the same, starvation or exile.

An alternative so monstrous and so pitiful is not presented in the United States to those who toil; but the conditions and prospects presented to them are often harsh and bitter.

We have seen in the instances of labor strikes, and by the simultaneous suspension of work in the great mills and factories, that tens of thousands of men accustomed to subsist by the returns of their daily toil, have been reduced, with their families, to want and wretchedness.

The accounts given in the public journals of the sufferings in Ohio and Pennsylvania during the recent strikes amongst the miners, recalls the widespread, and, in instances, awful distress which prevailed in the districts in question.

The startling figures lately put forth by representatives of the Knights of Labor, which is said to be a powerful and widely extended labor organization, as to the number of unemployed men in the United States, seem incredible in the face of the apparent activity of trade and the general seeming prosperity; but there is no doubt the real figures are great enough to excite deep concern on the part of the thoughtful and reflecting observer.

It does not require that one should be either a philosopher or a communist to see in the prevailing conditions of the labor element in the United States, that something is seriously out of gear. With capital everywhere concentrating in the form of monopolies,—whether it be in the consolidation of railroads and telegraphs, or in mills and mines where products are "pooled," or yet in the colossal stores and factories, on every hand is seen the strengthening and solidifying of capital in the hands of the few. And this consolidation, it is plain, is only effected by sweeping out or swallowing up smaller enterprises. This is the logical and perhaps inevitable result of our modern social system—in which wealth and "greed of gain" is held to be the chief end of life. But, with this visible agglomeration of wealth in the hands of the comparatively few, what is to be said of the conditions and prospects of the laboring masses? If, happily, in the acquisition and accumulation of wealth by monopolists, we could hope for the rules and application of Christian principles and a realizing sense of Christian duties in its employment and distribution, there would then be less occasion for concern and apprehension in considering the problems presented in the questions of "Capital and Labor." However seductive and alluring may be the dreams and vagaries of latter-day theorizers, inequality of social and worldly conditions is and will remain the rule. Utopia will remain in the books; it cannot be realized, in fact, under the conditions of our or any other known civilization. It can and may be realized, but in a form and fashion outside the ken of the modern "philosopher,"—and that will be by the universal acceptance of Divine law and the general practice of the Divine commands.

The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain the solution of all the problems with which we are concerned in the discussion of this question. When capital recognizes and acts up to the duties involved in and implied by the possession of wealth, labor will recognize and respect the rights of capital.

The philosophy of the question turns upon these two simple words, "RIGHTS" and "DUTIES."

Adam Smith says: "The property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property." A distinguished Catholic authority—Cardinal Manning—gives a more concise definition—"the honest exertion of the powers of our minds and of our body for our own good, and for the good of our neighbors."

The rights of the workman to dispose of his own toil on his own terms cannot be questioned, nor can his right to combine and unite with other toilers for purposes of mutual protection be seriously questioned. Indeed, such unions and combinations may be said to be a necessity in the existing order.

How is it possible except through such union and combination to resist the power of great corporations and exacting monopolies, which, as a rule, little regard the rights of the day laborer. Capital is protected by its own innate power, by its influence over legislation and legislative bodies, and by the readiness with which "pools" and "combinations" are formed to its bidding; but in its control over labor it is more powerful still by reason of the helplessness of the working masses, who must work in order to live. An autocratic order from the chief of some great corporation will sometimes reduce the wages of tens of thousands of employés from ten to twenty per cent in one swoop. And the tens of thousands have no redress or alternative unless to "strike."

And here lies the difficulty. The public, as a rule, do not sympathize with "strikes" and "strikers." Strikes are always inconvenient. They upset the existing order, disturb business, and sometimes lead to destruction of property.

There is, and can be, of course, no justification for lawlessness. If the rights of the workman to fix a price for his labor, and other conditions as to the hours of his service, cannot be disputed, the equal rights of the employers to fix the terms and price to be paid is no less certain. Between these often irreconcilable conditions lie only submission, strikes, or arbitration. The former is often expedient, the second sometimes necessary, the last is always wise. A leading mine owner, widely known for his uniform practical sympathy with his operatives, and for his public spirit and high character, Col. William P. Rend, of Chicago, has lately put forward, in several public conventions representing the mining interests, a method of arbitration which would be invoked in case of differences between employers and operatives.

The simple suggestion of arbitration as the true remedy carries on its face the evident solution of this vexed labor problem.

It is not necessary to suggest details. The fundamental idea is that all differences may and ought to be reconciled by frank and honest arbitration. Where employers will meet operatives on this half-way neutral ground, an adjustment may be confidently looked for in most cases. The arts of the demagogue and the threats of the socialists will no longer be effective with the laboring masses. Where arbitration by mutual agreement is not practicable, legislative "Boards of Arbitration" could be appealed to; and these should be provided for by law in every state.

When corporations and individual employers shall, as very many to their honor, be it said, undoubtedly do, show due regard and consideration for the rights and necessities of workmen and operatives, there need be no fear of the spectre of communistic disorder in the United States. Our mechanics and workingmen are instinctively conservative and cannot be led away permanently into dangerous societies and combinations, if only capital will join in promoting the adoption of "arbitration" as the true solution of the labor problem.

Wm. J. Onahan in Scholastic Annual.

A Cure for tight shoes—go barefoot.

Senator Hayes.
A SKETCH OF HIS ANTECEDENTS IN IRELAND AND AMERICA—HIS BRILLIANT ELECTION.

Hon. John J. Hayes.

Among the forty gentlemen elected to serve in the Senate during the present term of the General Court of Massachusetts, we hesitate not to predict that it will be found that Hon. John J. Hayes, the subject of this brief sketch, will bring to bear upon such questions for legislative consideration and action as may devolve upon him a most intelligent culture, a well-developed business training and thorough uprightness of purpose. In choosing him as their senatorial representative, the voters of the Eighth Suffolk District, embracing Wards Twenty-two, Twenty-three, Twenty-four and Twenty-five—all combined, having a preponderating majority of Republican votes—have exhibited the soundest judgment, we are confident, in the exercise of citizen-franchise. Mr. Hayes' election was a well-considered rebuke to the narrow systems of legislation prevalent in most of the New England States. Hon. William H. Spooner, the district Senator of last year, is, in private and business life, an honorable and esteemed gentleman; but being an extreme partisan in politics and a zealot in sectional legislative efforts, when a fitting candidate was offered at the last election to oppose him, a gentleman of adequate views of the needs and requirements of his fellow-citizens to confront him, the voters hesitated not at the polls whom to choose.

Among his fellow-citizens of Boston and vicinity, Senator Hayes is well recognized as an uncompromising adherent of Home Rule principles in the affairs of Ireland, his native land. These come naturally to him. His father, Mr. John Hayes, now of Manchester, N. H., was a devoted supporter of O'Connell and, though young in years, was in turn warmly appreciated by the great liberator. From the most steadfast patriotism he has never swerved, and the blood in his children's veins, with the teachings he inculcated, impels them to tread in the same path of patriotic purpose as their worthy sire.

Our Senator was born in Killarney, Kerry, January 26, 1845. His childhood saw many days amidst the inspiring scenes of this grand and most lovely portion of Ireland. He was educated in Dublin. Mr. Hayes entered for the civil service examination for the war office department before the noted Military Institute of Stapleton of Trinity College, and readily passed the first examination. Pending the usual delay preceding the second examination, the Bank of Ireland threw their appointments open to public examination, and John J. received the first of fourteen appointments, several hundred persons being competitors for these places. He was assigned to serve in the Dublin office of the Bank, and subsequently found rapid advancement in the Gorey and Arklow branches as cashier, and later in the same capacity in the respectively more responsible branches of the Bank in Drogheda and Cork. Mr. Hayes growing restive under the naturally slow advancement in the Bank's services, accepted a tempting offer from one of the strongest banks in Canada and reached Boston en route thereto. Here, however, he was met with a business offer which induced him to pitch his fortune in Boston business circles, and after a few years became the junior member of the firm of Brown & Hayes, importers, exporters and commission merchants, Broad Street, and where he still continues to do the same business. His firm changed to Hayes & Poppelé in 1877 and as it is now to Hayes & Angle.

Under the new organization of the School Board, Senator Hayes served five years, from 1876 to 1880, during which he won deserved confidence by his independence and unremitting watchfulness in school matters. During these years he held several chairmanships and membership in committees on accounts, salaries and other executive duties of the board. He was a pronounced advocate of proper compensation to teachers in which work he has always felt and shown a great and sympathetic interest. From the advent of his services on the board, the teachers had reason to know him as a friend, who would do battle for them against reduction of their salaries, as was many times attested by his minority reports and speeches in session. He resisted the attempts to do away with the Suburban High Schools, and the residents of the sections where they are located should feel indebted to his leading opposition to such attempts for the retention of these suburban schools.

Mr. Hayes has been a director in several insurance companies and has been for many years on the executive committee of the Union Institution for Savings. Senator Hayes resides in a handsome residence, surrounded by ample grounds, in the Dorchester district, Ward Twenty-four. He is a thorough Democrat in principle. It was, therefore, a most flattering testimony to his personal popularity and of the great respect of his usual political opponents that they voted for him. Particularly is this the case in so far as his Dorchester Republican neighbors are concerned, so many of these being of the ancient and wealthy families, descendants of the earlier colonial settlers of Massachusetts Bay. The district also embraces the homes of many retired merchants and strong business men of Boston. In view of all the circumstances, Mr. Hayes' senatorial campaign success, it must be conceded, was a most brilliant one.

Saints and Serpents.

Even among Catholics the story of St. Patrick's driving the snakes and other reptiles out of Ireland has often been made the subject of, let us say, good-natured jest. But, besides, among others than Irishmen the legend has been laid to the score of the excessive credulity of Irishmen. I myself have heard German Catholics instance this story as an evidence of the excesses into which the Celtic mind is apt to run. And yet, investigation shows that the Irish are not alone in their pious belief. Father Chas. Cahier, a Jesuit, has compiled a work entitled "Caractéristiques des Saints dans l'Art Populaire." It is a most wonderful and valuable storehouse of information, illustration, and explanation. Thus we find in that our saint is not only patron of Ireland but also of Murcia in Spain, for the reason that on his feast, 17th of March, 1452, was won the battle of Los Alporchones. Turning to the heading "Serpent," we meet with a long array of saints represented in painting or sculpture with one or more of these reptiles in his vicinity. Italy, Brittany, Germany, France, Syria, Egypt, and other lands furnish legends as strange as that concerning our apostle. In fact, comparatively small space is devoted to him by the erudite Jesuit. He briefly says, "It is thoroughly admitted by the Irish that he drove from their Isle the serpents and other venomous animals. It is even added that the English have many times, but in vain, endeavored to acclimate venomous animals in Ireland." In a footnote he continues as follows:

"A prose of Saint Patrick (in the Officia SS. Patritii, Columbæ, Brigidæ, etc., Paris, 1620, in 16, p. 110-112) says:

"'Virosa reptilia
Prece congregata,
Pellit ab Hibernia
Mari liberata.'

"Cf. Molan Hist. SS. Imag., lib. iii. cap. x. (ed. Paquot, p. 265). Nieremberg, De Miraculosis ... in Europa, lib. ii. cap. LXII. (p. 469, sq.); et cap. XVIII. (p. 429).

"Nevertheless, Father Theoph. Raynaud (Opp, t. viii. p. 513) says that this might have been a fact existing in Ireland previous to the days of her apostle."

In Jocelyn's "Life and Acts of Saint Patrick," Chap. CLXIX., we read, "Even from the time of its original inhabitants, did Hibernia labor under a three-fold plague: a swarm of poisonous creatures, whereof the number could not be counted; a great concourse of demons visibly appearing; and a multitude of evil-doers and magicians. And these venomous and monstrous creatures, rising out of the earth and out of the sea, so prevailed over the whole island that they not only wounded men and animals with their deadly sting, but slayed them with cruel bitings, and not seldom rent and devoured their members."

Chapter CLXX. continues: "And the most holy Patrick applied all his diligence unto the extirpation of this three-fold plague; and at length by his salutary doctrine and fervent prayer he relieved Hibernia of the increasing mischief. Therefore he, the most excellent pastor, bore on his shoulder the staff of Jesus, and aided of the angelic aid, he by its comminatory elevation gathered together from all parts of the island, all the poisonous creatures into one place; then compelled he them all unto a very high promontory, which was then called Cruachan-ailge, but now Cruachan-Phadring; and by the power of his word he drove the whole pestilent swarm from the precipice of the mountain headlong into the ocean. O eminent sign! O illustrious miracle! even from the beginning of the world unheard, but now experienced by tribes, by peoples and by tongues, known unto all nations, but to the dwellers in Hibernia especially needful! And at this marvellous, yet most profitable sight, a most numerous assembly was present; many of whom had flocked from all parts to behold miracles, many to receive the word of life.

"Then turned he his face toward Mannia, and the other islands which he had imbued and blessed with the faith of Christ and with the holy sacraments; and by the power of his prayers he freed all these likewise from the plague of venomous reptiles. But other islands, the which had not believed at his preaching, still are cursed with the procreation of those poisonous creatures."

The Rev. Mr. O'Farrell, in his "Popular life of Saint Patrick," says, "Rothe in his elucidations upon this passage of Jocelyn, compared this quality bestowed upon Irish soil, through the prayers of Saint Patrick, with that conferred upon Malta by the merits of Saint Paul, with this difference, he adds, 'that while in Malta serpents, adders, and other venomous reptiles, retain their life and motion, and lose only their poisonous power, in Ireland they can neither hurt nor exist, inasmuch as not only the soil but the climate and atmosphere, are unto them instant death.'"

Ribadeneira says that even the wood of Ireland is proof against poisonous reptiles. He declares that King's College, Cambridge, is built within of Irish oak, and consequently not even a spider can be found within it.

