He came,

And so regain my home."
And, halting by the ancient dame,
Heard her brief story and request,
Which moved the pity in his breast ;
And so he straightway took her load,
Toiling beside her up the road,
Until, with heart that overflowed,
She begged him lay her bundled sticks
Close at the feet of the crucifix.

9. So down he set her brushwood freight
Against the wayside cross, and straight
She bowed her palsied head to greet
And kiss the sculptured Saviour's feet;
And then and there she told her grief
In broken sentences and brief.

And now the memory o'er her came
Of days blown out like a taper flame,
Never to be relighted, when,

From many a summer hill and glen,
She culled the loveliest blooms to shine
About the feet of this same shrine:
But now, where once her flowers were gay,
Naught but the barren brushwood lay!
She wept a little at the thought,
And prayers and tears a quiet brought,
Until anon, relieved of pain,

She rose to take her load again.
But lo! the bundle of dead wood
Had burst to blossom, and now stood
Dawning upon her marvelling sight,
Filling the air with odorous light!

10. Then spake her traveller friend: "Dear soul, Thy perfect faith hath made thee whole; I am the Burden-bearer,-I

Will never pass the o'erladen by.

My feet are on the mountain steep;
They wind through valleys dark and deep;
They print the hot dust of the plain,
And walk the billows of the main.
Wherever is a load to bear,

My willing shoulder still is there :
Thy toil is done!" He took her hand,
And led her through a May-time land;
Where round her pathway seemed to wave
Each votive flower she ever gave
To make her favorite altar bright,

As if the angels, at their blight,
Had borne them to the fields of blue,
Where, planted 'mid eternal dew,
They bloom, as witnesses arrayed
Of one on earth who toiled and prayed.

T. BUCHANAN READ.

1. HONORA, or, as her friends and beneficiaries loved to call her, Nano Nagle, was the daughter of a gentleman named Garret Nagle, of Ballygriffin, near Mallow, in the county of Cork, where she was born A.D. 1728. Through both parents she was related, not only to many of the old Catholic

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houses, but to several of the most influential Protestant families in the South; which is only worthy of remark as furnishing a clew to the fact of her parents' wealth and social standing in times when those of the proscribed religion were not only disqualified from accumulating or holding property in their own right, but were personally objects of contempt and contumely to the dominant class. It may also, perhaps, account for the impunity with which Mr. Nagle, despite the numerous statutory enactments, was enabled to send his favorite child to the Continent to complete an education the rudiments only of which could be obtained in the privacy of her family.

2. Accordingly, at an early age, Nano quitted her pleasant and cheerful home by the Blackwater for the retirement and austerity of a convent on the banks of the Seine, in which institution she acquired all the accomplishments and graces then considered befitting a young lady of position. Having entered school a mere girl, untutored, undeveloped, and, it is even said, a little petulant and self-willed, she now, in her twenty-first year, emerged from the shadow of the convent walls into the sunshine of Parisian life, an educated, beautiful, and self-possessed woman.

3. Her family had many friends in the French capital, particularly in the households of the Irish Brigade officers and other Catholic exiles, and her entrance into the best society was unimpeded, and was even signalized by rare scenes of festivity and mutual gratification. Her native wit and buoyancy of spirits, tempered with all the well-bred courtesy and dignity of a French education under

the old régime, made her a general favorite; and though it does not appear that she was in the least spoiled by the admiration and adulation that everywhere awaited her, there is little doubt that she participated in the fashionable dissipations of the gay capital with all the ardor and impetuosity latent in her disposition.

4. Admitted to such scenes, it is little wonder that for a time she forgot the land of her birth, its persecutions and tribulations, its downtrodden peasantry and timid aristocracy. One so young and so capable of appreciating the refinements and elegancies of the most cultured city in Europe, might well be excused if she found it difficult to exchange them for the obscurity and monotony of a remote provincial town.

5. But the spell which at this time bound her was soon to be broken. The still, small voice of conscience was soon to find a tongue and speak to her soul with the force almost of inspiration. The circumstances of this radical change are thus graphically described in a sketch of her life: "In the early hours of a spring morning of the year 1750, a heavy, lumbering carriage rolled over the uneven pavement of the quartier Saint Germain of the French capital, awakening the echoes of the still sleeping city. The beams of the rising sun had not yet struggled over the horizon to light up the spires and towers and lofty housetops, but the cold, gray dawn was far advanced.

6. "The occupants of the carriage were a young Irish lady of two-and-twenty, and her chaperon, a French woman, both fatigued and listlessly reclining in their respective corners. They had lately