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times interrupted by the difficulty of breathing, she humbly begged forgiveness for all her failings, and the faults by which she had scandalized or grieved them. Père Olivaint then said: 'It is time now to address your last recommendations to your daughters.' Upon which she made an effort to raise her voice, and uttered these words: Let them continually increase in zeal for the Holy Souls in purgatory, and in the spirit of their order; let the houses of China, Nantes, Brussels, and Paris, be one in heart and soul.' 'And all the future foundations also,' Père Olivaint added, with a kindly smile. 'Charity, that is what I recommend,' the dying founder ejaculated; and her director, who was well acquainted with her thoughts, added, And the interior spirit, without which there can be no true religion, and, indeed, no Christian life.' From that day to the 6th of February, the era of her death, Mère Marie received the Blessed Sacrament every day. The 19th of January was the anniversary of the foundation of the community. On that day she said: 'Almighty God has showered blessings on our society; it is right I should suffer a great deal. . . . Oh, if you did but know what I feel that it is entirely his work, and not mine! He has chosen the most wretched of instruments to effect his purpose. Blessed be God!' To the end her mind remained perfectly clear, and pious ejaculations rose to her lips, especially the words 'Jesus, eternal joy of the saints!' 'It is strange,' she remarked, 'how continually present to me are those words.' The cry of our Blessed Lord's agony was also ever bursting from her heart. 'I can no longer pray, or even listen to prayer,' she often said, but I can still say Fiat;' and with the rosary of the Curé d'Ars in her hands, she repeated on every bead, 'Jesus, fiat.' ''*

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* In 1870 she began to use (writes one of her nuns) what she called her "spiritual chloroform." This

We have recorded certain trials which she had dreaded, and which had all befallen her. She had truly dreaded them, but it is to be borne in mind that she had not asked to escape them. One thing, however, she had asked, "to die well prepared, without any definite expectation of her decease, yet immediately after receiving absolution." And as was often the case in her life of dependence upon God's providence, the answer came signally to her earnest prayer. On the seventh of February she made confession and received absolution, but without a sign that she thought her death imminent. After that absolution she did not speak again, but slept peacefully, and from that sleep, without another word, she passed peacefully into the sleep of death.

She had said once, "You ask my idea of heaven. It is love! love! love! On earth we can love deeply, indeed, but our hearts are always crying out that they cannot love enough. In heaven it will not be so. Our love will then be without limit, because we shall love God purely, and our hearts are made for him.

She had said also, "We often make acts of faith, hope, and charity, but it does not often occur to us to make acts of joy. And yet it would be very pleasing to God if, for instance, we sometimes said to him, My God, how glad I am that I belong to you."

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When for that heart of love a bar against sin or fault or imperfection was forever placed by death, may not its first act have been to cry, My God, how glad I am that I belong to you?" Or was this soul, that had given its all for the holy souls, allowed to enter purgatory-not to suffer-but by a special grace of God

was the constant repetition on the beads of the Curé d'Ars of the words, Fiat Jesus. We used to hear her continually reiterating this devotion. The spirit of her whole life was in that prayer. Rapid were the strides of the terrible disease which was hurrying her to the grave. She kept it a secret as long as possible; only a few intimate friends knew of its existence. She used to call it her hidden treasure.

to take home with her joyously a happy company of those for whom she had lived on earth, with them to gain the blessed vision of God's face forever, with them forever to "love, love, love ?"

It is peculiarly natural to follow Mère Marie after death, for her life had been spent in and for purgatory during seventeen years here.

Judged by the narrative before us, it was a singularly simple life. This spiritual mother left but four foundations of her order-in Paris, in Nantes, in Brussels, in China. Another has been gained since her death for England. As yet the seed is small compared with what Mother Barat in her long lifetime sowed. But what it will be as it becomes more widely known one may prayerfully and lovingly fancy, not so much measuring its future growth by the thousands of aching or broken hearts that mourn their dead, as by the desire for reparation which shall one day waken in lands that, casting away the Catholic faith, have cast off with it the very thought of a middle state of sufferings, and have dared to rob the dead of what pious souls had left to be a perpetual memorial to mankind to intercede for them.