In the first volume of Chambers' "Book of Days" is told the story of the attempt made by James Cleland, an Irish gentleman, in 1831, to introduce reptiles into the Holy Isle. He bought half a dozen harmless English snakes (natrix torquata) in Covent Garden market, London, and turned them loose in his garden in Rathgael, County Down. Within a week one was killed at Milecross three miles distant. A peasant who found one and thought it an eel, took it to Dr. J. L. Drummond, the celebrated Irish naturalist, and was horrified to learn that it was a genuine serpent. There was great excitement, and it was fortunate for Mr. Cleland that his connection with the affair was not known. One clergyman preached on the discovery of the reptile as a presage of the millennium; another saw a relation between it and the cholera-morbus. Some energetic men took the matter in hand and offered a reward for the dead bodies of the snakes. Three were killed within a few miles of the garden, and the others were never fully accounted for.

But to return to Father Cahier. He tells us of the following, depicted in sacred art in close proximity to serpents.

Moses is not only represented raising the brazen serpent in the desert to cure those who had been bitten by the reptiles (Num. xxi. 6-9), but also casting his rod on the ground, that it may be changed into a serpent—either at God's command before the burning bush as proof of his divine mission (Exod. iv. 1-5), or before Pharaoh to obtain the deliverance of the Israelites. (Exod. viii. 8-13.)

Saint Paul the Apostle. A viper hanging from his hand and which he is shaking off into the fire. (Acts. xxviii. 3-6.) This event, which occurred in the island of Malta, has given rise to a devotion greatly in vogue, especially among the Greeks. Earth taken from a cavern, wherein it is alleged Saint Paul took refuge after his shipwreck on the coast of that island, is carried to a distance as a preservative against the bite of dangerous beasts and against fevers.

There was also in by-gone times a persuasion that any man born on the 25th of January (the day of the apostle's conversion) was guaranteed against the reptile's tooth.

Saint Andrew the Apostle. His apocryphal legend relates, that he cast out devils, under the form of serpents or dragons. (Legend aur., cap. ii.) This is found represented amongst other places, on a stained-glass window of the Cathedral of Chartres.

Saint Peter Celestine, Pope. I do not remember, says Father Cahier, ever to have seen him painted with a dragon or a large serpent; but it is probable that this may be met with, especially in Italy. For it is related that, having retired into a grotto of the Abruzzi, he expelled from it a venomous serpent, which had made great ravages in the neighborhood.

Saint Romain or Romanus, Bishop of Rouen; 24th of October, 639. His dragon, or serpent, gave rise to an annual procession, during which a prisoner was released in memory of the service rendered to the country by the holy bishop. Father Cahier adds that this legend probably allegorized the destruction of Paganism by the bishop's efforts in his diocese.

Saint Spiridion, Bishop of Tremithontes in the island of Cyprus; 14th of December, about 348. Offering a serpent to a poor man.

He had a great reputation for charity, so the needy confidently applied to him for aid. But one day when a beggar asked him for assistance, the saint, who had nothing to give him, picked up a serpent, which the poor man hardly cared to accept. Nevertheless, encouraged by the bishop, he held his hand out; and the beast was converted into gold. (Surius, 14th December.)

Saint Narcissus, Bishop of Gironu in Catalonia, and apostle of Augsburg; 18th of March, about 307. It is related in the country of the Julian Alps that he destroyed a dragon, which was posted beside a spring, from which all the inhabitants fled.

Saint Amand, Bishop of Maestricht, and apostle of Flanders; 6th of February, 675. While still a child, he drove, it is said, from the island of Oye (near La Rochelle) a serpent which he met in his way. (Acta Sanctorum, Februar., t. i, p. 849.) Father Cahier says that the original is a dragon, which artists have converted into a serpent, and that it is quite likely it symbolizes the idols overthrown by the saint's apostolic labors in the country about Ghent.

Saint Modestus, Bishop of Jerusalem; 16th of December, seventh century. Putting to death a serpent which infested a fountain; much like the legend of Saint Narcissus. (Bagatta, Admiranda orbis, lib. vii. cap. i, §. 19, No. 29.)

Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers; 14th of January, about 368. Old artists paint him with a staff around which is twined a serpent; or serpents fleeing from that staff. This signifies, that during his exile, he completely banished the reptiles which infested the island of Gallinaria in the Mediterranean, near Genoa (the Gallinara of the present day). According to other versions he did not exactly rid the entire island of those animals, but simply relegated them to a corner of the land, where he planted his staff as a boundary which they were nevermore to pass. (P. de Natal., libr. ii, cap. LXVIII.—AA. SS., Januar., t. i, p. 792.) Cl. Robert quotes an epitaph on the doctor of Poitiers, found, he says, in an ancient manuscript, although the style gives little indication of the Middle Ages.

"Hilarius cubat hac, pictavus episcopus, urna;
Defensor nostræ mirificus fidei.
Illius aspectum serpentes ferre nequibant,
Nescis quæ in vultu spicula sanctus habet."

Might this be, asks Father Cahier, a way of expressing the fact that the saint had banished Arianism from amongst his people?

It is elsewhere shown that the dragons of many legions may be interpreted by the overthrow and expulsion of Paganism, that is, the end of Satan's reign over hearts. The serpent seems to have had something of this symbolism in ecclesiastical monuments, except that sometimes, here or there, it probably denotes heresy instead of idolatry. (Cf. Manni, Osservazioni istoriche sopra i sigilli antichi dei secoli bassi, t. V, sigill. 15.)

Saint Pirmin, (Pirminus or Pirminius) travelling bishop in Germany (and a Benedictine, it is said); 3d November, 758. He is described as a bishop of Meaux, who left his see in order to go and preach the Gospel along the banks of the Rhine; and he is usually painted as putting a multitude of serpents to flight. (Calendar. Benedict., 3d of Nov.—Rader, Bavaria Sancta.) A sequence of Saint Gall (ap. Mone, Hymni ... media ævi, t. III., p. 482, sq.) thus describes the marvel:

"Hic Augiensem insulam
Dei nutu intraverat,
Quam multitudo pessima
Destinebat serpentium.
Intrante illo ...
Statim squammosus
Hestinanter exercitus
Aufugit, ampli lacus
Natatu tergus
Tegens per triduum."

Amongst other abbeys of his foundation, he established that of Reichenau in the island of Constance, vanishing from the island the vipers or adders which had enormously multiplied in it. The legend even goes on to say that, for three days, the surrounding water was covered with these reptiles which forsook their old abode.

Was this story the legend or the consequence of an invocation of Saint Pirmin against unwholesome drinks? Besides people recommended themselves to this saint against the plague and the consequences of dangerous food. Furthermore, his dalmatic and his cincture were considered powerful to assuage the sufferings of pregnant women. An ancient seal of Saint Pirmin is found with these two verses used in certain provinces of Germany:

"Sanctificet nostram sanctus Pirminius escam,
Dextera Pirmini benedicat pocula nostra."

Saint Samson, Bishop of Dol, in Brittany; 28th of July, about 564. Some say he slew a dragon, and Father Cahier says this may be symbolic of the many victories he gained over the enemy of men. According to several, it was a serpent which he drove from a grotto on the banks of the Seine (Cf. Longueval, Histoire de l'Eglise gallicane, livre IX.)

Saint Mellon (Mélon, Mellonus, Mallonus, Mello, Melanius?) first Bishop of Rouen; 22d of October, about 214. A serpent of which his legend speaks may be only the dragon of the saints who preached the Gospel to idolatrous nations. An old office of his says:

"Manum sanat arescentem
Morsum curat, et serpentem
Sese cogit perdere."

His legend further relates that he overthrew in the city of Rouen the idol Roth, and that the devil complained to him of the trouble he had caused in his empire. (AA. SS. Octobr., t. IX., p. 572, sq.)

Saint Cado (or Kadok, Cadout, Cadog, Catrog-Doeth, Cadvot), bishop and martyr in Brittany; 1st of November, about 580. The Bretons relate that on a little island off the coast of Vannes, between Port-Louis and Auray, he drove the serpents away and they never appeared there again (Vie des Saints de la Bretagne, p. 666). The island retains the name of Enis-Cadvod or Inis-Kadok, that is, the island of Saint Cado.

A Saint Paternus, bishop, whom Father Cahier cannot locate, is mentioned as having warded off the bites of serpents. He cannot say, too, but that there is more of symbolism than of real history in the story.

Saint Peregrinus, bishop, martyred at Auxerre, 16th of May, third century, driving out serpents. Though one may consider this representation a manner of expressing the earnestness he displayed in extirpating idolatry from the people of Auxerre, it is admitted that in the Nivernais country (especially at Bouhy where he took refuge), serpents are never seen. People even come to the church of that village to take earth out of a hole habitually dug ad hoc; and that earth is carried away as a preservative against the bite of reptiles. It is besides regarded as an understood fact at Bouhy that a certain family there always has the figure of a serpent on the body of some one belonging to it. They are, according to the story, the descendants of a pagan, who, striving to drive the saint away by hitting him with a whip, saw the lash change into a serpent which "landed" near the rock where Saint Peregrinus had sought refuge against persecution.

Saint Honoratus of Arles, or of Lerins; 16th of January, about 430. When he retired into the island which still bears his name, near the coast of Provence, vainly was it represented to him that it was a receptacle of venomous animals. The man of God exactly wanted a shelter, a refuge from all visitors, and drove out all the serpents which had long multiplied there without any obstacle. A palm-tree is still shown there, on which, it is alleged, our saint waited until Heaven came to his aid, by having the waves sweep away all that "vermin" which had rendered the island uninhabitable until then. (Surius, 16 Januar.; and AA. SS. Januar., t. II., p. 19.) Observe that the islands of Saint-Honorat and Sainte-Marguerite are held in that country to have formed but one in olden days, which was the real Lerins, Pliny and Strabo to the contrary notwithstanding.

Saint Protus of Sardinia, priest; 25th of October, under Diocletian. He was martyred with the deacon Saint Januarius and Saint Gavinus, a soldier converted by them. Protus, exiled at first to the island of Asinara(?) drove from it, it is said, all the venomous beasts. Many even would have it that this privilege was extended to the whole of Sardinia, for which, however, Father Cahier says he would not make himself responsible. (Cf. Hagiolog. italic., t. II., p. 256). Hence a reptile is often represented at the feet of the saint, while artists often associate him with his two companions in martyrdom. In this case they may be easily distinguished by their costumes of priest, deacon, and soldier, which indicate the profession of each.

Saint Florence of Norcia (Florentius or Florentinus), monk; 23d of May, about 547. He has been confounded, rightly or wrongly, with Saint Florence of Corsica. But Saint Gregory the Great (Dialog., III., 15, ed Galliccioli, t. VI., p. 202) speaks of him only as a simple monk, and relates that he destroyed a multitude of serpents by his prayer.

Saint Florence of Glonne, priest, patron of Saumur and Roye; 22d of September, fourth century. He is sometimes said to have thrown a dragon or serpent into the Loire, but the Bas-Bretons give the credit to Saint Mein, abbot of Gaël, who lived more than a century later.

Saint Amantius of Citta-di-Castello, priest; 26th of September, towards the end of the sixth century. He became famous in his lifetime by numerous miracles, especially by delivering the people of the country in which he dwelt from serpents. (Gregor. M., Dialog., III., 35. Brantii Martyrol poeticum.)

Saint Julius, priest; 31st of January, about 399. The island of Orta, near Novara, was delivered by him from a quantity of serpents when he went there to build the last church he erected. According to some, these reptiles, put to flight by the holy man's blessing, plunged into the lake; others say that the serpents took refuge on Mount Camocino near there, but that they never hurt any one any more. (Labus, Fasti, 31 gennajo.—AA. SS. Januar., t. II., p. 1103.) The lake of Orta is still called Lago de san Giulio, by the people of the country around Milan.

Saint Magnus (Magnoaldus), abbot of Fuessen, and apostle of Algan; 6th of September, about 660. At Kempten this saint is credited with having expelled venomous animals; as for the dragon, he is said to have caused its death by his prayers at Æqui caput. However this may be, his staff was employed at Abthal against field rats, and in Brisgan against all kinds of insects that might injure the crops. (Cf. Wilh. Mueller, Gesch ... der altdentschen Religion, p. 113.—Calendar. benedict., 6th of Septembr.—Rader, Bavaria sancta.)

Saint Didymus, in the East. Father Cahier cannot say whether it is Didymus of Alexandria (28th of April) or Didymus of Laodicea (11th of September). Several modern German authors, copying one another, say that he is represented walking on serpents and nailed to the cross. Either, says Father Cahier, I greatly mistake, or the martyr of Laodicea, who was torn on a stake (Menolog. græc., t. I., p. 29,) is confounded with the hermit of the same name who used to walk amongst the most dangerous reptiles (scorpions, horned vipers, etc.), without ever being injured by them. (Rosweyde, Vitæ PP., p. 479.)

Saint Phocas of Antioch, in Syria, martyr; 5th March, time disputed. He is famed in the East as a signal protector against the bite of reptiles. These reptiles are often represented near the church which is dedicated to him, because it is acknowledged that they lose their venom as soon as they approach it, and that those bitten by them there recover health. (Cf. Martyrol. Rom., 5 mart.)

Saint Christopher of Lycia, martyr; 25th of July, about 560. A serpent is sometimes placed near him, either because reptiles were used without effect to torture him, or on account of some miracle due to his intercession long after his death. (AA. SS. Jul., t. VI., p. 137-139.) Father Cahier adds, in a note, if, as Servius says, the word anguis was used to denote reptiles which live in water, consequently amphibious animals, it becomes easier to understand that inundations may have been expressed by a dragon or a serpent; so many writers have thought, the Bollandists amongst others. So, in many cases, it may have been a symbolic picture, whose significance was lost in the lapse of time. A serpent near Saint Christopher might indicate that the saint had crossed deep water.

