Volume 18 — CHAPTER VI. MARRIAGE BELLS. (continued 3)

Neither need such organizations be restricted, as it were, to any special class. The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, of which the Xavier Alumni Sodality is a branch, may be made to embrace all classes. It was founded in the Roman College of the Society of Jesus, on December 8, 1563, exactly three hundred years prior to the foundation of this promising offshoot in New York. The society has an eventful history. It began in the Jesuit Colleges, and was restricted to the students. It speedily spread thence throughout the world, embracing all ranks from the crowned head to the peasant. One branch took up one good work, another devoted itself to some other. It entered the world, society, the army, everywhere. Popes belonged to it, kings, astute statesmen, great generals, as well as the rank and file, and the humblest craftsmen. Many a saint's name glitters on its scroll. S. Aloysius Gonzaga, S. Stanislaus Kotska, S. Charles Borromeo, S. Francis of Sales, Blessed Berchmans, and many another consecrated in Catholic history, were all members of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So great was the good it wrought that popes have bestowed upon it many rights and privileges. It has had the glory of persecution. Infidel governments suppressed it from time to time, in France particularly, fearing lest it should lead men back to God; for if there is one thing more than another that the devil fears, it is seeing the young go from him wholesale.

Now, this matter is worthy the attention of all Catholics. Enough graduates go out yearly from our colleges, and enough intelligent and zealous Catholic young men are scattered through our great cities and towns, to take this matter up earnestly, and establish Catholic societies of this kind for practical, pious, and sanitary purposes. They might embrace in a short time all the Catholic youth of America. As has been seen, the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary is very elastic in its constitution, though one in its organization and aims; and it may be made to embrace all classes and states of life. It has history, stability, saintly members, and good works innumerable to recommend it. It has been specially blessed and favored by many popes, and it has for its head the Blessed Mother of God, whilst those who enroll themselves in it do so as children of Mary.

Coming back to the opposing forces here at home—Catholicity, Protestantism, and infidelity—we see nothing more powerful to withstand the assault of the latter particularly than Catholic societies of this nature. The social atmosphere to-day is full of insidious poison. The young unconsciously breathe it from their infancy up. The edifice of faith in God was never more persistently assaulted by the united forces of the powers of this world. No persecution of the Roman emperors, unless, perhaps, that of Julian the Apostate, ever threatened the religion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with a tithe of the bitterness and hatred that frown upon it now. Men nowadays do not so much seek out the chiefs of the church, the pontiffs, and the bishops as the little children and the young of all ages. In some cases, as in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil, they add open and violent persecution to its secret and more fatal forms. The great cry of the age—a good and earnest cry—is for education. Educate the masses! Educate all at any cost! That cry is good in itself, and is as old as the church of Christ, and no older. But to it is joined another cry: The church is out of date. It cannot educate. It has failed. It will keep the people ignorant and superstitious. That is just the right state for the priests. We know that of old. The priests in pagan times were just the same. They kept the people blind for their own sakes. But the newspapers have broken all that up. Men who read their daily Herald or their daily Times know a little too much for that nowadays. So out with the priests and their church altogether. We want the children to know how to read, and write, and cipher, and be intelligent. If they want religion, they may find it where they can. But religion is quite a secondary consideration nowadays. It used to be the first thing. That was the great mistake. We must now make it the last.