When that day comes in England, a day which, viewed by the dying

prophecy of King Edward the Confessor, may not be far distant, when she shall once more be Catholic, what myriad souls shall find themselves with the heroic act of charity, how many descendants of the men who wrought three hundred years ago the awful deformation of England shall vow themselves to a lifelong reparation in the order of the Helpers of the Holy Souls!

God's own glory is interested in their release.

God's glory-what but this is the key to the mystery of vocation? Where human wisdom would have called a bereaved and aching heart to found an order for their dead, God turned to his glory in this respect a life marked by sunshine and buoyancy. And he chose a bereaved widow, from whom parents and husband and sister had one by one been taken, to found in the Western world a great branch of those Sisters of Charity whose life and works are peculiarly characterized by the active spirit of their first founder, St. Vincent de Paul. How should it make us distrust our own judgment and our own will, and be content with that will of God, which meekly accepted, gives indeed the strength to bear everything!

VOL. XIV.-10

TO-DAY.

LET dotards grieve for childhood's days, And only those look back

Whose wasted wealth or shattered health
Betrays a shameless track:

I cannot join in mourning time
For ever passed away ;

For whilst I look on Nature's book
I'm thankful for to-day!

The trees are still as fresh and green
As ever branches were,

And still, in primal vigor seen,

They wave their arms in air;
The rivers sing the selfsame song
That they have sung for aye,
Whose burden, as they glide along,
Is "God is here to-day!"

There's not a bird upon the bough,
Or leaf upon the tree,

But in the summer twilight now
As sweetly sings to me:

The bleakest wind that winter blows

Can chase disease away,

And shower blessings in the snows
That hide the earth to-day.

And everywhere a thousand gifts
Invite us to rejoice ;

To grieve no more the days of yore,

But raise a thankful voice;

That tell us, though the world were fair

In years removed for

aye,

The earth and sky, and sea and air,

As lovely are to-day.

Then tell me not that childhood's days

Alone are fraught with joy;

That manhood's fancy cannot raise

The structures of the boy:

The childish mind is lost in dreams

Of pictures far away,

But man beholds majestic themes
In wonders of to-day.

Oh ye whose eyes upbraiding rise,

Pronouncing fate unjust,

Who walk the earth with cherished hopes

Low trailing in the dust,

Discard a false unmanly thrall,

Nor own so weak a sway,

But hope in Him who gave you all,

And thank Him for to-day!

A PLEA FOR PLAIN HISTORY.

The reader will soon discover that I advance but few pretensions to that which has been called the philosophy of history, and which I have had the temerity to call the philosophy of romance. It is the privilege of the novelist to be always acquainted with the secret motives of those whose conduct and character he delineates; but the writer of history can know no more than his authorities have disclosed, or the facts themselves necessarily suggest. If he indulge his imagination, if he pretend to detect the hidden springs of every action, the real origin of every event, he may embellish his narrative, but he will impose upon his readers and probably upon himself. Much research and experience may perhaps have entitled me to form an opinion; and I have little hesitation in saying that few writers have done more to pervert the truth of history than philosophical historians. They may display great acuteness of investigation and a profound knowledge of the human heart, but little reliance can be placed on the fidelity of their statements. In their eagerness to establish some favorite theory they are apt to overlook every troublesome or adverse authority, to distort facts in order to form a foundation for their system, and to borrow from their own fancy whatever may be wanting for its support and embellishment.-Dr. Lingard's Preface to History of England.

IN view on the one hand of the above weighty and well-considered words, and on the other hand of the performances at the present day of the historical muse, we cannot avoid asking ourselves the question whether the writing of history be not likely to become as much a lost art as architecture or even as logic itself.

For who among contemporary historians who at least that aims at being "popular," and attaining that circulation which is its own reward -but does and must do the very thing which a grave and capable authority thus strongly deprecates?