Saint Leontius, martyr; honored at Muri in Switzerland, as one of the soldiers of the Theban legion. A serpent is given him as attribute, with a little phial. Father Cahier says he has failed to discover the significance of the emblems.

Saint Amable of Riom, priest; 19th of October, fifth century. Near him serpents and venomous animals, because it is said that he drove all maleficent beasts out of the neighborhood of Riom.

Saint Briac, abbot; 17th of December, about 609. He banished a serpent with the sign of the cross. This saint met a man who was already stung by a dangerous reptile and fleeing from the animal, which was in pursuit of him. The servant of God, by giving his blessing, cured the wounded man and put the animal to flight. (Vies des Saints de la Bretagne.)

Saint Maudez, hermit; 18th of November, seventh century. Driving out of an island, in which he had established his hermitage, a number of reptiles that lived in the place. The custom is preserved in Brittany of using earth taken from the island as a remedy for serpents' bites. (Vies des Saints de la Bretagne, p. 724, 725.)

Saint John of Reomey, founder of this abbey, which afterwards took the name of Montier-Saint-Jean; 28th of January, about 545. He is generally represented beside a well and holding a sort of dragon chained. His legend relates that he caused the death of a basilisk which made the water of a well or fountain dangerous. (Calend. benedict., 28 januar.) Sometimes instead of this dragon (winged) there is placed near him a chained serpent. (Cf. Aug. de Bastard, Mémoire sur les crosses, p. 776.)

Saint Beat or Beatus of Vendomois, hermit; 9th of May, year difficult to determine. The story goes that, finding a reptile in the grotto into which he desired to retire, near the Loire, he drove the animal out with the sign of the cross. (AA. SS., Maii, t. II., p. 365. D. Piolin, Hist. de l'Eglise du Mans, t. I., p. 62.)

Saint Lifard (Liphardus, Liethphardus), hermit, afterwards abbot at Meun-sur-Loire; 3d of June, about 540. Near him in pictures is a staff planted in the earth, and bitten at top by a serpent, which is broken in the middle of the body. It is related that near his cell an enormous serpent prevented the people of the locality from having access to a fountain. Urbitius, a disciple of the holy man, ran one day to him, telling him that he had met the dreadful reptile. Lifard smiled and bade Urbitius be ashamed of his lack of faith, and gave him his staff with orders to plant it in the ground in front of the beast. This being done, and while the hermit was praying to God, the monster sprang upon the staff, which he bit with madness. The weight of the monstrous beast made it burst in the middle, and the country was delivered from him. (Surius, 3 jun.)

Outside of France, this is sometimes represented by an empaled dragon from which issue a number of little dragons flying away. (Calendar. benedict., 4 jun.)

Saint Leonard the younger, abbot of Vendeuve; 15th of October, about 570. He is represented with a serpent near him, because one of these serpents having crawled towards the holy man while he was at prayer, stopped without being able to hurt him. He is also represented with a serpent dying at his feet or twined around his body. (AA. SS., Octobr., t. VII., p. 48, sq.) It is asserted that a serpent has never since appeared in that place.

Saint Memin (or Maximin), abbot of Micy; 15th of December, 520. He is painted holding a serpent, because he is said to have driven a dangerous reptile from the banks of the Loire. (Aug. de Bastard, Crosses, p. 776.)

Saint Dominic of Sara, abbot of the order of Saint Benedict; 22d of January, about 1031. A present of fish sent to the holy man having been abstracted on the way, the rogues were rather surprised to find only snakes instead of the fish they had stolen. (Calendar. benedict., 22 januar.,—Brantii, Martyrol. poetic.)

"Qui missos sancto pisces abscondit, in angues
Mutatos, rediens vidit et obstupuit."

Saint Vincent of Avila, with Saint Sabina and Saint Christeta, his sisters; 27th of October, under Diocletian. The bodies of these martyrs having been abandoned to beasts of prey, an enormous serpent protected their remains from any insult. A Jew, even, who had come to see the corpses, ran such danger from the reptile that he made a vow to receive baptism. (Espana sagrada, t. XIV., p. 32.)

Saint Gorry (Godrick, Godrich, Godricus), hermit in England; 21st of May, 1170. He put himself under the direction of the monks of Durham, and passed the latter part of his life in a solitude. He is represented surrounded by serpents, because those venomous animals gathered around him and did him no harm. (Calend. benedict., 29 mai.—AA. SS., Maii, t. V., p. 68, sqq.)

The Blessed Bonagiunta Manetti, Servite and first general of his order; 31st of August, 1257. Father Cahier says that in France pictures of the Servites are seldom found, and then with no particular emblem. He, however, found one in which the blessed Bonagiunta is blessing loaves which break, and bottles from which serpents escape. In the art of the Middle Ages a serpent is the emblem of poison, and so it seems to be here. As the holy man, while asking alms for his community, did not hesitate to rebuke sinners, he gave offence to a Florentine merchant. Pretending to be repentant and charitable, he sent poisoned bread and wine to the Servite monastery. The Blessed Bonagiunta received the man who brought the pretended alms, and said to him, "I know well that thy master would take my life. But tell him that no evil will happen us, and that death will soon strike himself." The prophecy was accomplished. (Cf. Brocchi, Vite dei SS. Fiorentini, t. I., p. 246.)

Saint Heldradus, abbot of Novalèse (13th of March, 875), is said to have expelled the serpents that infested the valley of Briançon where the saint wanted to establish a colony of his monks. (AA. SS., Mart., t. II., p. 334.)

Saint Thecla, virgin and martyr; 23d of September, Apostolic age. This saint is called a martyr, and even the first of martyrs, because although her life was not taken in torments, she seems to be the first Christian woman who was given over to the barbarity of Pagan public power. It is related that she was thrown into a ditch filled with vipers, but a ball of fire fell from heaven and killed all those venomous animals. So she is sometimes painted with a fiery globe in her hand or near her. Father Cahier adds that her Acts have not come to us with sufficient indications of authenticity; but the church, in her prayers for the dying, retains the memory of the three tortures (flames, wild beasts, and venomous animals), from which the saint was delivered by assistance from on high. She prays: "As thou didst deliver that most blessed virgin Thecla from three most cruel torments, so vouchsafe to deliver the soul of this Thy servant," etc.[3]

Saint Christina, virgin and martyr in Tuscany; 24th of July, towards the end of the third century. Same attribute and same reason as for as Saint Thecla. (Bagatta, Admiranda orbis, lib. VII., cap. I., 19, No. 3.)

Saint Anatolia, virgin, martyred with Saint Audax, 9th of July, about 250. She was confined in a narrow dungeon, with a venomous serpent, which was expected to kill her. When it was thought that she was slain, Audax, one of those Marsi who prided themselves on being able to charm reptiles, was sent into the prison. But the virgin was unhurt, and the serpent flung itself on the pretended charmer, who was delivered only at Anatolia's command. Audax was converted to Christianity, and gave his life for Jesus Christ some time after the death of the saint, who was pierced by a sword. (Martyrol. Rom., 9 Jul.—Bagatta, Admiranda orbis, lib. VII., cap. I., § 19, No. 17.)

Saint Verena, virgin at Zurzach in Switzerland; 1st of September, about the beginning of the fourth century. At her prayer, it is said, a quantity of venomous serpents forsook the country and flung themselves into the Aar.

Saint Verdiana (Viridiana), virgin of the Third Order of Saint Francis, or of Valeambrosa at Castel-Fiorentino; 13th of February, 1242. Living as a recluse with serpents. She imposed this sort of penance on herself to overcome the horror that reptiles excited in her, and took care to feed these strange guests herself so that they would not go away. (Bagatta, l. c., ibid., No. 27.)

Saint Isberga, (Itisberga), a hermit virgin near Aire in Artois, afterwards abbess; 21st of May, about 770. As daughter of Pepin and sister of Charlemagne, she is often represented with a crown and a mantle covered with fleurs-de-lis. But she is particularly distinguished by another emblem. An eel is put in her hand, sometimes on a dish, and for this reason: A powerful prince had asked Isberga's hand in marriage; but in order to preserve the vow of virginity which she had made, she besought God to send her some disease which would disfigure her. Her face was soon covered with pustules, and the suitor no longer insisted upon marrying her. Heaven then revealed to Isberga that she would be cured by eating the first fish that would be caught in the Lys. The men whom she sent for that purpose toiled long without succeeding in taking anything but an eel, along with which they brought up in their nets the body of Saint Venantus, a hermit (the saint's director), who had been slain and cast into the river by the princess's lover, for he blamed the hermit for the resolution taken by the virgin whose hand he sought in marriage. The discovery of the body brought the crime to light, and made known the sanctity of Venantus, to whose merits Isberga ascribed the efficacy of the fish in delivering her from disease. (AA. SS. Maii, t. V., p. 44.—Dancoisne, Numismatique béthunoise, p. 165, sqq.)

Saint Enimia of Gevandan, virgin; 6th of October, about the seventh century. She, too, is depicted with a serpent because she is said to have delivered the country from that dangerous animal. (AA. SS. Octobr., t. XI., p. 630, t. III., p. 306, sqq.)

Saint Crescentian; 1st of June, 287. Coins of Urbino represent him armed cap-a-pie, on foot or on horseback, and killing a dragon with his lance, or carrying a flag; at other times he is seen in deacon's costume, trampling a serpent under his feet. He is said to have been a Roman soldier, and to have introduced the Gospel into Citta-di-Castello. (Brantii Martyrolog. poeticum, 1 jun:

"Letifero Crescentinus serpente Tipherni
Occiso, gladio victima cæsa cadit.")

Turning to another part of Father Cahier's work, we find that the following saints are also represented with serpents:

Saint John the Evangelist; 27th of December. He is represented holding a sort of chalice surmounted by a little serpent or a dragon. The Golden Legend says, that, to prove the truth of his teaching, he was compelled to drink poison. Some of it was first given to two men condemned to death and they died on the spot. The saint made the sign of the cross over the cup, drank, suffered no inconvenience, and then restored the two dead men to life. Father Cahier adds that this story seems to have given rise to the custom especially prevalent among Germanic nations of drinking to friends' health under pretense of honoring Saint John. He says that this custom has sometimes been put under the protection of Saint John the Baptist, but that it is not probable the Germans would have cared about putting their healths put under the protection of a saint who drank only water.

Saint Chariton, hermit and abbot in Palestine; 28th of September, about 350. Near him is represented a serpent plunging its head in a cup. A native of Lycaonia, and released by the Pagans after being tortured for the faith, he went to Jerusalem, where he was taken by robbers, and confined in the cave which was their retreat. A serpent came and drank out of the vase in which their wine was, at the same time poisoning it with his venom, and the robbers died in consequence, whereupon the saint made the cave the cradle of a monastery. (Menolog., græc, t. I., p. 73.)

Saint Pourcain (Portianus), abbot in Auvergne; 24th of November, about 540. He is represented with a broken cup from which emerges a serpent. King Thierry I. was ravaging Auvergne, and the holy abbot went to intercede with him for the poor people. The King was still asleep when he came, and the principal officer offered him a drink, which he refused because he had not yet seen the king or celebrated the office. Pressed, however, he blessed the vase which was brought him, it broke, and a serpent came out of it. The whole court considered that he had been saved from poison. (Gregor. Turon., Vitæ PP., cap. V.)

Saint John of Sahagun, Hermit of Saint Augustine; 12th of June, 1497. He is represented amongst other ways, with a cup surmounted by a serpent. This is because he was really poisoned by a dissolute woman in revenge for the conversion of her lover by the saint and his consequent dismissal of her. (AA. SS. Jun., t. II., p. 625.)

Saint Louis Bertrand, Dominican; 10th of October, 1581. A cup with a serpent indicates that in his missions in America he had poison given him more than once by the Pagans, without being injured by it.

Th. Xr. K.

The Poems of Rosa Mulholland.[4]

Miss Rosa Mulholland has at last been induced to gather her poems into a volume which will be dear to all lovers of poetry into whose hands it may fall. No person with the faintest glimmering of insight into the subtle mechanism of literary composition in its higher forms could study the prose writings of the author of "The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil," of "Eldergowan," and many other dainty fictions, without being sure that the writer of such prose was a poet also, not merely by nature but by art; and many had learned to follow her initials through the pages of certain magazines. The present work contains nearly all of these scattered lyrics; and, along with them, many that are now printed for the first time combine to form a volume of the truest and holiest poetry that has been heard on earth since Adelaide Procter went to heaven.

The only justification for the too modest title of "Vagrant Verses," which gleams from the cover of this pretty volume, lies in the fact that this most graceful muse wanders from subject to subject according to her fancy, and pursues no heroic or dramatic theme with that exhaustive treatment which exhausts every one except the poet. The poems in this collection are short, written not to order, but under the manifest impulse of inspiration, for the expression only of the deeper thoughts and more vivid feelings of the soul. Except the fine lyrical and dramatic ballad, "The Children of Lir," which occupies eight pages, and the first five pages given to "Emmet's Love," none of the rest of the seventy poems go much beyond a page or two, while they range through every mood, sad or mirthful, and through every form of metre.

We have named the opening poem, which is an exquisitely pathetic soliloquy of Sarah Curran, a year after the death of her betrothed, young Robert Emmet—a nobler tribute to the memory of our great orator's daughter than either Moore's verse or Washington Irving's prose. But the metrical interlacing of the stanzas, and the elevation and refinement of the poetic diction, require a thoughtful perusal to bring out the perfections of this poem, which, therefore, lends itself less readily to quotation. We shall rather begin by giving one shorter poem in full, taken almost at random. Let it be "Wilfulness and Patience," as it teaches a lesson which it would be well for many to take to heart and to learn by heart:—

I said I am going into the garden,
Into the flush of the sweetness of life;
I can stay in the wilderness no longer,
Where sorrow and sickness and pain are so rife;

So I shod my feet in their golden sandals,
And I looped my gown with a ribbon of blue,
And into the garden went I singing,
The birds in the boughs fell a-singing too.