That is pretty much how the lights of the age—the scientific apostles—talk. Their opinions are re-echoed in the pages of journals which, compared to Christian or Catholic, are as a thousand, nay, ten thousand, to one; so that they are ever before the public eye in one form or other. Consequently, religion is not only thrown out of the school, but, to a great extent, out of the world altogether; nay, if the accounts our Protestant friends give of themselves be true, out of the pulpit also, when preachers preach "a theology without the Theos, and a Christianity without Christ." It is perhaps only natural, then, to find public morality at a sad discount; private morality, on a large scale, a thing ugly to inquire into, and commercial morality broken down before commercial gambling. It is not strange to find the loosest ideas on the marriage tie prevail, and a corresponding disregard of the sanctity of the household and the mutual obligations of husband and wife, of father and child, spreading wider and further every day. It is no wonder to find public amusements, as a rule, unfit to be witnessed by the eye of a decent man or woman. It is not surprising to see well-dressed crowds listening eagerly to brilliant lecturers, who in mellifluous accents and the chastest English, and in evening costume, pleasantly and quietly, and in the best possible taste, laugh away the idea of God and Christianity; and it is no surprise to find the children of those well-dressed crowds growing up and moving about the world, with no sense of Christian morality at all, and at best, to use an ordinary expression, a human sense of what is "square."

Right in the face of this scornful infidelity or shaky faith, it is noble to see the Catholic world, especially the young Catholic world, rising up everywhere to proclaim openly, boldly, and with no hesitation in the tone, its whole-souled faith in the Roman Catholic Church, its tenets, its doctrines, and its practices. Allusion, as will be understood, is made chiefly to the pilgrimages in Europe, and more particularly to the contingent furnished by Protestant England. A pilgrimage, composed of Catholic young men, visited, the other day, the shrine of S. Thomas of Canterbury; another soon after crossed over to France, to visit the shrine of the Sacred Heart at Paray-le-Monial; and doubtless others will follow. We see it advocated in the Catholic press that our young men here do likewise. They would do well; but whether their desire take living form or not, certain it is that in this country they are just as eager to give evidence of their Catholic faith as in any other. And just here, in this proposal to make an American pilgrimage to some of the Catholic shrines in Europe, step in the want and necessity of such Catholic organizations, distinct enough individually, but linked together more or less, and springing from a common centre, to aid effectually in making such a proposal feasible.

Coming back to ourselves, the rising Catholic generation may congratulate itself that it has fallen upon good times. It would be well for it to remember that these good times are the result of the labors of their fathers; and that as they were won by incessant conflict, so they must be retained. The present generation has not so many odds to contend against. That fact is perhaps as much a danger as a benefit. The Catholic generation that is passing away had to suffer more or less a social ostracism. The barriers between class and class are dwindling down; and to-day, on the whole, a Catholic does not find his religion mark him off from his fellow-citizens as a man to be left out in the cold.

That is no doubt very satisfactory. At the same time, however painful may be this kind of social ostracism, certain it is that the class who come under its ban are more apt to be circumspect in their conduct than classes removed from it. To-day the spirit of liberality is abroad; but liberality often means liberalism, which is a very different thing. The order of the day is that it does not matter what you are, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or pagan, provided you only act as everybody else acts. This sudden effusion of brotherly love among all castes and creeds is no doubt very gratifying, and a vast improvement on old-fogy barriers; but, at the same time, it involves often a sacrifice of principle. It is a rank and unhealthy growth, springing from the neutral ground of infidelity, or that unpronounced infidelity known as indifferentism.

Catholics cannot enter the world as non-Catholics. Their religion must be more than a Sunday religion. It cannot be left outside on entering their office, nor in the hall on entering society. It must accompany them everywhere, not aggressively, indeed, so as to be outwardly offensive to the neighbor who does not believe in it, because he does not know it, or because he may not see its effects visible in those who profess to believe in it; its principles must guide them in the transaction of their business, in the amusements or recreation they take, as well as in the confessional or at the altar. Without this, it is no religion. Without this unaggressive, but none the less real, atmosphere of piety, surrounding and emanating from Catholics in the world as well as in the church, the heaviness of the present social atmosphere can never be lifted. It requires a constant current to and fro, and this can only be obtained by the creating of a Catholic influence right in the heart of the world.

