died. Though her sufferings were very great, she bore them without complaint; and when she saw that her end was near, having received the last sacraments, she called the Sisters to her bedside, and begged their pardon for any want of charity that she might have been guilty of; and then, at her urgent request, she was placed upon the floor, and there breathed out her spirit into the keeping of God's angels.

12. Beside her, in her last agony, bowed in grief, there knelt two children of her love, whom, thirty years before, she had found little waifs by the riverside, and whose helpless condition had inspired her to found the orphan asylum.

13. Mother Catherine, though simple and unpretending as a child, had a superior mind, united to great firmness and decision of character. Her good sense and sound judgment were as remarkable as the beauty and purity of her life. She had the secret of giving to others her own confidence and enthusiasm, making them feel that what she undertook could not fail. But, above all, she was a true Sister of Charity, devoting her life to the alleviation of human misery with a love which only Jesus, the God of the poor, can inspire.

14. At her death the little community which had its birth, forty-five years before, in the log-cabin of the backwoods, had established convents, schools, and asylums in many parts of Kentucky. The buildings at Nazareth were among the most magnificent in the country, and in the Academy there more than two hundred young ladies were being trained in the knowledge and practice of all that most becomes the Christian woman.

LESSON LVIII.

THE LOVE OF HOME.

1. It is only shallow-minded pretenders who either make distinguished origin a matter of personal merit, or obscure origin a matter of personal reproach. Taunt and scoffing at the humble condition of early life affect nobody in America but those who are foolish enough to indulge in them, and they are generally sufficiently punished by public rebuke. A man who is not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early condition.

2. It did not happen to me to be born in a logcabin; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log-cabin, raised among the snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney, and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada.

3. Its remains still exist; I make it an annual visit. I carry my children to it, to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode.

4. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now among the living; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if ever I fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared it and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and, through the

fire and blood of a seven years' revolutionary war, shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity be blotted forever from the memory of mankind!

DANIEL WEBSTER.

LESSON LIX.

SUMMER WIND.

1. It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk
The dew that lay upon the morning grass ;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me.

All is silent, save the faint

And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around.
Feel the too potent fervors; the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover drops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far, in the fierce sunshine, tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds,
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven-
Their bases on the mountains, their white tops
Shining in the far ether-fire the air

With a reflected radiance, and make turn
The gazer's eye away.

2.

For me, I lie

Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,

Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays its coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?

Oh, come, and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge
The pine is bending his proud top, and now,
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes !
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep, distressful silence of the scene

Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds
And universal motion.

3.

He is come,

Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings
Music of birds and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers,
By the roadside and the borders of the brook,
Nod gayly to each other; glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew
Were on them yet; and silver waters break
Into small waves, and sparkle as he comes.

BRYANT.

LESSON LX.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

1. LOVE being the supreme act of the soul and the chief potency of man, what we owe to God is to love Him. The love of God is the virtue which crowns all the other virtues, and opens to us, in the way of transformation, the issue nearest to the end. For the peculiar quality of love is to unite those who love one another, to blend their thoughts, their desires, their sentiments, all the expressions and all the blessings of their life, and to penetrate even to the substance of the loved one, in order to cleave to it with a force as invincible as it is ardent.

2. Even when love seizes upon limited beings, it draws from them a degree of energy which enlarges man beyond himself; what must it be when it takes possession of God? There it finds and gives to us all that is wanting to our feeble nature; it finds God, and it gives us God. Already resembling Him by a likeness of nature and a likeness of beauty; already borne towards Him by the sympathy which springs from likeness, our love seizes Him and clasps Him in an ecstasy which will afterwards become. complete in the midst of vision, but which, here below, is a prelude of the eternal embrace in which our life will be consummated.

3. Having reached here the height of the mystery, I am like a man who has been climbing a steep and high mountain, and who, at last standing upon a solitary rock, sees at his feet the road he has tra