Just at the wicket I met with Patience,
Grave was her face, and pure and kind,
But oh, I loved not her ashen mantle,
Such sober looks were not to my mind.

Said Patience, "Go not into the garden,
But come with me by the difficult ways,
Over the wastes and the wilderness mountains,
To the higher levels of love and praise!"

Gaily I laughed as I opened the wicket,
And Patience, pitying, flitted away.
The garden glory was full of the morning—
The morning changed to the glamor of day.

O sweet were the winds among my tresses,
And sweet the flowers that bent at my knees;
Ripe were the fruits that fell at my wishing,
But sated soon was my soul with these.

And would I were hand in hand with Patience;
Tracking her feet on the difficult ways,
Over the wastes and the wilderness mountains,
To the higher level of love and praise!

The salutary lesson that the singer wants to impress on the young heart, is here taught plainly and directly even by the very name of the piece. But here is another very delicious melody, of which the name and the purport are somewhat more mysterious. It is called "Perdita."

I dipped my hand in the sea,
Wantonly—
The sun shone red o'er castle and cave;
Dreaming, I rocked on the sleepy wave;—
I drew a pearl from the sea.
Wonderingly.

There in my hand it lay:
Who could say
How from the depths of the ocean calm
It rose, and slid itself into my palm?
I smiled at finding there
Pearl so fair.

I kissed the beautiful thing,
Marvelling.
Poor till now I had grown to be
The wealthiest maiden on land or sea,
A priceless gem was mine,
Pure, divine!

I hid the pearl in my breast,
Fearful lest
The wind should steal, or the wave repent
Largess made in mere merriment,
And snatch it back again
Into the main.

But careless grown, ah me!
Wantonly
I held between two fingers fine
My gem above the sparkling brine,
Only to see it gleam
Across the stream.

I felt the treasure slide
Under the tide;
I saw its mild and delicate ray
Glittering upward, fade away.
Ah! then my tears did flow,
Long ago!

I weep, and weep, and weep,
Into the deep;
Sad am I that I could not hold
A treasure richer than virgin gold.
That Fate so sweetly gave
Out of the wave.

I dip my hand in the sea,
Longingly;
But never more will that jewel white
Shed on my soul its tender light.
My pearl lies buried deep
Where mermaids sleep.

Some readers of this Magazine are, no doubt, for the first time making acquaintance with Miss Mulholland under this character in which others have known her long; and even these newest friends know enough of her already to pronounce upon some of her characteristics. She is not influenced by the spell of modern culture which has invested the poetic diction of recent years with an exquisite expressiveness and delicate beauty. But, while her style is the very antithesis of the tawdry or the commonplace, she has no mannerisms or affectations; she belongs to no school; she does not deem it the poet's duty to cultivate an artificial, recherche, dilettante dialect unknown to Shakespeare and Wordsworth—if we may use a string of epithets which can only be excused for their outlandishness on the plea that they describe something very outlandish. Her meaning is as lucid as her thoughts are high and pure. If, after reading one of her poems carefully, we sometimes have to ask "What does she mean by that?" we ask it not on account of any obscurity in her language, but on account of the depth and height of her thoughts.

The musical rhythm of our extracts prepares us for the form which many of Miss Mulholland's inspirations assume—that of the song pure and simple. Those last epithets have here more than the meaning which they usually bear in such a context; for these songs are not only eminently singable, but they are marked by a very attractive purity and simplicity. There are many of them besides this one which alone bears no other name than "Song."

The silent bird is hid in the boughs,
The scythe is hid in the corn,
The lazy oxen wink and drowse,
The grateful sheep are shorn.
Redder and redder burns the rose,
The lily was ne'er so pale,
Stiller and stiller the river flows
Along the path to the vale.

A little door is hid in the boughs,
A face is hiding within;
When birds are silent and oxen drowse,
Why should a maiden spin?
Slower and slower turns the wheel,
The face turns red and pale,
Brighter and brighter the looks that steal
Along the path to the vale.

Here and everywhere how few are the adjectives, and never any slipped in as mere adjectives. Verbs and nouns do duty for them, and the pictures paint themselves. There is more of genius, art, thought, and study in this self-restraining simplicity than in the freer and bolder eloquence that might make young pulses tingle.

This remarkable faculty for musical verse seems to us to enhance the merit of a poem in which a certain ruggedness is introduced of set purpose. At least, we think that the subtle sympathy, which in the workmanship of a true poet links theme and metre together, is curiously exemplified in "News to Tell." What metre is it? A very slight change here and there would conform it to the sober, solemn measure familiar to the least poetical of us in Gray's marvellous "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." That elegiac tone already suits the rhythm here to the pathetic story. But then the wounded soldier, who, perhaps, will not recover after all, but may follow his dead comrade—see how he drags himself with difficulty away from the old gray castle where the young widow and the aged mother are overwhelmed by the news he had to tell; and is not all this with exquisite cunning represented by the halting gait of the metre, in which every line deviates just a little from the normal scheme of five iambics?

Neighbor, lend me your arm, for I am not well,
This wound you see is scarcely a fortnight old,
All for a sorry message I had to tell,
I've travelled many a mile in wet and cold.

Yon is the old gray château above the road,
He bade me seek it, my comrade brave and gay;
Stately forest and river so brown and broad,
He showed me the scene as he a-dying lay.

I have been there, and, neighbor I am not well;
I bore his sword and some of his curling hair,
Knocked at the gate and said I had news to tell,
Entered a chamber and saw his mother there.

Tall and straight with the snows of age on her head,
Brave and stern as a soldier's mother might be,
Deep in her eyes a living look of the dead,
She grasped her staff and silently gazed at me.

I thought I'd better be dead than meet her eye;
She guessed it all, I'd never a word to tell.
Taking the sword in her arms she heaved a sigh,
Clasping the curl in her hand, she sobbed and fell.

I raised her up; she sate in her stately chair,
Her face like death, but not a tear in her eye.
We heard a step, a tender voice on the stair
Murmuring soft to an infant's cooing cry.

My lady she sate erect, and sterner grew,
Finger on mouth she motioned me not to stay;
A girl came in, the wife of the dead I knew,
She held his babe, and, neighbor, I fled away!

I tried to run, but I heard the widow's cry.
Neighbor, I have been hurt and I am not well:
I pray to God that never until I die
May I again have such sorry news to tell.

The next piece we shall cite has travelled across the Atlantic, and come back again under false pretences, and without its author's leave or knowledge. Some years ago an American newspaper published some pathetic stanzas, to which it gave as a title "Exquisite Effusion of a Dying Sister of Charity." One into whose hands this journal chanced to fall, read on with interest and pleasure, feeling the verses strangely familiar—till, on reflection, he found that the poem had been published some time before in The Month, over the well-known initials "R. M." As the American journalist named the Irish convent where the Sister of Charity had died—not one of Mrs. Aikenhead's spiritual daughters, but one of those whom we call French Sisters of Charity—the reader aforesaid went to the trouble of writing to the Mother Superior, who gave the following explanation: The holy Sister had been fond of reading and writing verse; and these verses with others were found in her desk after her death and handed over to her relatives as relics. They not comparing them very critically with the nun's genuine literary remains, rashly published them as "The Exquisite Effusion of a Dying Sister of Charity." The foregoing circumstances were soon afterwards published in the Boston Pilot; but the ghost of such a blunder is not so easily laid, and the poem reappears in The Messenger of St. Joseph for last August, under the title of "An Invalid's Plaint," and still attributed to the dying Nun, who had only had the good taste to admire and transcribe Miss Mulholland's poem. In all its wanderings to and fro across the Atlantic many corruptions crept into the text; and it would be an interesting exercise in style to collate the version given by The Messenger with the authorized edition which we here copy from page 136 of "Vagrant Verses," where the poem, of course, bears its original name of "Failure."

The Lord, Who fashioned my hands for working,
Set me a task, and it is not done;
I tried and tried since the early morning,
And now to westward sinketh the sun!

Noble the task that was kindly given
To one so little and weak as I—
Somehow my strength could never grasp it,
Never, as days and years went by.

Others around me, cheerfully toiling,
Showed me their work as they passed away;
Filled were their hands to overflowing,
Proud were their hearts, and glad and gay.

Laden with harvest spoils they entered
In at the golden gate of their rest;
Laid their sheaves at the feet of the Master,
Found their places among the blest.

Happy be they who strove to help me,
Failing ever in spite of their aid!
Fain would their love have borne me onward,
But I was unready, and sore afraid.

Now I know my task will never be finished,
And when the Master calleth my name,
The Voice will find me still at my labor,
Weeping beside it in weary shame.

With empty hands I shall rise to meet Him,
And when He looks for the fruits of years,
Nothing have I to lay before Him
But broken efforts and bitter tears.

Yet when He calls I fain would hasten—
Mine eyes are dim and their light is gone;
And I am as weary as though I carried
A burthen of beautiful work well done.

I will fold my empty hands on my bosom,
Meekly thus in the shape of His Cross;
And the Lord, Who made them frail and feeble,
Maybe will pity their strife and loss.

It might have been expected that so skilful an artist in beautiful words would be sure occasionally to find the classic sonnet form the most fitting vehicle for some rounded and stately thought. About half a dozen sonnets are strewn over these pages, all cast in the true Petrarchan mould, and all very properly bearing names of their own, like any other form of verse, instead of being labelled promiscuously as "sonnets." The following is called "Love." What a sublime ideal, only to be realized in human love when in its self-denying sacredness it approaches the divine!

True love is that which never can be lost:
Though cast away, alone and ownerless,
Like a strayed child, that wandering, misses most
When night comes down its mother's last caress;

True love dies not when banished and forgot,
But, solitary, barters still with Heaven
The scanty share of joy cast in its lot
For joys to the beloved freely given.

Love, smiling, stands afar to watch and see
Each blessing it has bought, like angel's kiss,
Fall on the loved one's face, who ne'er may know
At what strange cost thus, overflowingly,
His cup is filled, or how its depth of bliss
Doth give the measure of another's woe.

As this happens to be the solitary one among Miss Mulholland's sonnets, which in the arrangement of the quatrains varies slightly from the most orthodox tradition of this pharisee of song, I will give another specimen, prettily named "Among the Boughs."

High on a gnarled and mossy forest bough,
Dreaming, I hang between the earth and sky,
The golden moon through leafy mystery
Gazing aslant at me with glowing brow.
And since all living creatures slumber now,
O nightingale, save only thou and I,
Tell me the secret of thine ecstacy,
That none may know save only I and thou.

Alas, all vainly doth my heart entreat;
Thy magic pipe unfolds but to the moon
What wonders thee in faëry worlds befell:
To her is sung thy midnight-music sweet,
And ere she wearies of thy mellow tune,
She hath thy secret, and will guard it well!

Unstinted as our extracts have been, there are poems here by the score over which our choice has wavered. Our selection has been made partly with a view to the illustration of the variety and versatility displayed by this new poet in matter and form; and on this principle we are tempted to quote "Girlhood at Midnight" as the only piece of blank verse in Miss Mulholland's repertory, to show how musical, how far from blank, she makes that most difficult and perilous measure. But we must put a restraint on ourselves, and just give one more sample, of the achievements of the author of "The Little Flower Seekers" and "The Wild Birds of Killeevy," in what an old writer calls "the melifluous meeters of poesie." This last is called "A Rebuke." Was there ever a sweeter or gentler rebuke?

Why are you so sad? (sing the little birds, the little birds,)
All the sky is blue,
We are in our branches, yonder are the herds,
And the sun is on the dew;
Everything is merry, (sing the happy little birds,)
Everything but you!

Fire is on the hearthstone, the ship is on the wave,
Pretty eggs are in the nest,
Yonder sits a mother smiling at a grave,
With a baby at her breast;
And Christ was on the earth, and the sinner He forgave
Is with Him in His rest.

We shall droop our wings, (pipes the throstle on the tree,)
When everything is done:
Time unfurleth yours, that you soar eternally
In the regions of the sun.
When our day is over, (sings the blackbird in the lea,)
Yours is but begun.

Then why are you so sad? (warble all the little birds,)
While the sky is blue,
Brooding over phantoms and vexing about words
That never can be true;
Everything is merry, (trill the happy, happy birds,)
Everything but you!

The setting of these jewels is almost worthy of them. The book is brought out with that faultless taste which has helped to win for the firm of No. 1 Paternoster Sq., such fame as poets' publishers. A large proportion of contemporary poetry of the highest name, including till lately the Laureate's, has appeared under the auspices of Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., who seem to have expended special care on the production of "Vagrant Verses."

And now, as we have let these poems chiefly speak for themselves, enough has been said. We do not hesitate to add in conclusion, that those among us with pretensions to literary culture, who do not hasten to contribute to the exceptional success which awaits a work such as even our brief account proves this work to be, will so far have failed in their duty towards Irish genius. For this book more than any that we have yet received from its author's hand—nay, more than any that we can hope to receive from her, since this is the consummate flower of her best years—will serve to secure for the name of Rosa Mulholland an enduring place among the most richly gifted of the daughters of Erin.

Rev. Matthew Russell, S. J.

Dublin, 1886.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.

About Critics.