This is for our young men to do by their societies and associations; by knowing each other, meeting together, consulting, and creating a tone that will tell sooner or later upon society. Many a fine young fellow is lost for pure lack of a good companion. Many a one spends his evenings in places and amid society that, if not actually sinful, are undoubtedly demoralizing in tendency, because he has no other society or place of amusement to enter. It is too hard upon the young to tell them that they must not follow the way of the world, if no better mode of recreation is provided for them. The blood of youth is coursing through its veins, and the heat will find vent, if not in good, then in evil. It is the place of all true Christians to help and provide that good, by aiding in the work of building up societies, halls, reading-rooms, and libraries for our young people. The blessing will come back upon their own heads in their children, in their children's children, and in the building up of a sound, moral, Christian tone among the young in these days, when it is considered more manly to deny than to inquire; to sneer at all religion than to kneel down and adore the God that made us to his own image. With our young men linked together thus, working together throughout the whole country, showing by deeds, and words, and open profession that they are Catholics, those who to-day, in 1873, wonder at the marvellous growth of the church within the last half-century, if God spares them another half-century, may find their country, if not Catholic, covered, at least, and blest from end to end, with Catholic homes of learning, piety, and charity; whilst the church may respond to the foolish taunt that is flung at her, that her religion is a foreign religion, and her children nursed in foreign ideas, by pointing silently to what her children are—by contrasting her Christian sons with the product and growth of an education with God left out.

FOOTNOTES:

ENGLISH SKETCHES. AN HOUR IN A JAIL.

There is nothing in the exterior of the building to indicate its real character, nor is it in any way calculated to strike terror into the mind of the beholder whose imagination, fed by early prejudices, connects the idea of a jail with gloomy precincts, drawbridges, and armed sentinels pacing before frowning gates. The jail of Reading, the chief town of the royal county of Berks, presents the very antithesis of all this. This is a gay edifice of variegated red brick and white stone, in the style called carpenter's Gothic—a rather appropriate name for the jocular mongrel performance it designates, and which is one of the most surprising hallucinations of the modern architect's mind. The building stands close by the Forbury gardens and at the back of the Catholic church. The delusion as to the character of the place is not dispelled on entering; the uninitiated stranger might, on passing the great door, still fancy himself in some free dwelling, where no abnormal impediments prevented his exit; but crossing the court, he ascends by a flight of steps to a second gate of ominous appearance, and before whose glittering steel bars the spell of liberty dissolves. Within this second gate there is another, equally formidable, which opens into a broad gallery lighted from the roof and crossed by light bridges at intervals, to which you ascend by a steep, ladder-like iron staircase. The second story is occupied by the women prisoners, the lower one by the men.

As few of our readers may have had the opportunity or the curiosity to go through an English jail, perhaps they would like to do so vicariously, as the Shah enjoyed dancing—sitting quietly in his chair, while foolish people fatigued themselves for his entertainment. We were accompanied by a young priest, whose ministry had frequently led him within the steel gates on another errand than curiosity; and, thanks to his friend's (Canon R——) introduction to the governor, we had permission to see every detail of the place. The aspect of the long galleries, with the bright-tiled flooring and white walls glancing in the flood of sunshine flowing from the roof, kept up the first impression of cheerfulness. There was nothing so far to suggest unnecessary rigor or broken spirits, still less cruelty and demoralization. All was airy and exquisitely clean. Warders in official uniforms paced leisurely up and down the corridors and galleries; and though the silence was broken only by their foot-falls and our own voices as we conversed with the warder who acted as our guide, there was no oppressive gloom in the atmosphere. The cells opened on either side of the gallery. They were each lighted by a good-sized window looking on the prison garden and protected by strong iron bars; in one corner was a complete washing apparatus, with a water-pipe over the basin; in another there was a gas-pipe. The furniture consisted of a small table, a stool, and a stretcher-bed, which is rolled up during the day. On a shelf were the prisoner's plate and mug. The Protestants are allowed the use of their Bible and the Common Prayer-Book; the Catholics have the Douay edition of the Bible and The Garden of the Soul; special good conduct is rewarded by the loan of story-books. Some of the cells were ornamented with prints from the Graphic and the Illustrated London News. A man with a good conscience and sound health might live comfortably in one of these cells.

