he had done there was a great time-people blowing their noses and wiping their eyes as if it had been a funeral.

Then Cerinthy Ann she pulled off Mary's glove pretty quick; but that poor beau of hers, he made such work of James's that he had to pull it off himself after all, and Cerinthy Ann she liked to have laughed out loud.

"And so, when the Doctor told them to join hands, Jim took hold of Mary's hand as if he didn't mean to let go very soon; and so they were married, and I was the first one that kissed the bride after Mrs. Scudder. I got that promise out of Mary when I was making the dress. And Jim Marvyn he insisted upon kissing me, 'cause, says he, Miss Prissy, you are as young and handsome as any of them. And I told him he was a saucy fellow, and I'd box his ears if I could reach them.

"That French lady looked lovely, dressed in pale pink silk, with long pink wreaths of flowers in her hair; and she came up and kissed Mary, and said something to her in French.

And, after a while, old Candace came up, and Mary kissed her; and then Candace put her arms round Jim's neck and gave him a real hearty smack, so that everybody laughed.

"And then the cake and the wine was passed round, and every. body had good times till we heard the nine-o'clock bell ring. And then the coach came up to the door, and Mrs. Scudder she wrapped Mary up, kissing her and crying over her; while Mrs. Marvyn stood stretching her arms out of the coach after her.

"And then Cato and Candace went after in the waggon behind, and so they all went off together, and that was the end of the wedding. And ever since then we ha'n't any of us done much but rest, for we were pretty much tired out. So no more at present from your affectionate sister

666 'PRISSY.'

"P. S. (to Miss Prissy's letter)--I forgot to tell you that Jim Marvyn has come home quite rich. He fell in with a man in China who was at the head of one of their great merchant-houses, whom he nursed through a long fever, and took care of his business, and so when he got well nothing would do but he must have him for a partner, and now he is going to live in this country and attend to the business of the house here. They say he is going to build a house as grand as the Vernons; and we hope he has experienced religion, and he means to join our church, which is a providence, for he is twice as rich and generous as that old Simon Brown that snapped me up so about my wages. I never believed in him for all his talk. I was down to Miss Scudder's when the Doctor examined Jim about his evidences. At first the Doctor seemed a little anxious 'cause he didn't talk in the regular way, for you know Jim always did have his own way of talking, and never could say things in other people's words; and sometimes he

makes folks laugh when he himself don't know what they laugh at, because he hits the nail on the head in some strange way they ar'n't expecting. If I was to have died I couldn't help laughing at something he said, and yet I don't think I ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there, in a sort o' grand, straightforward, noble way, and told us all the way the Lord had been leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind; and all about the dreadful ship. wreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of the Lord, till the Doctor's spectacles got all blinded with tears, and he couldn't see the notes he made to examine him by; and we all cried, Mrs. Scudder, and Mary, and I; and as to Mrs. Marvyn, she just sat with her hands clasped, looking into her son's eyes, like a picture of the Virgin Mary; and when Jim got through there wa'n't nothing to be heard for some minutes, and the Doctor he wiped his eyes and wiped his glasses, and he looked over his papers, but he couldn't bring out a word, and at last, says he, 'Let us pray,' for that was all there was to be said, for I think sometimes things so kind o' fills folks up that there a'n't nothin' to be done but pray, which the Lord be praised we are privileged to do always. Between you and I, Martlia, I never could understand all the distinctions our dear, blessed Doctor gets up; and when he publishes his system, if I work my fingers to the bone, I mean to buy one and study it out, because he is such a blessed man; though after all's said I have to come back to my old place, and trust in the loving-kindness of the Lord, who takes care of the sparrow on the house-top and all small lone creatures like me; though I can't say I'm lone either, because nobody need say that so long as there's folks to be done for; so if I don't understand the Doctor's theology, or don't get eyes to read it on account of the fine stitching on his shirt ruffles I've been trying to do, still I hope I may be accepted on account of the Lord's great goodness; for if we can't trust that, it's all over with us all.'"

Thus have we sketched the main outlines of this charming novel. We fear we have drawn too largely from its pages, yet truly may it be said we should have preferred to add much more. Many a delightful edifying scene has been omitted, and many a clever interesting sketch of character passed over.

We do not say, however, that the book is faultless. There is that absence of the due appreciation of supernatural grace, which is so constantly found in Protestant writings; and, as might be expected, there is an undue exaltation of the natural. Thus the lives of such as St. Catherine of Siena are treated as the effect of imagination or some natural cause; the idea of real supernatural influence, and intercourse with the unseen world is not