A critic is a judge: and more, he is a judge who knows better than any author how his book should have been written; better than the artist how his picture should have been painted; better than the musician how his music should have been composed; better than the preacher how his sermon ought to have been arranged; better than the Lord Chancellor how he should decide in Equity; better than Sir Frederick Roberts how he should have pursued Ayoob Khan; better than the whole Cabinet how they should govern Ireland; and far better than the Pope how he should guard the deposit of faith. This, no doubt, needs a high culture, a many-sided genius, and the speciality of an expert in all subjects of human intelligence and action. But all that goes for nothing with a true critic. He is never daunted; never at a loss. If he is wrong, he is never the worse, for he criticises anonymously. Sometimes, indeed, the trade is dangerous. A well-known author of precocious literary copiousness, whose volumes contain an "Appendix of Authors quoted" almost as long as the catalogue of the Alexandrian Library, was once invited, maliciously we are afraid, to dine in a select party of specialists, on whose manors the author had been sporting without license. Not only was the jury packed, but the debate was organized with malice aforethought. Each in turn plucked and plucked until the critic was reduced to the Platonic man—animal bipes implume.

Addison says, somewhere in the Spectator, that ridicule is assumed superiority. Criticism is asserted superiority. Sometimes it may be justified, as when the shoemaker told Titian that he had stitched the shoe of a Doge of Venice in the wrong place. Sometimes it is not equally to be justified, as in the critics of the Divine Government of the world, to whom Butler in his "Analogy" meekly says that, if they only knew the whole system of all things, with all the reasons of them, and the last end to which all things and reasons are directed, they might, peradventure, be of another opinion.

There are some benevolent critics whose life is spent in watching the characters and conduct of all around them. They note every word and tone and gesture; they have a formed, and not a favorable, judgment of all we do and all we leave undone. It does not much matter which: if we did so, we ought not to have done it; if we did not, we ought to have done so. Such critics have, no doubt, an end and place in creation. Socrates told the Athenians that he was their "gadfly." There is room, perhaps, for one gadfly in a city; but in a household, wholesome companions they may be, but not altogether pleasant. These may be called critics of moral superiority. Again, there are Biblical critics, who spend their lives over a text in Scripture, all equally confident, and no two agreed. An old English author irreverently compares them to a cluster of monkeys, who, having found a glowworm, "heaped sticks upon it, and blowed themselves out of breath to set it alight." We commend this incident in scientific history to whomsoever may have inherited Landseer's pallet and brush, under the title of "Doctors in Divinity," for the Royal Academy in next May.

This reminds us of the historical critics who have erected the treatment of the most uncertain of all matters into the certainty of science, by the simple introduction of one additional compound, their own personal infallibility. The universal Church assembled in Council under the guidance of its Head does not, cannot and what is worse, will not, know its own history, or the true interpretation of its own records and acts. But, by a benign though tardy provision, the science of history has arisen, like the art of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, to recall the Church from its deviations to the recognition of its own true misdeeds. Such higher intelligences may be called and revered as the Pontiffs of the Realm of Criticism.

We are warned, however, not to profane this awful Hierarchy of superior persons by further analysis. We will, therefore, end with three canons, not so much of criticism as of moral common sense. A critic knows more than the author he criticises, or just as much, or at least somewhat less.

As to the first class: Nothing we have said here is lèse majesté to the true senate of learned, patient, deliberate, grave, and kindly critics. They are our intellectual physicians, who heal the infirmities of us common men. We submit gladly to their treatment, and learn much by the frequent operations we have to undergo. If the surgeon be rough and his knife sharp, yet he knows better than we, and the smart will make us wiser and more wary, perhaps more real for the time to come. There is, indeed, a constant danger of literary unreality. A great author is reported to have said: "When I want to understand a subject, I write a book about it." Unfortunately, great authors are few, and many books are written by those who do not understand the subject either before or after the fact. The facility of printing has deluged the world with unreal, because shallow, books. Such medical and surgical critics are, therefore, benefactors of the human race.

As to the second class, of those who know just as much as the author they criticise, it would be better for the world that they were fewer or less prompt to judge. The assumption of the critic is that he knows more than his author; and the belief in which we waste our time over their criticisms is that they have something to add to the book. It is dreary work to find, after all, that we have been reading only the book itself in fragments and in another type.

But, lastly, there is a class of critics always ready for anything, the swashbucklers of the Press, who will write at any moment on any subject in newspaper, magazine, or review. Wake them out of their first sleep, and give them something to answer, or to ridicule, or to condemn. It is all one to them. The book itself gives the terminology, and the references, and the quotations, which may be re-quoted with a change of words. We remember two criticisms of the same work in the same week: one laudatory, especially of the facility and accuracy of its classical translations; the other damnatory for its cumbrous and unscholarlike versions. The critic of the black cap was asked by a classical friend whether he had read the book. He said, "No, I smelt it." This unworshipful company of critics is formidable for their numbers, their vocabulary, and their anonymous existence. Their dwelling is not known; but we imagine that it may be not far from Lord Bacon's House of Wisdom, the inmates of which, when they "come forth, lift their hand in the attitude of benediction with the look of those that pity men."

Henry Edward, Cardinal Archbishop, in Merry England.

The Celts of South America.

The exiles of Erin wandering far from their native land, are always sure to make their presence felt. Their power is well known in the United States; and it is, therefore, gratifying to note the progress which the Irish race is making amongst the people of South America, and especially in the Argentine Republic. To our countrymen is mainly due the development of the sheep-farming industry, which is carried on to a greater extent than in this country or Australia. Many of them number their acres by thousands and their flocks by hundreds of thousands. And the pleasure which the knowledge of this prosperity gives us is exceedingly increased by the many evidences in which we observe that National spirit and feeling is strong, active and energetic amongst them. In their educational institutions, and notably in Holy Cross College at Buenos Ayres, the study of Irish history is made a special and prominent subject of attention. In the capital, too, an Irish Orphanage has been established, where, under the kindly care of Father Fitzgerald, the children of the dead Irish exiles are lovingly tended and preserved from contaminating influences. In the breasts of the Irishmen of the River Platte there is love for the Old Land as warm and generous as can be found in the green and fertile plains of Meath or Tipperary. There are young men born in this country of Irish parents who are deeply read in Irish history, and who follow with loving anxiety the progress Ireland is making on the road to liberty. There are nearly a quarter of a million of Irishmen in the Argentine Republic, and they may always be relied on to aid their kindred in the Old Land. The chain of Irish loyalty to Ireland is complete around the world.

The Parisians, with that fine appreciation of the fitness of things for which they have always been famous, have changed the adjective chic, by which they used to describe the attributes of the "dude" (male or female), for the more expressive one bécarre. As the latter word is usually interpreted "natural," it would seem that our French cousins, in their estimate of the "dude" species, agree with the Irish, who, disliking to apply the epithet "fool" to any one, invariably designate a silly person as a "natural."

ENCYCLICAL[5]
(Quod Auctoritate)
PROCLAIMING AN EXTRAORDINARY JUBILEE.

To Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops and other Ordinaries of places having Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See,

POPE LEO XIII.

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

What we have twice already by Apostolic authority decreed, that an extraordinary year of jubilee should be observed in the whole Christian world, opening for general welfare those heavenly treasures which it is in our power to dispense, we are pleased to decree likewise, with God's blessing, for the coming year. The usefulness of this action you, Venerable Brethren, cannot fail to understand, well aware as you are of the moral condition of our times: but there is a special reason rendering this design more seasonable perhaps than on other occasions. For having in a previous encyclical taught how much it is to the interest of States that they should conform more closely to Christian truth and a Christian character, it can readily be understood how suitable to this very purpose of ours it is to use what means we can to urge men to, or recall them to, the practice of Christian virtues. For the State is what the morals of the people make it: and as the goodness of a ship or a building depends on the goodness of its parts and their proper union, each in its own place, similarly the course of government cannot be rightful or free from obstacles unless the citizens lead righteous lives. Civil discipline and all those things in which public action consists, originate and perish through individuals: they impress on these things the stamp of their opinions and their morals. In order, therefore, that minds may be thoroughly imbued with those precepts of ours, and, above all, that the daily life of the individual be ruled accordingly, efforts must be made to the end that each one shall apply himself to the attainment of Christian wisdom, and also of Christian action not less publicly than privately.

And in this matter efforts must be increased in proportion to the greater number of dangers that threaten on every side. For the great virtues of our fathers have declined in no small part: passions that have of themselves very great force have through license striven to still greater: unsound opinions entirely unrestrained or insufficiently restrained are becoming daily more widespread: among those who hold correct sentiments there are many, who, deterred by an unreasonable shame, do not dare to profess freely what they believe, and much less to carry it out: most wretched examples have exercised an influence on popular morals here and there: sinful societies, which we ourselves have already designated, that are most proficient in criminal artifices, strive to impose on the people and to withdraw and alienate as many as possible from God, from sacred duties, from Christian faith.

Under the pressure of so many evils, whose very length of duration makes them greater, we must not omit anything that affords any hope of relief. With this design and this hope, we are about to proclaim a sacred Jubilee, admonishing and exhorting all who have their salvation at heart to collect themselves for a little while and turn to better things their thoughts that now are sunken in the earth. And this will be salutary not only to private persons but to the whole commonwealth, for the reason that as much as any person singly advances in perfection of mind, so much of an increase of virtue will be given to public life and morals.

But the desired result depends, as you see, Venerable Brethren, in great measure on your work and diligence, since the people must be suitably and carefully prepared in order that they may receive the fruits intended. It will pertain, therefore, to your charity and wisdom to give to priests selected for the purpose the charge of instructing the people by pious discourses suited to common capacity, and especially of exhorting to penance, which is, according to St. Augustine, "The daily punishment of the good and humble of the faithful in which we strike our breasts, saying: forgive us our trespasses." (Epist. 108.) Not without reason we mention, in the first place, penance and what is a part of it, the voluntary chastisement of the body. For you know the custom of the world: it is the choice of many to lead a life of effeminacy, to do nothing demanding fortitude and true courage. They fall into much other wretchedness, and often fashion reasons why they should not obey the salutary laws of the Church, thinking that a greater burden has been imposed on them than can be borne, when they are commanded to abstain from a certain kind of food, or to observe a fast on a few days of the year. Enervated by such mode of life, it is not to be wondered at that they by degrees give themselves up entirely to passions that call for greater indulgence still. It is proper, therefore, to recall to temperance those who have fallen into or are inclined to effeminacy; and for this reason those who are to address the people must carefully and minutely teach them what is a command not only of the law of the gospel but of natural reason as well, that every one ought to exercise self-control and hold his passions in subjection; that sins are not expiated except by penance. And that this virtue may be of enduring character, it will not be an unsuitable provision to place it as it were in the trust and keeping of an institution having a permanent character. You readily understand, Venerable Brethren, to what we refer; namely, to your perseverance—each in his own diocese—in protecting and extending the Third, or secular, Order of St. Francis. Surely, to preserve and foster the spirit of penance among Christians, there will be great aid in the examples and favor of the Patriarch Francis of Assisi, who to the greatest innocence of life joined a studious chastisement of himself so that he seemed to bear the image of Jesus Christ crucified not less in his life and customs than in the signs that were divinely impressed upon him. The laws of that order, which have been by us suitably tempered, are very easily observed; their importance to Christian virtue is by no means slight.

Secondly, in so great private and public needs, since the whole hope of salvation lies in the favor and keeping of our Heavenly Father, we greatly wish the revival of a constant and confiding habit of prayer. In every great crisis of the Christian commonwealth, whenever it happened to the Church to be pressed by external or internal dangers, our ancestors raising suppliant eyes to Heaven have signally taught in what way and from whence were to be sought strong virtue and suitable aid. Minds were thoroughly imbued with those precepts of Jesus Christ, "Ask and it shall be given you;" (Matt. vii. 7.) "We ought always to pray and to fail not." (Luke xviii. 1.) Consonant with this is the voice of the Apostles, "pray without ceasing;" (1 Thessal. v. 17.) "I desire, therefore, first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men." (1 Tim. ii. 1.) On this point John Chrysostom has left us, with not less acuteness than truth, the following comparison: as to man, when he comes naked and needing everything in the world, nature has given hands by the aid of which to procure what is necessary for life, so in those things that are above nature, since of himself he can do nothing, God has bestowed on him the faculty of prayer by the wise use of which he may easily obtain all that is required for salvation. And in these matters let all of you determine, Venerable Brethren, how pleasing and satisfactory to us is the care you have, with our initiative, taken to promote the devotion of the Holy Rosary, especially in these recent years. Nor can we pass over in silence the general piety awakened in the people nearly everywhere in that matter: nevertheless the greatest care is to be taken that this devotion be made still more ardent and lasting. If we continue to urge this, as we have more than once done already, none of you will be surprised, understanding as you do of how much moment it is that the practice of the Rosary of Mary should flourish among Christians, and knowing well, as you do, that it is a very beautiful form and part of that very spirit of prayer of which we speak, and that it is suitable to the times, easily practiced, and of most abundant usefulness.

But since the first and chief fruit of a Jubilee, as we have above pointed out, ought to be amendment of life and an increase of virtue, we consider especially necessary the avoidance of that evil which we have not failed to designate in previous Encyclical letters. We mean the internal and nearly domestic dissensions of some of our own, which dissolve, or certainly relax, the bond of charity, with an almost inexpressible harm. We have here mentioned this matter again to you, Venerable Brethren, guardians of ecclesiastical discipline and mutual charity, because we wish your watchfulness and authority continually applied to the abolition of this grave disadvantage. Admonishing, exhorting, reproving, work to the end that all be "solicitous to preserve unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," and that those may return to duty who are the cause of dissension, keeping in mind in every step of life that the only-begotten Son of God at the very approach of his supreme agonies sought nothing more ardently from his Father than that those should love one another who believed or were to believe in him, "that they all may be one as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." (John xvii. 21.)

Therefore trusting in the mercy of Almighty God and the authority of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, of that power of binding and loosing which the Lord has conferred on us though unworthy, we grant to each and every one of the faithful of both sexes a plenary indulgence according to the manner of a general Jubilee, on the condition and law that within the space of the next year, 1886, they shall do the things that are written further on.