The Reading jail is worked entirely on the isolated system, each prisoner being virtually as much alone amidst two hundred fellow-captives as if he were the only inmate. It is urged against this system that it frequently leads to madness, total solitude being the most cruel form of punishment, and the one against which the human mind is, by its very essence, least calculated to bear up. But the theory applies in its chief force to solitary confinement, where the sound of the human voice and the sight of his fellow-creature's face never intrude upon the tomblike silence of the dungeon; where complete inaction of the body feeds the despondency of the imagination dwelling on the one fixed idea of an interminable perspective of silence and solitude. In the case of short periods of incarceration, the separate system must be regarded as an immense improvement on the old gregarious one. It prevents the spread of vice, and protects the comparatively innocent subject from being utterly corrupted by the hardened sinner. In France, where the gregarious system is in full force, its effect is too plainly visible in the most deplorable results. A youth or a girl goes in a mere novice in iniquity, and, after a short sojourn in the midst of the offscourings of society, comes out utterly depraved. Nowhere is this truth more lamentably apparent than in those cases that come under the head of prison préventive, where any suspected person, on the smallest amount of evidence, is thrown into these social sloughs for weeks, nay, months sometimes, and held in hourly contact with thieves, forgers, burglars, and every species of offender. Strong indeed must be the principles, and pure the heart, that come out unshaken and unsullied from such an ordeal.

The men were at work on the day when we arrived at the jail, so we saw the penal system in full operation. The mildest form of hard labor is the oakum-picking. It is performed partly in the open air, partly in the cells, and consists of untwisting old cables, and then tearing them into loose hemp, which is used for caulking the seams of ships.

The next category was the stone-breaking. One side of a yard is walled off into separate compartments, with a railing at each end, and from these the ring of the pick-axe resounds dismally for many hours in the day. One of these cages was occupied by a lunatic, who had attempted the life of his brother. The poor fellow was only there for the day, awaiting an order for removal to some government asylum for the insane. He stood bolt upright, without leaning against the wall, with his hands hanging by his side, and his head bent downwards, the picture of melancholy and sullen despair. We noticed with satisfaction that the warder compassionately avoided passing before the poor creature's railing, and did not even speak within earshot of him.

On re-entering the house, we came into a corridor where the air was filled with a grinding noise of ominous import. On either side of us were cells, where the forced labor in its most severe aspect comes into view. Warders were walking slowly up and down, peeping at intervals into the cells through a narrow little aperture in the doors, where the prisoners were undergoing the sentence of the law. Some were grinding corn, others were turning the crankpump. The former is done by a machine which it takes all the strength of the workman's two arms to keep going. In one of these cells, the door of which was unlocked for us to examine closely, there was a lad of a little over twenty, of middle height, and with a countenance which, but for the sinister leer of the mouth, might have been called mild and almost prepossessing. We were startled to learn that this juvenile criminal had been taken up for highway robbery, with attempt to murder.

The cell opposite his was occupied by a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man, who was turning the crankpump. This is the most severe of all the forms of labor in the jail. To a superficial observer it would seem almost easy labor, so smooth is the movement of the crank as it gyrates under the clenched hands of the prisoner, his body rising and falling in rhythmic movement with the rotation of the crank he is propelling; but the strain upon the spine becomes after a while intolerable. This man was a very hardened criminal, and had just undergone seven days on bread and water in the dark cell, twenty-four lashes of the cat-o'-nine tails having proved unavailing; and he was still unsubdued. His misdemeanor in the prison was swearing at one of the warders, and threatening to break his skull against the wall; even after the fearful infliction of the dark cell, he repeated his threat to "do for him."

