A REAL AMERICAN SAINT.

Mrs. Jameson, in her beautiful book lately published in London, Legends of the Monastic Orders, has the following account of the only American woman ever canonized:

"Santa Rosa di Lima was born at Lima, in Peru, in 1586. This flower of sanctity, whose fragrance has filled the whole Christian world, is the patroness of America, the St. Theresa of Transatlantic Spain. She was distinguished, in the first place, by her austerities. 'Her usual food was an herb bitter as wormwood. When compelled by her mother to wear a wreath of roses, she so adjusted it on her brow that it became a crown of thorns. Rejecting a host of suitors, she destroyed the lovely complexion to which she owed her name, by an application of pepper and quicklime. But she was also a noble example of filial devotion, and maintained her once wealthy parents, fallen on evil days, by the labor of her hands.' All day she toiled in a garden, and at night she worked with her needle. She took the habit of the third order of St. Dominic, and died in 1617. She was canonized by Clement X. According to the Peruvian legend, the Pope, when entreated to canonize her, absolutely refused, exclaiming, 'India y santa! asi como llueven rosas!' (India and saint! as much so as that it rains roses!') Whereupon, a miraculous shower of roses began to fall in the Vatican, and ceased not till the incredulous pontiff acknowledged himself convinced."

Among men saints have been more plentiful.