grasped. No doubt there is a high and unworldly appreciation of the worth of sorrow and the sublimity of selfabnegation, but it does not take its life and its value from union with the cross of Christ; it is not the life of Christ in the individual to which our attention is called, it is the individual exalted by use of natural powers and of surrounding circumstances. It is true the supernatural comes in as a system; but that system, from which the authoress herself appears to revolt, is vitiated by a false and hideous conception of God, and that in spite of the system, Mary is what she is depicted. It is evident this system and many of the characters are pictures from life. How one's soul yearns for them that one beam of warm Catholic truth might enlighten their hearts! That God might be known, indeed, as man's first beginning and last end, as man's all in all; but not as a Being who requires the sacrifice of human souls, and even the commission of sin execute His designs! Would to God that God were known! The root of every error all around us, the wasting of human hearts and human energies, the stretching out of the hands after emptiness, which we witness all over,-from what does it all arise but a false idea, an absence of the knowledge of God? We may be sure of it; men now-a-days, even men who have a religion, but who have not learnt it from the teacher sent from God, are wasting their heart's best affections on a creation of man's; and what we have to do is to preach to them God! To teach them as we teach every child in our schools, that man is made "to know God, love God, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in the next." This truth once imbibed how could it enter into any mind to conceive that God could be pleased by man's renunciation of Himself, his God, the very end for which he is created? No! the very reward of self-abnegation is the blissful enjoyment of God.

Our limits are already exceeded, but there is one passage which strikes us as so true and beautiful, and so calculated to conduce to charity in its highest sense, that we cannot pass it over, more especially as its concluding words call for an explanation from us on a matter much misunderstood by many religious Protestants. It runs thus:

"As to every leaf and every flower there is an ideal to which the

VOL. XLVIII-No. XCV,

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growth of the plant is constantly urging, so is there an ideal to every human being,-a perfect form in which it might appear, were every defect removed and every characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest point. Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an unreal character, but, looking through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,-loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be. Such friends seem inspired by a divine gift of prophecy,-like the mother of St. Augustine, who, in the midst of the wayward, reckless youth of her son, beheld him in a vision, standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the right hand of God-as he has stood for long ages since. Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends with whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity, we should follow them with faith and reverence through all the disguises of human faults and weaknesses, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.'

66

But these wonderful soul-friends, to whom God grants such perception, are the exceptions in life; yet sometimes are we blessed with one who sees through us, as Michael Angelo saw through a block of marble when he attacked it in a divine fervour, declaring that an angel was imprisoned within it and it is often the resolute and delicate hand of such a friend that sets the angel free.

"There be soul-artists, who go through this world looking among their fellows with reverence, as one looks amid the dust and rubbish of old shops for hidden works of Titian and Leonardo, and finding them, however cracked or torn, or painted over with tawdry daubs of pretenders, immediately recognize the divine original, and set themselves to cleanse and restore. Such be God's real priests, whose ordination and anointing are from the Holy Spirit; and he who hath not this enthusiasm is not ordained of God, though whole synods of bishops laid hands on him.

"Many such priests there be among women; for to this silent ministry their nature calls them, endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre and a subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed reason." pp. 54.5.

This is a noble thought, and one which may help us to overcome many a petty dislike and shrinking from imperfections and failings in others which jar on our sensitiveness. If there is a confusion of ideas in the concluding paragraphs, it is not that the ideas are false in themselves. The mistake arises from the two-fold sense which may be attached to the word Priest. Doubtless in strictness its sense is limited to persons duly ordained by those ministering hands which have received authority and power from Christ to confer the priestly office, and to convey the

graces necessary for it. This is its true and sacramental sense, a sense in which the office is always divine, whatever may be the defects of the individual; but there is another sense in which the word is often used, and in which it is in fact used in this very passage. It may be applied to those favoured persons, whether ordained priests or not, who have received either natural or supernatural gifts direct from God Himself, to minister to their fellowcreatures, gifts not sacramental, (though it may be heavenly,) and therefore altogether independent of episcopal ordination. This is one instance out of many where we find the Catholic Church reconciling paradoxes which no other system can reconcile, and that, for the simple reason that she is a living, animated, harmonizing whole, and that her life is the Spirit of God; so that all falls into its due place, and there is no contention among truths which when removed from her sphere at once become discordant, just as branches die and lose their flexibility when torn from the parent tree. Thus we find St. Catherine of Siena counselling Popes and Cardinals, and exercising supernatural influence on the affairs of the Church. So also St. Margaret of Cortona, by God's assistance, wonderfully converted and influenced both laymen and ecclesiastics, reading their inmost thoughts, and even bestowing her blessing on consecrated ministers of God. Neither the great St. Benedict, nor St. Francis of Assisi, were priests; and all this is found in that religion which the enemy of souls endeavours to paint to strangers as the essence of formality, human presumption, and hard external rule!

The laws of nature are unbending, yet how full of adaptation! So is it with laws of grace; a thoughtful mind may discern in the Catholic Church the ruling hand and the animating spirit of the same God who rules and who animates the kingdom of nature.

At last we must end; though we have but glanced at thoughts we would fain have developed; we have but skimmed over passages which we are sure, as they exist in the writer's mind, contain much matter for lengthened treatises. But we have done what we could at the moment, and done it gladly, and with a heart which warms towards the writer. If her book contains a few mistakes about Catholic practice or doctrine, there is no wilful, no unkind misrepresentation. We have