All those residing in Rome, or visiting the city, shall go twice to the Lateran, Vatican and Liberian Basilicas, and shall therein for awhile pour out pious prayers for the prosperity and exaltation of the Catholic Church and the Apostolic See, for the extirpation of heresies and the conversion of all the erring, for concord of Christian Princes, and the peace and unity of the whole people of the faith, according to our intention. They shall fast, using only fasting food (cibis esurialibus), two days outside of those not comprehended in the Lenten indult, and outside of other days consecrated by precept of the Church to a similar strict fast; besides they shall, having rightly confessed their sins, receive the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and shall according to their means, using the advice of the confessor, make an offering to some pious work pertaining to the propagation and increase of the Catholic Faith. Let it be free to every one to choose what pious work he may prefer; we think it well however to designate two specially, on which beneficence will be well bestowed, both, in many places, needing resources and aid, both fruitful to the State not less than the Church, namely private schools for children and Clerical Seminaries.

All others living anywhere outside of the city, shall go twice to three churches to be designated by you, Venerable Brethren, or your Vicars or Officials, or with your or their mandate by those exercising care of souls; if there are but two churches in the place, three times; if but one, six times, all within the above-mentioned time; they must perform also the other works mentioned. This indulgence we wish also applicable by way of suffrage to the souls that have departed from this life united to God by charity. We also grant power to you to reduce the number of these visits according to prudent judgment for chapters and congregations, whether secular or regular, sodalities, confraternities, universities, and any other bodies visiting in procession the churches mentioned.

We grant that those on sea, and travellers when they return to their residences, or to any other certain stopping-place, visiting six times the principal church or a parochial church, and performing the other works above prescribed, may gain the same indulgence. To regulars, of both sexes, also those living perpetually in the cloister, and to all other persons, whether lay or ecclesiastic, who by imprisonment, infirmity, or any other just cause are prevented from doing the above works or some of them, we grant that a confessor may commute them into other works of piety, the power being also given of dispensing as to Communion in the case of children not yet admitted to first Communion. Moreover to each and every one of the faithful, whether laymen or ecclesiastics, secular and regular, of whatsoever order and institute, even those to be specially named, we grant the faculty of choosing any confessor, secular or regular, among those actually approved; which faculty may be used also by religious, novices and other women living within the cloister, provided the confessor be one approved for religious. We also give to confessors, on this occasion, and during the time of this Jubilee only, all those faculties which we bestowed in our letters Apostolic Pontifices maximi dated February 15, 1879, all those things excepted which are excepted in the same letters.

For the rest let all take care to obtain merit with the great Mother of God by special homage and devotion during this time. For we wish this sacred Jubilee to be under the patronage of the Holy Virgin of the Rosary, and with her aid we trust that there shall be not a few whose souls shall obtain remission of sin and expiation, and be by faith, piety, justice, renewed not only to hope of eternal salvation, but also to presage of a more peaceful age.

Auspicious of these heavenly benefits, and in witness of our paternal benevolence, we affectionately in the Lord impart to you, and the clergy and people intrusted to your fidelity and vigilance, the Apostolic Benediction.

Given at Rome at St. Peter's the 22d day of December, 1885, of Our Pontificate the Eighth year.

LEO PP. XIII.

A Gallant Soldier Rewarded.—The friends of Colonel John G. Healy, of New Haven, Conn., especially the Irish National element with which the Colonel has been prominently identified for many years, will be gratified to learn of his appointment to a responsible position at Washington. The newly-elected Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, Colonel Samuel Donelson, of Tennessee, at the instance of his friend, Congressman Mitchell, of New Haven, has appointed Colonel Healy to the position of Superintendent of the Folding Room of the House of Representatives, a place of more responsibility and consequence than any in the House, except alone that of the Doorkeeper. It is very pleasant to see Tennessee thus extending the hand of fellowship to Connecticut, and we are certain that the citizens of Irish birth and extraction feel grateful to Colonel Donelson and to the popular and able Representative of the Second Congressional District of Connecticut for this recognition of a gentleman who has given the best years of his mature life to every patriotic movement for the land of his fathers.

England and Her Enemies.
A FRENCH VIEW OF PERILS ENCOMPASSING THE GREAT BRITISH EMPIRE.

Are the English so strong, so sure of their power, so thoroughly convinced of their superiority that they can afford to display so much disdain toward a great nation? Truly, the sun does not set on the possessions of the Empress of India, who counts millions of subjects in five parts of the world; but is this necessarily a sign of strength? The power of Charles V. encompassed the world, and we all know what became of his vast empire. But we foresee the objection to this comparison. It is that the power of Charles V. and Philip II. was mined by a secret and almost invisible enemy—an idea, a principle—liberty of conscience—and that Queen Victoria is not menaced by any such enemy. Indeed! But a small fact—the assassination of an Irishman of the most ignoble kind—affords ample food for reflection, and cannot fail to inspire grave doubts regarding the solidity of the British Empire. In spite of all the efforts of the English police, Carey, their unworthy protégé, was tracked, seized, and slain by a secret power. The Government of Queen Victoria, with all its resources, was not able to find a corner of the globe, however remote, where the life of the informer could be beyond the reach of the Irish counter-police.

The thing that renders this secret power so dreadful is that it exists wherever the Empress of India has subjects. In every English city, in every English colony, at the Cape, in Australia, in Canada as in India, in China as in America, in France as in Japan, wherever a British tourist travels, wherever an English missionary preaches, wherever an English merchant trades, the secret Irish enemy lurks ready to assassinate if he receives the order. The English may laugh at him or may become exasperated by him; but if England should become engaged in a foreign war could she consider without a shudder the incalculable dangers to which this enemy within might expose her—an enemy that will stop at nothing, that nothing can terrify, for he offers his life as a sacrifice, and that nothing can reconcile, for he is the personification of deadly hatred? For our part we know well that if France held within her borders millions, or even thousands, of men animated by such a spirit we would tremble for the future of our country.

But besides this irreconcilable Ireland that is everywhere, that sits in Parliament and there makes and unmakes majorities, and consequently cabinets, and that would betray the nation, if it saw fit, even in the centre of the national representation, it seems to us that the Australian colonies also are likely one day to take a notion to become independent; that the colonies in Southern Africa are rapidly becoming disaffected; that the inhabitants of India are demanding autonomy in a tone that would become very menacing if Russia should come nearer to Cabul—and she is plainly enough moving in that direction; and that Egypt is beginning to get restless and to show herself a little ungrateful, as if she cannot clearly understand the utterly disinterested intentions of Lord Dufferin. What would England do if upon two or three of these territories revolts should come simultaneously? The thing may be improbable, but not impossible. And what would England do if, taking advantage of these revolts, a great European power should declare war against her? What would she have done in 1857 if Russia had been in a position to give assistance to Nana Saïb? Such things have been seen in history.

To face such dangers—the danger of war, the danger of revolt, the danger of conspiracy—a large army composed of the most steadfast troops would be necessary. Where can England get that army? Her present forces are hardly sufficient in time of peace. She finds it impossible to retain the old soldiers in her service. A sufficient number of recruits cannot be obtained to fill up the gaps, and it appears to be impossible to stop the desertions that are constantly thinning the ranks. In vain the pay of the soldier is raised. The English workman refuses to enlist. It is, then, to the Irishman that recourse must be had. Trust that Irishman!

The British Government is unable to raise an army of more than three hundred thousand men, counting the Indian troops, whose fidelity is, perhaps, not beyond all suspicion; and three hundred thousand soldiers to defend an empire the most populous and the most widely scattered that has ever been seen on the face of the globe count for very little. Of course, there is the fleet, which is superb. But what could the fleet do against an enemy invading India by land? Of what use was it against the Boers or against Cetywayo? Of what use would it be against even a very inferior fleet that used torpedos as the Russians did on the Danube?

All these things considered, it seems to us that if the English would calmly consider their own situation they would become less arrogant in their international relations. We don't ask any more of them, for we have no desire to obtain from them any service whatsoever. We wish simply to be able to live with them and with their government on terms of courteous politeness.

Republique Française

M. Gounod, when lately at Reims, had been asked by the Archbishop to compose a Mass in honor of Joan of Arc. Some further details have since reached us as to the offer and acceptance of the happy suggestion. M. Gounod declared that he would compose within the year not a Mass, but a cantata on the life and martyrdom of the Maid of Orleans, the words to be drawn from Holy Scripture. He said, moreover, that his hope would be to return to Reims and to compose the music—the spirituality, tenderness, and animation of which all lovers of Gounod will seem to feel in advance—in the cathedral itself and close to the altar where the blessed and miraculous young creature knelt in tears to offer her victory to God.

Ireland: A Retrospect.

In the early days of the Land League, the cry throughout Ireland was for compulsory sale of the landlords' interest to the State at twenty years' purchase of the valuation, the occupiers to become tenants of the government for a fixed number of years until their yearly payments had cleared off both the principal and interest of the sum advanced to the landlords. Famine had made its appearance in many parts of the country, and the peasantry would be glad to be rid of the incubus of landlordism at any cost. The landlords scoffed at the proposal, and it was well for the tenants that they did not accept it. Foreign competition was but then in its infancy, and the prices of agricultural produce were not going down by leaps and bounds as they have been in 1884 and 1885. The yearly instalments the tenantry would have to pay to the State could not be met out of the produce of the land at present prices, if twenty years' purchase of Griffith's valuation had been accepted by the landlords. At the present time the majority of tenants in Ireland (and perhaps in England), taking into consideration the depression in agriculture, and the probable higher taxation of land in the near future, would think fifteen years' purchase too much for the fee simple of the land. It is pretty certain that when the land question comes to be finally settled, very few Irish landlords' interests can realize more than fifteen years' purchase on the valuation. In 1880, they were, with few exceptions, blind to the changes going on at their very doors, and struck out for their old rack-rents by threats of eviction and law proceedings. Instead of meeting their tenantry half way, they set the crow-bar brigade to work, and the numbers evicted were so appalling, that Mr. Parnell's party prevailed on the late government to pass through the Commons the Compensation for Disturbance Act, the result of which would be to suspend all evictions until a Land Bill was passed. But the landlords got their friends in the House of Lords to throw out the bill, and kept on impressing on the late government the necessity for coercion. The effect of the action of the Lords was stupefying on the middle classes, who saw that the last chance of a peaceable settlement was gone, and the half-starved peasantry were stung to madness at the thought of the revival of the eviction scenes of 1847 and 1848. Then sprung up a crop of outrages which became systematic where they had been isolated, and the agrarian war was really upon us.

The landlords proceeded with their evictions, and the peasantry retaliated by outrage until the Liberal government, having failed to pass their ameliorative measure, was forced to have recourse to coercion. The first Coercion Act of the Liberals was passed before the Land Bill, and thus Ireland was whipped first and caudled afterwards. Mr. Forster "ran in" his twelve hundred Suspects, and the result was an increased crop of outrages, and that the Invincibles lay in wait twenty times to murder him. The Suspects were generally the more respectable of the middle classes in the villages and towns—men whose interest it was to check outrage—who were marked down by the finger of landlordism as sympathizers with their brethren on the land. Then came the suppression of the Land League (1881), and the retaliating No-Rent Manifesto, which was not generally obeyed—chiefly through the influence of religion. There was suppressed anger and hatred of the ruling class throughout the land, and the people would not assist the police (who attacked their meetings and bludgeoned or stabbed them into submission) in tracking murderers or incendiaries. All this time the landlords kept on evicting, and calling through the English Press for still sterner repression of the right of public meeting, and the result was that secret societies multiplied and flourished. Religious influences could cope with a No-Rent Manifesto, but were almost powerless in grappling with secret societies. If the late Cardinal McCabe denounced them in the Cathedral, a large portion of the congregation rose up ostentatiously and withdrew. The voices of the national leaders who had restrained the people were gagged—Davitt in Portland, Parnell in Kilmainham. Things were going from bad to worse; the tension of public feelings was growing tighter day by day; the landlords were evicting apace and gloating over their victims, and saw not that such a state of siege could not last forever. And it appears Mr. Forster was so infatuated as to believe that it needed only a few months more of his stern rule to break the spirit of the Irish people. A glimmering of the true state of affairs had, however, begun to dawn upon his colleagues, and Mr. Forster succumbed at last to the incessant attacks of the remnant of the Nationalist members, who did not give him a chance of depriving them of their liberty by setting foot in Ireland, and to the vigorous criticism of the Pall Mall Gazette.

The Suspects were released and there was joy throughout Ireland. People began to breath freely once more; for the reign of landlord terror and peasant outrage seemed to draw near its close. The Land Act of 1880 had begun to inspire the tenantry with hope, especially as the first decisions of the commissioners gave sweeping reductions off the rents hitherto paid. In May, 1882, things were looking brighter. It seemed as if the Liberals had repented them of coercion, and that conciliation was to be tried in Ireland. But the Invincibles, for whose creation Mr. Forster's regime seems to be especially responsible, were not to be placated so easily. The Phœnix Park butchery had already been planned, and it was carried out with fiendish determination. The civilized world was horror stricken. The cup of peace was dashed from the lips of Ireland, and a cry of rage and despair resounded throughout the country. It was heard from pulpit and platform, and echoed through the Press of every shade of opinion. Many good men thought that now England's opportunity for gaining the affections of the Irish people had come at last; that by trusting to the horror of the Irish race for so dastardly a crime, its perpetrators would be brought to the bar of justice, and the victims avenged. But it was not to be so. In England the general public seemed to believe that the Irish were a demon race, who deserved to be chastised with scorpions, and knowing what was the state of the public mind in Ireland after the Phœnix Park assassinations, it would be hard to blame Englishmen for thinking as they did in the face of such an appalling crime. The blood of Lord Fred. Cavendish called aloud for vengeance, and the government passed the Prevention of Crimes Act, the most severe of all the Coercion Statutes.