Coarse-matting weaving is another prison employment; it is far less laborious than either of the two preceding, yet working the heavy looms must be a great discipline to unpractised arms. One man's face in this category struck us as different from the others; it bore the unmistakable stamp of education; we found that the weaver was properly a man of a better class, and who, with half the ingenuity he had shown in getting into his present condition, might have been a well-to-do member of society.

In the lower basement there are admirably constructed baths, immersion in which is compulsory on the prisoners once a month. The dark cell above referred to is also in these lower regions. Refractory subjects are consigned to it for three, five, or seven days, as the case may be, for insubordination or idleness. It must be a very obdurate spirit indeed, one would imagine, which this awful punishment could leave unbroken. The darkness is like that of the grave, so dense that it is suffocating; and when the warder, to show how utterly every ray of light was excluded from the cell, suddenly went out, and locked the double doors upon us as we stood in the gloom, we all felt a chill of indescribable horror creep over us. The ventilation is, however, perfect, though we could not see how it was contrived.

The kitchen department is as bright and as complete in its appointments as the rest of the building. Great and desirable reforms have of late been effected in the prison fare, which a few years ago was so luxurious as to call loudly for remonstrance from all wise rulers and thoughtful men. The thief and the burglar a little time ago fared far better than the poor working-man struggling to put honest bread into his children's mouths, and infinitely better than the inmate of the workhouse. All this is happily changed, and the hospitality of the jail is now proportioned to the quality of the guests. The bread is coarse and brown, but sweet and wholesome. Each prisoner gets six ounces of it at breakfast, with a pint of gruel; eight at dinner, with a pound of potatoes; and on three days in the week three ounces of bacon; the other four he gets cheese instead; at supper, bread and gruel again. The quantity is less for a short-period man, namely, those who are condemned for a week or a fortnight; the reason being that the constitution could not resist for a lengthened period the low diet, which acts with salutary effect on the spirit for a short time. In answer to our inquiries how far the present system or any system acted as reformatory on criminals, the warder said he believed it very seldom attained that end. A man who once came to jail was pretty sure to come twice. "When a man gets the name of a jail-bird," he said, "it is all over with him; he can never hold up his head again amongst honest folk, and so he goes back to his old ways and haunts." He added that the one chance he had was to go out of the country to a place where he had no past to live down; and for this reason he observed that the Prisoners' Aid Society ought to be upheld by all humane people. It offered the only plank to the shipwrecked that was possible.

