soul- around were the numberless dead.

stalwart man and tender woman, feeble infancy and decrepit age hushed quietly together in the clay!

"Where is Marion, where?" pealed forth a voice from the soul's depths. "Where is she who wandered with me by these grass-grown tombs and crumbling walls?" "Here, Michael,

brother, here am I!"

to my quest no more.

Thus would she respond

"Ah, Marion, one word,

one only word to the companion of thy infancy;" but the wind sighed past the ruined walls faint odours rose wafted from the flowers: the rail repeated a hoarse note, her companion its soft cuckoo.

And now upsprung the voices of the night: piping winds came pealing through the trees; boughs rose and fell; the brooks uttered a choral song and all joined in a hymn to God the Maker!

The dead seemed to rise from their graves and kneel upon that earthly floor; and Marion, too, was there; and many a maiden and many a youth, long buried in the tomb, united with lifted hands, as in vesture of clay they besought the Mighty Father, that he would assoil them of their sins and send them once more, thus purified and renewed, to run a bright career throughout eternity. I felt no fear; why should I? Sisters, brothers, were with me looked at me with tender, loving eyes, as though they would declare,-"And thou, too, art one of us!"

I know not how long I slept, but my head had rested on Marion's grave, and my hair was wet with dew. The morning's sun shone bright and warm; the larks sang merrily, and a yellowhammer on an elder tree poured forth its soul in many a dying fall.

Returning home, the table was already spread. I made a slender repast, and tears stood in our

eyes, as with fond embrace and blessings from heart's depths, we said our last farewell.

MAYNOOTH.

WHEN I entered the famous seminary, the teachers were struck by a proficiency so unusual. "A man in converse," they said, "a boy in years." I knew nothing, indeed, of the "Institutiones Philosophica" of Anglade; but I had read a little in the book of human nature, and of human life. A fragmentary knowledge of English, and knowledge still more fragmentary of the ancient classics, was all that was expected, probably because it was all that could be realised. To these rude acquirements were now to be added a little scholastic logic, a course of barren divinity, and some faint inklings of natural science. It was doing the young men scant justice in the first instance and in the last; it was but poorly

qualifying them for the influence they were to exercise, and the posts they were to fill. The world, its errors and its excellences, were alike excluded. Associates they had none, beyond those as incult as themselves; or teachers who for the most part had run the same career.

Better, in truth, their books had been closed; better they had remained illiterate as the clod, even as the fishers and sail-makers of Christ! Better have cast scholastic lore aside; praying to God on bended knees; thanking him for the mighty gift of life, and abiding with the soul's devotion by his unalterable law for ever. Better far have braced their loins, and waiting on the sick and dying, comforted the unhappy, ministered to the sorrow-laden. Better even, laying hold of spade and plough, have taught the right culture of the soil, and remaining with the rude peasant, banished unthrift and intemperance. For man, after all, was their theme; with him

they were to live, to die, to smile, to weep; he was to be their cross, their care, their condemnation, or their "exceeding great reward."

Far be it from me to disparage books, but only such books! Those who were to heal the souls and reassure the hearts of men struggling with misery, and the languor of mortal sickness, should be set in a measure to the task at once. They who had the call should be placed apart, while they who had no call should go their way. Yet who more willing than the devoted Irish priest to strive by night, to toil by day, to face disease and death, and to confront, as best he may, the great enemy, the man of sin, in all his countless wiles and disguises. Scant profit hath he-no name, no fame; but he has that whispered approval which, let a man's conviction be what it may, tells to his secret soul that he has fought the good fight, that his work has been rightly done.