For mere facts our public has ceased to care, nor does it employ historians to provide it with such dry and Spartan fare. Their business is to cook the facts; to chop them up; to season them scientifically; to serve them up highly spiced to tickle the public palate. Above all, they have to save the public mind from the disagreeable process of thought. That same mixture of shallow culture, ambitious to know everything, and of mental indolence, unwilling to work at anything, by virtue of which we allow reviewers to persuade us that we admire poetry which no mortal man can understand, brings it likewise about that men should have very strong and

very combative opinions respecting all historical problems, from the origin of the Athanasian Creed to the guilt of Mary Queen of Scots, while with the bare outline of the facts involved they have not even a decent acquaintance.

But it is not with the recipient. public that we are now concerned; not with those who cry for food, but with those who put it into their mouths; not with the consumer, but with the producer. And in speaking of this producing class the fact we assert seems not to need proof. Historians nowadays are expected to be "philosophical," and "philosophical" they are. They do not even think of presenting us with facts as facts and inferences as inferences, or of confining themselves to what they find recorded. To read character, to detect and lay bare its inmost recesses and hidden springs, to penetrate from the fact on the surface to the motive beneath, to tell us not only the "what" but the "why," and the why not objective only, but subjective as well—this is their task, and it is only on the strength of supposed fitness for this task that they occupy the position which they have.

They are taken, in other words, as historical experts who from much

familiarity with the subject have acquired eyes to see what others cannot see, and a right in consequence to interpret for their less practiced brethren that which the said brethren have not the means of understanding for themselves.

Now it is doubtless true that within certain limits this claim is reasonable. It is true that, as an African explorer or an excavator of catacombs, so also a seeker among records and archives has a right to a hearing and must have a special authority when he speaks on matters within the limits of his researches. This is true; and it is true besides that he will acquire by his experience such a knowledge of the tract in which he works as to be able to take short cuts where others must go round-about, and to recognize his bearings by landmarks which for others have no meaning.

This we allow, but we can allow him no more, and our present task is to protest against the other functions which they who call them selves historians affect to discharge, functions which we hold with Dr. Lingard to be dangerous and absurd. As to argument on the subject, his admirable remarks might suffice; but we will observe two things in addition. First, that with all our telegraphs and all our correspondents we find it quite impossible to master the right and the wrong, the why and the wherefore, of history in progress at this moment with half the confidence and security with which historical sleight of hand affects to clothe its interpretation of the dim records of the middle ages; and second, that while historical clairvoyance reads glibly off for us the character and motives of men of other centuries, no one of us can do the same for his most intimate living friend.

Our thesis, then, is this: the historian is a man of facts, and he who ceases to be a man of facts ceases, so far, to be an historian. He may

use his acquired knowledge to arrange and to co ordinate facts or to argue from them, but he must let us know how much is fact or record and how much inference. He may think that a chronicle betrays a leaning or that a recorded action suggests a motive, and he may tell us So. But if he undertakes to assert simply as a piece of history that the writer wrote as he did because of that leaning, or that the subject of his history did what he did because of that motive, he is as much a charlatan as the magician who undertakes to find a spring by the divining rod, or the astrologer who casts a horoscope according to the stars.

This thesis we do not propose to argue a priori. We will take some specimens of recent "history," and in their presence ask the common sense of readers to say how far they deserve the name.

Mr. James Anthony Froude has been engaged these last few months in telling the British public and the world at large what they are to think of St. Thomas of Canterbury, or as he curtly styles him "Thomas Becket." Those who know anything of this author's method will not need to be told that his tale is entirely made up of those elements which we wish to see eliminated. Motives, objects, influences, are run off the reel for us from the beginning of the complex narrative even to the end. Reasons are given to explain facts, and when that will not do, reasons are given to explain facts away, and the reasons in the one case as in the other are given quite as peremptorily and categorically as the facts.

We have heard of an Italian who being drawn to serve in the army of his united country was saved from the disagreeable honor by the characteristic intervention of an interested official. It was this man's duty to test the conscript's eyes by handing him various kinds of

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