Amongst the two hundred prisoners which the jail accommodates, there happens at the present moment not to be a single Catholic. We were surprised to hear this, for we noticed more than once that the men into whose cells we entered cast a wistful look at the young priest who was with us; and when he smiled and nodded to them on turning away, their faces relaxed into a smile too. Mr. S—— told us that this was no uncommon thing; that, as a rule, the prisoners, whatever be their religion, welcome the Catholic priest with a smile, and seem thankful for the chance of speaking to him. The parson, on the contrary, they look on with suspicion, and even with aversion, frequently listening in sullen silence to his questions, and refusing to answer them. This does not betoken any dislike to the Protestant minister personally; it arises from the fact of his having a sort of official character, and being thus associated in their minds with the cruel strength of the law; whereas the priest only comes in the capacity of a helper—one who pities them, and would serve them in body and soul if he could; his errand is purely one of mercy and kindness. Our companion told us that this jail has for him many beautiful memories of grace and repentance. He has gone there frequently in the course of the winter to hear the confessions of penitents who have approached the sacraments in their little cells with sentiments of the most touching humility and sorrow. These prodigals are almost invariably Irish. "Wherever you find a Paddy, you find the faith," observed Canon R——; "and where is the spot on earth where you don't find one?" To illustrate the truth of this remark, he told us a curious anecdote, which was related to him many years ago by the priest to whom it occurred. This priest went on the mission to America, and for some years his labors lay in the wild regions of the far West. The missionary led pretty much the life of the children of the virgin forests that he traversed, and where the footprint of the white man was never seen. He rode for miles and miles through the wilderness, feeding, like the anchorites, on what he could gather by the way, and sleeping in the branches of some thick-foliaged tree, to the stem of which he tied his horse; and at daybreak he was off on his rambles again. One morning, as he was riding through a wood in search of food, he descried a little wreath of smoke curling above the trees. He made for the spot, thinking he had come on a field of labor in the shape of a little colony to be baptized; but, on approaching, he found only a solitary wigwam, at the door of which a wild woman was squatting with a brood of small children about her. The good father was exhausted with hunger, and managed, by signs and a few words of the Indian dialect, to convey this fact to the woman. She rose at once, and placed before him her frugal store. While he was doing justice to it, the lord of the wigwam returned, and great was his amazement to behold the guest whom his lady was hospitably ministering to. The priest was trying to air his small store of words, when his host, who was attired in the scanty costume of his tribe, with a plentiful crop of feathers sprouting from his head-gear, after surveying him silently for a moment, exclaimed, "Your reverence is a Catholic priest, I'll be bound, and an Irishman into the bargain!" His listener nearly capsized with astonishment. But it was neither a vision nor a delusion. The wild Indian was himself an Irishman, who, with two older companions, had come to those remote forests many years before in search of fortune in some form or other; the trio had been captured by the Indians, who put two of them to death, and only spared the youngest on account of his expertness with the bow and arrow and other kindred accomplishments which made him useful to the tribe. He learned in time to speak their language and adopt their mode of life, even to the extent of marrying a wild woman of their race. But the faith of his childhood survived amongst the vicissitudes of this strange career. He welcomed the priest with joy and the reverence of a genuine Irish heart; and before the missionary left his wigwam, he received the wife into the church, married the pair, baptized and instructed the children, and administered the sacraments to the father. Then he sallied forth once more on his life of danger and self-sacrifice, which, though it afforded many consoling and romantic episodes, never furnished such another as this. "Now," exclaimed Canon R—— triumphantly, "just tell me if such an adventure as that could happen to any two men under the sun but a pair of Irishmen!" And no one contradicted him.

But to return to the jail. We visited the church last. It was the saddest spectacle of all, though the building itself was bright and just then full of sunshine. The seats rise in the form of a steep amphitheatre, almost touching the ceiling at the last tier; and they are so contrived that each prisoner is as isolated in his own seat as if he were the only one looking up at the bare pulpit, where no crucifix, nor pitying Madonna, nor kindly angel face looks down upon him, but only the wooden box, where the preacher once a week tells him of the message of mercy, and points to the home where the Father awaits each prodigal son. There, locked up between four narrow boards that rise high above his head, the prisoner assists at the service on Sunday. So rigorously is the separate system maintained that the two men who were employed in washing the stairs and floor of the church were masked, so as not to recognize each other even in passing, while a warden stood by to prevent their exchanging a word together. The men are exercised in batches every morning from six to a quarter past seven in the prison garden—a dreary place to call by that flower-suggestive name. They wear masks, and walk at a distance of four yards from one another, holding a rope with the left hand. Such a system naturally disarms the dangers of agglomeration, and makes mutiny or concerted rebellion impossible. The strength of union is not theirs, and they are as feeble as if, instead of being two hundred against nine, the proportions were reversed. Attempts to escape are almost unknown. The reason of this may be that the inmates are never condemned to a longer term than two years, which would be trebled, both in duration and in severity, if the attempt failed; so, in face of such a risk, it would hardly be worth while to make it. We did not visit the female department, which is conducted on precisely the same principle, the only difference being the greater lenity of the enforced labor. It was painful enough to see strong men brought to just humiliation for their misdeeds; but our hearts failed us to look at women in the same position. On the whole, we left the Reading jail with our minds disabused of many illusions concerning the strong hand of the law. Its application is as humane and merciful as is compatible with the interests of justice and the professed object of legal punishment. There is nothing to demoralize or to harden a culprit whose misfortune it is to undergo a term of durance within its walls. Before, however, such punishment can be really reformatory, the whole community must be reformed on the highest Christian ideal. We must learn not to despise or unduly mistrust the weak brother who has fallen once, but to practically recognize the vital truth implied in the prayer taught us by our Master: "Lead us not into temptation;" remembering that if we have not fallen it is from no merit or strength of our own, but of the gratuitous mercy of God, whose providence has prevented us in temptation, and saved us from our own weakness; and that the measure of our preservation from evil should be the measure of our charity to the fallen. When we have all learned this, we may see our prisons reformatory as well as penitential; we doubt if we ever shall otherwise.