It was a mistake to treat Ireland as if she sympathized with the Phœnix Park butchery. Under the Crimes Act we had secret inquisitions, informer manufacture by means of enormous bribes, swearing away of the lives of innocent men by wretches, who were the scum of society, jury packing to a degree unknown since 1848, conviction by drunken juries, and even the starting of secret societies by ruffians who were in the pay of the Executive.

The people quickly lapsed into their old indifference as to aiding an executive which used such base means of governing. It mattered little that Earl Spencer's personal character was above suspicion. Under his rule the lives and liberties of honest men were taken away by juries packed with landlords, or their partisans, on the testimony of hired or terrified wretches, who were generally the most guilty of the gangs that were banded together for unlawful purposes during the land war. Earl Spencer ruled by means which must necessarily have involved innocent men in the punishment of the guilty, and his name is the best hated of all the bad viceroys that ever ruled Ireland.

J. H.

Jim Daly's Repentance.

When the story was told to me, I thought it infinitely sad and pathetic. I wish I could tell it as I heard it, but having scant skill as a narrator, I fear I cannot. I can only set down the facts as they happened, and in my halting words they will read, I fear, but baldly and barely; and if in the reading will be found no trace at all of the tears which awoke in me for this little human tragedy, I am sorry, more sorry than I can say, for my want of skill. Indeed, I would need to write of it with a pen steeped in tears. It is the story of a hard and futile repentance,—futile, in that amends could never be made to those who had been sinned against; but surely, surely not futile, inasmuch as no hour of human pain is ever wasted that is laid before our Lord, but rather is gathered by Him in His pitiful hands, to be given back one day as a harvest of joy.

"Whisht, achora, whisht! sure I know you never meant to hurt me or the child." The woman, childishly young and slight, who spoke was half sitting, half lying in a low rush-bottomed chair, in the poor kitchen of a small Irish farmhouse. Her small, pretty face was marked with premature lines of pain and care, and now it was paler than usual, for across eyebrow and cheek extended a livid, dark bruise, as if from a blow of a heavy fist, and over the pathetic, drooping mouth there was a cruel, jagged cut, this evidently caused by a fall against something with a sharp, projecting point. By her side, in a wattled cradle, lay a puny, small baby, about a year old, with its small blue fingers, claw-like in their leanness, clutched closely, and with such a gray shade over its pinched features that one might have thought it dying. The young husband and father was cast down in an attitude bespeaking utter abasement at his wife's knees, and his face was hidden in her lap; but over the nut-brown hair her thin hands went softly, with caressing tender strokings, and as the great heart-breaking sobs burst from him the tears rolled one after another down her wan little face, while her low, soft voice went on tenderly, "Whisht, alanna machree, whisht! sure it's breakin' my heart ye are! Sure, how can I bear at all, at all, to listen to ye sobbin' like that?"

All the weary months of unkindness and neglect were forgotten, and she only remembered that her Jim was in sore trouble—Jim Daly that courted her, her husband, and her baby's father; not Jim Daly the good fellow at the public-house, always ready to take a treat or stand one; always the first in every scheme of conviviality, drowning heart and mind and conscience in cheap and bad whisky; while at home, on the little hillside farm, crops were rotting, haggard lying empty, land untilled, and poverty and hunger threatening the little home, and day after day the meek, uncomplaining young wife was growing thinner and paler, and the lines deepening in her face where no lines should be. Three years had gone by since the wedding-day that seemed but the gate of a happy future for those two young things who loved each other truly, and almost since that wedding-day Jim Daly had been going steadily downhill. Not that he was vicious at all; he was only young and gay and good-natured, and so sought after for those things, and he had a fine baritone voice that could roll out "Colleen dhas cruitheen na mo" with rare power and tenderness, and when the rare spirits who held their merry-makings in the Widow Doolan's public-house nightly would come seeking to draw him thither with many flattering words, he was not strong enough to resist the temptation; and the young wife—they were the merest boy and girl—was too gentle in her clinging love to stay him. So things had gone steadily from bad to worse, and instead of only the nights, much of the days as well were spent in the gin-shop, and at last the time came when people began to shake their heads over bonny Jim Daly as a confirmed drunkard, and the handsome boyish face was getting a sodden look, and the once frank, clear eyes refused to look at one either frankly or clearly, but shuffled from under a friend's gaze uneasily and painfully. Last night, however, the climax had come when, reeling home after midnight, the tender little wife, with her baby on her breast, had opened the door for him, and had stood in the door-way with some word of pain on her lips, and he feeling his progress barred, but with no sense of what stood there, had struck out fiercely with his great fist, and stricken wife and child to the ground. And Winnie's mouth had come with cruel force against a projecting corner of the dresser, and his hand had marked darkly her soft face, and she and the little son were both bruised and injured by the fall. We have seen how bitter poor Jim's repentance was when he came to himself out of his drunken sleep, and in presence of it his wife, womanlike, forgot everything but that he needed her utmost love and tenderness. But if she was forbearing to him out of her great love, his little brown old mother, who had been sent for hastily to her farm two miles away, spared not at all to give him what she called the rough side of her tongue; and when the doctor came from his home across the blue mountains, and shook his head ominously over the baby, and dressing Winnie's wan face, said that the blow on the forehead by just missing the temple had escaped being a deathblow, the old woman's horror and indignation against her son were great. But the doctor had gone now, with a kindly word of cheer at parting to the poor sinner, and with an expressed hope of pulling the baby through by careful attention and nursing. These it was sure to have, because Jim Daly's mother was the best nurse in all fair Tipperary, and, despite the very rough side to her tongue on occasion, the gentlest and most kind-hearted.

These two were alone now, and the room was quite silent except for the man's occasional great sobs, and the low, sweet, comforting voice of the woman.

Presently the door opened again, this time to admit a priest, a hale, ruddy-faced man of fifty or so, spurred and gaitered as if for riding, who, coming to them quickly, with a keen look of concern and pain in his clear eyes, and drawing a chair closer, laid one large hand on Jim's bent head, while the other went out warmly to take Winnie's little, cold fingers. "My poor, poor children!" he said, and under that true, loving pity Winnie's tears began to flow anew. He was sorely troubled for these; he had baptized them, had admitted both to the Sacraments, had joined their hands in marriage, and he had tried vainly to stop this poor boy's easy descent to evil; and now it had ended so. In the new silence he was praying rapidly and softly, asking his Lord to make this a means of bringing back the strayed lamb to His fold. Then he spoke again:—

"Look up, Jim, my child; you needn't tell me anything about it, I know all. Look up, and tell me you are going to begin a new life; that you are going with me now to the altar of God, to kneel there and ask His forgiveness, and to promise Him that you will never again touch the poison that has so nearly made you the murderer of your wife and child. It is His great mercy that both are spared to you to-day, and the doctor tells me that he hopes to bring the baby through safely, so you must cheer up. And it will be a new life, will it not, my poor boy, from this day, with God's good help."

And so Jim lifted his head, and said brokenly:—

"God bless you, father, for the kindly word. Yis, I'm comin' back to my duty with His help, and I thank Him this day, and His blessed Mother, and blessed St. Patrick, that they held my hand. Oh, sure, father, to think of me layin' a hand on my purty colleen that I love better nor my life, and the little weany child that laughed up in my face with his two blue eyes, and crowed for me to lift him out of his cradle! But with the help of God, I'm going to make up to them for it wan day. But, father, I won't stay here where my family was always respectable and held up their heads, to have it thrown into my face every day that I had nigh murdered my wife and child. Sure I could never rise under such a shame as that. Give me your blessin', father, for me and Winnie has settled it. I'm goin' to Australia to begin a new life, and the mother's snug, and'll keep Winnie and the child till I send for them, or make money enough to come for them."

The priest looked at him gravely, and pondered a few minutes before his reply.

"Well, I don't know but you're right. God enlighten you to do what is for the best. It will be a complete breaking of the old evil ties and fascinations, at all events, and, as you say, the mother'll be glad to have Winnie and her grandson."

And a week later, wife and child being on the high road to convalescence, Jim Daly sailed for Australia.

This was in February, and outside the little golden-thatched farmhouse the birds were calling to one another, wildly, clearly, making believe, the little mad mummers—because spring was riotous in their blood—that each was not quite visible to the other under his canopy of interlaced boughs, bare against the sky, but that rather it was June, and the close, leafy bowers let through only a little blue sky, and a breath of happy wind, and a blent radiance of gold and green, and that so they must perforce signal to each other their whereabouts. Some in the thatch were nest-building, but these little merry drones were swaying to and fro on the bare boughs, delirious with the new delight that had come to them, for spring was here, and there was a subtle fragrance of her breath on the air; and all over the land, for the sound of her feet passing, there was a strange stirring of unborn things somewhere out of sight, and where she had trodden were springing suddenly rings and clusters of faint snowdrops, and tender, flame-colored crocuses, and double garden primroses, and the dear, red-brown velvet of the wall-flowers lovely against the dark leaves.

February again—but now far away from the mountain-side. In the city, where no sweet premonition of spring comes with those first days of her reign, and in the slums that crouch miserably about the stately cathedral of St. Patrick's, huddling squalidly around its feet, while the lovely tower of it soars far away into the blue heart of the sky. It is a blue sky—as blue as it can be over any spreading range of solemn hills, for poor Dublin has few tall factory chimneys to defile it with smoke—and there are little feathery wisps of white cloud on the blue, that lie quite calm and motionless, despite the fact a bright west wind is flying.

It is so warm that the window of one room in one of the most squalid tenement houses of the Coombe is a little open, and the wind steals in softly, and sways to and fro the clean, white curtains; for this room is poor, but not squalid and grimed as the others are. The two small beds are covered with spotlessly white quilts, and the wooden dresser behind the door is spotless, with its few household utensils shining in the leaping firelight; and opposite the window is a small altar, carefully and neatly tended, whereon are two pretty statuettes of the Sacred Heart and our Blessed Lady, and at the foot of these, no gaudy, artificial flowers, but a snowdrop or two and a yellow crocus, laid lovingly in a wineglass of water.

It is all very clean and pure, but, alas! it is a very sad room now, despite all that, because—oh, surely the very saddest thing in all the sad world! there is a little child dying there in its mother's arms. And the mother is poor little Winnie Daly, far from kindly Tipperary and the good priest, and the pleasant neighbors who would have been neighborly to her, and here, in the cruel city, she is watching her one little son die. He is lying on his small bed, with his eyes closed—a little, pretty, fair boy of seven—his breath coming very faintly, and the golden curls, dank with the death-dew, pushed restlessly off his forehead, and the two gentle little hands crossed meekly on each other on his breast. His mother, her face almost as deathly in its pallor and emaciation as his, is kneeling by the bed, her yellow hair wandering over the pillow, her head bent low beside his, and her eyes drinking thirstily every change that passes over the small face, where the gray shadows are growing grayer. They have lain so for a long time, with no movement disturbing the solemn silence, except once, when her hand goes out tenderly to gather into it the little, cold, damp one. But she is not alone in her agony. Two Sisters of Mercy, in their black serge robes, are kneeling each side of the bed, and their sad, clear eyes are very tender and watchful; they will be ready with help the moment it is needed, but now the great beads of the brown rosary at each one's girdle are dropping noiselessly through the white fingers, and their lips are moving in prayer. One is strangely beautiful, with a stately, imperial beauty; but it is etherealized, spiritualized to an unearthly degree, and the flowing serge robes throw out that noble face into fairer relief than could any empress's purple and gold brocade. Both women are wonderfully sweet-faced: these nuns are always so pitying and tender, because their daily and hourly contact with human pain and sin and misery must keep, I think, the warm human sympathies in them alive and throbbing always. Now there is a faint movement over the child's face and limbs, and the tall, beautiful nun rises quickly, because, well-skilled in death-bed lore, she sees that the end cannot be very far off. His eyes open slowly, and wander a little at first; then they come back to rest on his mother's face, and raising one small hand with difficulty he touches her thin cheek caressingly, and then his hand falls again, and he says weakly, "Mammy, lift me up."

"Yes, my lamb," poor Winnie answers brokenly, gathering him up in her arms and laying the little golden head on her breast. He closes his eyes again for a minute, then reopens them, and his gaze wanders around the room as if seeking something, and one of the nuns, understanding, goes gently and brings the few spring flowers to the bedside; this morning tender Sister Columba had carried them to him, knowing what a wonder and happiness flowers always were to the little crippled child,—for Jim's little lad was crippled from that fall in his babyhood. He lies contentedly a moment, and then says weakly, the words dropping with painful pauses between each,—

"Mammy, will there—be green fields in heaven—an' primroses—an' will I be able—to run then? I wouldn't go to Crumlin last summer—with the boys—'kase I was lame—but they got primroses—an' gev me some."

And it is the nun who answers, for the mother's agonized white lips only stir dumbly: "Yes, Jimmy, darling little child, there will be green fields in heaven, and primroses, and you will run and sing; and our dear Lord will be there and His Blessed Mother, and He will smile to see you playing about His feet."

Then she lifts the great crucifix of her rosary, and lays it for a moment against the wan baby lips that smile gently at her, and the white eyelids fall over the pansy eyes, and gradually the soft sleep passes imperceptibly and painlessly into death. And one nun takes him out of his mother's arms, and lays him down softly on the pillows and smooths the little fair limbs, and passes a loving hand over the transparent eyelids; and the other nun gathers poor Winnie into her tender arms, with sweet comforting words that will surely help her by and by, but now are unheeded, because God has mercifully given her a short insensibility. And the nun turns to the other, with a little soft fluttering sigh stirring her wistful mouth, and says, "Poor darling! the separation will not be for long. Our dear Lord will very soon lay her baby once more in her arms."

A fortnight later a bronzed and bearded man landed on the quay of Dublin. It was Jim Daly—a new, grave, strong Jim Daly, coming home now comparatively a wealthy man, with the money earned by steady industry, in the gold-fields. There he had worked steadily for three years, with always the object coloring his life of atoning for the past, and making fair the future to wife and child and mother, and the object had been strong enough to keep him apart from the sin and riotousness and drunkenness of the camp. He would have been persuasive-tongued, indeed, among the wild livers who could have persuaded Jim Daly to join in a carousal. But the worst living among the diggers knew how to come to him for help and advice when they needed it; and many a gentle, kindly act was done by him in his quiet unobtrusive manner, with no consciousness in his own mind that he was doing more than any other man would have done.

He had never written home in all those years, though the thought of those beloved ones was always with him—at getting up and lying down, in his dreams and during the hours of the working day. At first times were hard with him, and for three years it was a dreary struggle for existence; and he could not bear to write while every day his feet were slipping backward. Then came the rush to the gold-fields, and he, coming on a lucky vein, found himself steadily making "a pile," and so determined that when a certain sum was amassed he would turn his steps homeward; and because postal arrangements in those days were so precarious, and the time occupied by the transit of a letter so long, he had then given up the thought of writing at all, watching eagerly the days drifting by that were bringing him each day nearer home. In his wandering life no letter had ever reached him; but he never doubted that they were all quite safe; in that little peaceful hillside village, and cluster of farmsteads, life passed so innocently and safely; the people were poor, but the landlord was lenient, and they managed to pay the rent he asked without the starvation and misery that existed on other estates; and apart from the pain and destitution and sin of the towns, the little colony seemed also to be exempt from their diseases, and the little graveyard was long in filling up; the funerals were seldom, unless when sometimes an old man or woman, come to a patriarchal age, went out gladly to lay their weary old bones under the long grasses and the green sorrel and the daisy stars.

This had all been in his day, and he did not know at all how things had changed. First, after he sailed, things had gone fairly; Winnie had grown strong again, and even when his silence grew obstinate, no shadow of doubt crossed her mind; she was so sure he loved her, and she knew he would come back some day to her. The first cloud on the sky came when the baby developed some disease of the hip, the result of the fall, and it refused to yield to all the doctor's treatment; indeed it became worse with time, and as the years slipped by, the ailing, puny babe grew into a delicate, gentle child, fair and wise and grave, but crippled hopelessly. Then, the fourth year after Jim went, there came a bad season, crops failed, and the cow died; and then, fast on those troubles, the kind old landlord died, and his place was taken by a schoolboy at Eton, and, alas! the agency of his estates placed in the hands of a certain J. P. and D. L., tales of whose evictions on the estates already under his charge had made those simple peasants shiver by their firesides in the winter evenings. Then to this peaceful mountain colony came raising of rents like a thunder-clap, followed soon by writs, and then the Sheriff and the dreadful evicting parties. And one of the first to go was old Mrs. Daly; and when she saw the little brown house whereto her young husband, dead those twenty years, had brought her as a bride, where her children were born, and from whose doors one after the other the little frail things, dead at birth, had been carried, till at last her strong, hearty Jim came—when she saw the golden thatch of it given to the flames, the honest, proud old heart broke, and from the house of a kindly neighbor, where neighbor's hands carried her gently, she also went out, a few days later, to join husband and babes in the churchyard house, whence none should seek to evict them. And the troubles thickened, and famine and fever and death came; and then the good priest died too—of a broken heart, they said. And so the last friend was gone—for the people, with pain and death shadowing every hearthstone, were overwhelmed with their own troubles—and poor Winnie and the little crippled son drifted away to the city.

And at the time all those things were happening, Jim Daly used to stand at the door of his tent in the evening, gazing gravely away westward, his soul's eyes fixed on a fairer vision than the camp, or the gorgeous sunset panorama that passed unheeded before the eyes of his body. He saw the long, green grasses in the pastures at home in Inniskeen. And he saw Winnie—his darling colleen—coming from the little house-door with her wooden pail under her arm for the milking, and she was laughing and singing, and her step was light; and by her side the little son, with his cheeks like apples in August, and his violet eyes dancing with pleasure, and the little feet trotting, hurrying, stumbling, and the fat baby hand clutching at the mother's apron, till, with a sudden, tender laugh she swung him in her strong young arms to a throne on her shoulder, wherefrom he shouted so merrily that Cusha, the great gentle white cow, turned about, and ceased for a moment her placid chewing of the cud, to gaze in some alarm at the approaching despoilers of her milk.

Oh, how bitterly sad that dream seems to me, knowing the bitter reality! That in the squalid slums of the city, the girl-wife was setting her feet for death; that the little child, crippled by the father's drunken blow, had never played or run gladly as other children do—never would do these things unless it might be in the wide, green playing-fields of heaven.

I will tell you how he found his wife. It was evening when he landed at the North Wall, and he found then that till morning there was no train to take him home; and with what fierce impatience he thought of the hours of evening and night to be lived through before he could be on his way to his beloved ones, one can imagine. Then he remembered that by a fellow-digger, who parted with him in London, he had been intrusted with a wreath to lay on a certain grave in Glasnevin; and with a certain sense of relief at the prospect of something to be done, he unpacked the wreath from among his belongings on his arrival at the hotel, and, ordering a meal to be ready by his return, he set out for the cemetery.

It was almost dusk when he reached it, and not far from closing-time, and, the wreath deposited, he was making his way to the gate again. Suddenly his attention was caught by a sound of violent coughing, and turning in the direction from which it proceeded, he saw a woman's figure kneeling by a small, poor grave. For the dusk he could hardly see her face, which also was partly turned away from him; but he could see that her hands were pressed tightly on her breast, as if striving to repress the frightful paroxysms which were shaking her from head to foot.

Jim was tender and pitiful to women always, and now with a thought of Winnie—for the figure was slight and girlish-looking—he went over and laid his hand very gently on the woman's shoulder, saying, "Come, poor soul! God help ye; ye must come now, for it's nigh on closin'-time; and, sure, kneelin' on the wet earth in this raw, foggy evenin' is no place for ye, at all, at all."

The coughing had ceased, and as he spoke she looked up at him wildly. Then she gave a great cry that went straight through the man's heart; she sprang up, and, throwing her thin arms round his neck cried out: "Jim, Jim, me own Jim, come back to me again! Oh, thank God, thank God! Jim, Jim, don't you know your own Winnie?" for he was standing stupefied by the suddenness of it all. Then he gathered the poor, worn body into the happy harborage of his arms, and, for a minute, in the joy of the reunion, he did not even think of the strangeness of the place in which he had found her; and mercifully for those first moments the dusk hid from him how deathly was the face his kisses were falling on. Then, suddenly, with a dreadful thunderous shock, he remembered where they were standing, and I think even before he cried out to know whose was the grave, that in his heart he knew.

I cannot tell you how she broke it to him, or in my feeble words speak of this man's dreadful anguish; only I know that with the white mists enfolding them, and the little child lying at their feet, she told him all.

"An', darlin', I'm goin' too," she said, "an' even for the sake of stayin' wid you I can't stay. I'm so tired-like, an' my heart's so empty for the child; an' you'll say 'God's will be done,' won't ye, achora? And when the hawthorn's out in May, bring some of it here; an', Jim darlin', I'll be lyin' here so happy—him an' me, an' his little curly head on my breast, an' his little arms claspin' my neck."

He said, "God's will be done," mechanically, but I think his heart was broken; no other words came from his lips except over and over again, "Wife and child! wife and child! My little crippled son! my little crippled son!"

Katharine Tynan, in League of the Cross.

What English Catholics are Contending for,
AND WHAT AMERICAN CATHOLICS WANT.

Mr. A. Langdale in a letter to the London Daily News puts the Catholic view upon the education question with accuracy and yet with refreshing terseness. "We can accept," he writes, "no compromise, and must have our own Catechism, taught to our own children, in our own schools, by our own masters. We will accept a 'conscience clause,' and open our schools to all comers, and, as a fact, do. We will open our schools to Government inspection, and gladly abide by payments by results. All we desire is a fair field and no favor. One thing we can't and won't do, and that is to suffer our children to receive religious instruction which is not our own, and equally to accept teaching as a system in which religious teaching is not included. Now there are doubtless a great many who think we ought to be contented with unsectarian religious instruction, and some who even utter something of not having any Popery taught. Quite so, and to the end of all time the opinion of some will be opposed to the opinions of others. Well, we say our religion is at stake, and we can accept no less, and it is oppression and tyranny to deprive us of our rights. We pay our taxes, we pay our rates, we even provide our own schools, we educate our own teachers, and subscribe largely to our schools, all under Government approval, and we submit to a conscience clause. All we ask is that our secular teaching shall, under Government inspection, be paid for at the same rate as similar teaching is paid for in any other school. We say this is our first and paramount interest and liberty; to refuse it is persecution. I and thousands more are true Liberals heart and soul, and yet are forced to go as a matter of primary duty and do violence to every wish of one's heart, and support a Tory solely because the Liberal candidate refuses to recognize any Denominational system. It is no Liberty, but a cruel imposition of a religious intolerance."

Ingratitude of France in the Irish Struggle.

Not the least remarkable, though perhaps accountable, feature of the present Anglo-Irish crisis is to be found in the thinly disguised hostility with which our struggle for independence is viewed by the nations of Europe. One might at first be inclined to think that gratitude to the countrymen of those splendid fellows, without whose heads and hands the long series of English triumphs since 1688 over her bitterest foe had ne'er been broken, would have secured for us, if not encouragement, neutrality on the part of France. Not so, however. Spain alone, of European States refuses to take sides against us (Russia, for obvious causes, cannot be regarded as unbiassed); and Spain, as many of us know, claims a kinship with Ireland hardly less strong, if more legendary, than that which exists between America and England. As a matter of fact, our precious "sister" has been plying the hose with exceptional success. She has so saturated and stunned the Continental public with the thick stream of falsehood about Ireland and her people that the poor creature, half befuddled by the whole business, commits itself to approval of an act which calm reflection might convince it was indefensible. This gullible public has been taught by England to believe that we are a race of treacherous and incorrigible savages, ignorant of and indifferent to the common decencies of life; a nation of brawlers and beggars, loafers and drunkards. We are, moreover, in sympathy with those scourges of its own lands, the Communist, the Nihilist, the Socialist. What wonder then, that it should consider the humiliation of England, gratifying though it might be in itself, even a boon too dearly purchased at the price. We think it well that Irishmen should be constantly reminded of the degree in which they are indebted to their neighbor. But in doing so, we deem it of importance to guard ourselves carefully from misconception. Nothing is further from our desires than to keep an old sore running, simply to gratify an unchristian passion for revenge. Quite the contrary. At the same time we hold that in laying bare the hideous malice, the systematic meanness, with which our pious master has smirched the name of Ireland before the eyes of the world, we shall be deservedly rebuking an amiable but spiritless class, whose meek outpourings have become a nuisance. We would advise persons of this class to bear two things in mind. In the first place, that after the cession of an Irish Parliament (yielded, of course, only as the alternative to rebellion), the initiative towards reconciliation must be made by England, which is in the wrong, not by Ireland, that has suffered from the wrong. Secondly, that partnership in business does not necessarily imply either friendship or affection in private. Those who are most strongly opposed in politics and religion often pull well together when there is no help for it, and when they see that to do so is for the promotion of their mutual interests. So may it be with nations; and so, please God, will it be with Ireland and England, until that day when the latter is able to come forward and say to us, "I restore to you your escutcheon, which, trampled and spat upon by me of yore, I have since by my tears washed whiter than the driven snow."

Dublin Freeman's Journal.

O'Connell and Parnell—1835-1886.

"History repeats itself. Fifty years ago English parties found themselves in the presence of difficulties similar to those by which they are confronted to-day. The general election of 1835 left O'Connell master of the situation, as the general election of 1885 leaves Mr. Parnell. Then England returned 212, Ireland 39, and Scotland 13 Tories, making a total of 364 members who were prepared to support the government of Sir Robert Peel. On the other side, England returned 99 Whigs, 189 Radicals and Independents; Scotland, 10 Whigs, 30 Radicals and Independents; Ireland, 22 Whigs, acting mainly with O'Connell, and 44 Repealers, acting directly under him; thus making a total altogether of 349 anti-Ministerialists. But between the members of the Opposition so formed there was no cohesion. O'Connell stood aside from Whigs, Tories and Radicals, awaiting the arrangement of the terms on which his alliance was to be secured. Of the 219 Radicals and Independents elected at the polls only 140 could be relied on to support a Whig administration, and the result was that, so far as England and Scotland were concerned, the Tories had a working majority of 15. Thus: Tories, 264; Whig-Radical Coalition, 249; Tory majority, 15; Irish in reserve, 66. Here was 'an extraordinary state of parties,' to use the language of the Edinburgh Review; 'an awful situation,' to adopt the phraseology of the Times. 'O'Connell would be real Prime Minister,' roared the Thunderer of Printing-House Square, if Whigs and Tories did not loyally unite to put him down. One thing, in the opinion of the Times, was clear—no English party ought to touch 'the Repeal rebel,' 'the unprincipled ruffian,' 'the demon of malignity and anarchy,' in whose hands the people of Ireland had been forced to place the destinies of their wretched country."

The above is from the Dublin Freeman. Catholic emancipation was then the burning question, and O'Connell triumphed. To-day the question is Legislative Independence for Ireland. Will it be a triumph? The struggle of desperation will not, we hope, have to answer.

With true orators success is won by the long-continued work which supplies the hard facts and telling truths for which eloquent words are but the vehicle. Powder, no doubt, is very useful in war; it makes the most noise, but it is the bullets and shells that silence the enemy.—Rev. William Delaney, S. J.

Juvenile Department.