THE LUTE WITH THE BROKEN STRING.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Divine Sequence. By F. M. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1873.

This is a small volume, but one replete with thought. It treats of the relation existing between some of the principal doctrines of the faith, with special reference to the office of our Blessed Lady as mediatrix of grace. The topics treated, though they are the most sublime and mysterious dogmas of faith, are handled with a theological precision and with a depth of contemplative piety which show that the author has drawn her doctrine from the purest sources, and meditated on it profoundly within her own soul; for the author of this admirable treatise is a lady, though we refrain from giving her name out of respect to the modesty which has induced her to hide herself behind the veil of initials. There are some copies of the English edition—which we regret very much not to see reprinted here—for sale at The Catholic Publication House; and we feel sure that if the lovers of the choicest gems of spiritual thought and sentiment knew the value of this one, they would lose no time in securing it.

The Life of Luisa de Carvajal. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This book is an addition to the sum total of sound Catholic literature. We almost lose sight of the merit of the translator's style in admiration of the motive that led her to undertake the task. The life of this holy Spanish woman is strange and pathetic. Her lifelong sacrifice of worldly, and, what is more, of national, associations for the sake of an apostleship in England during the dark days of the faith in that country, is indeed a triumph of grace and a heroic model to all after-ages. Luisa de Carvajal was a woman of rare strength of mind, energy, perseverance, and endurance. Her holiness was that of the champion rather than of the novice. Her mind was richly cultivated. Latin was familiar to her; English she acquired after she was thirty years of age—a feat requiring much patience in a Spaniard. Her theological knowledge, patristic lore, and minute acquaintance with the Scriptures were distinguishing traits of her subsequent self-education. Involved in a tedious lawsuit, her accurate memory, excellent understanding, and unflagging presence of mind were no less remarkable than her sweet temper and great patience. Although never setting her will in opposition to that of her spiritual advisers, she invariably conquered their objections, and by her very humility proved her superiority. Her vocation to a life of poverty, without at the same time being called to a conventual life, was a peculiar dispensation; and when we think of the greater ridicule that attended such an unconventional manner of "leaving the world," we see how much greater the sacrifice was than we at the present day can imagine. Her life in England seems a romance of self-devotion, and her English biographer has lovingly dwelt upon its interesting details. One pregnant suggestion is made by the translator, which is, that it would be a specially holy work for a woman to undertake to train in a species of semi-religious community life those young girls whose future destiny is the instruction of youth in the higher classes. This, although applicable chiefly to England, and of less significance on this side of the ocean, is a suggestion that deserves more notice than it is perhaps likely to get, embedded as it is in the crowded narrative of Doña Luisa's life. One thing shines forth out of this exceptional record of a holy and strong woman's days, and it is this—that God somehow or other always removes all obstacles to his real will in his own good time. In her youth, Luisa was foiled, by her natural guardians and really best-intentioned friends, in her desire to adopt the strange life to which God called her—that of a recluse without a cloister—and in a few years these friends were taken away, leaving her her own mistress. Later on, when the seemingly Quixotic wish came over her to leave Spain to minister to the English martyrs under James I., and preach the Catholic faith in London, her long lawsuit, which was urged as a reason for giving up this design, suddenly came to a favorable and