eled with the papal tiara; from the parish. priest of the city to the anchoret of the rock; from the Carthusian and the inmate of La Trappe to the learned Benedictine; from the missionary, and the multitude of religious devoted to the alleviation of a the ills that afflict humanity, to the inspired prophet of ancient Sion! 3 The order of virgins is not less varied or numerous, nor Less varied in its pursuits. Those daughters of charity who consecrate their youth and their charms to the service of the afflicted, those inhabitants of the cloister who, under the protection of the altar, educate the future wives of men, while they congratulate themselves on their own union with a heavenly spouse,- -this whole innocent family is in admirable correspondence with the nine sisters of fable. Antiquity presented nothing more to the poet than a high-priest, a sorcerer, a vestal, a sibyl. These characters, moreover, were but accidentally introduced; whereas the Christian priest is calculated to act one of the most important parts in the epic. 4. M. de la Harpe has shown in his Melanie what effects may be produced with the character of a village curate when delineated by an able hand. Shakspeare, Richardson, Goldsmith, have brought the priest upon the stage with more or less felicity. As to external pomp, what religion was ever accompanied with ceremonies so magnificent as ours? Corpus Christi day, Christmas, Holy-week, Easter, All-souls, the funeral ceremony, the Mass, and a thousand other rites, furnish an inexhaustible subject for splendid or pathetic descriptions. 5. The modern muse that complains of Christianity cannot certainly be acquainted with its riches. Tasso has described a procession in the Jerusalem, and it is one of the finest passages in his poem In short, the ancient sacrifice itself is not banished from the Christian subject; for nothing is more easy than, by means of an episode, a comparison, or a retrospective view, to introduce a sacrifice of the ancient covenant. 163. THE INDIAN BOAT. MOORE. 1. 'Twas midnight dark, The seaman's bark Shoot o'er the wave before him. "She comes from the Indian shore, And to-night shall be our prize, Sail on sail on !" He saw the gold still clearer; But, though so fast The waves he pass'd, That boat seem'd never the nearer. 3. And many a day To night gave way, Through day and night, And that mocking bark, before ! For, oh, till sky And earth shall die, And their death leave none to rue it, That boat must flee O'er the boundless sea, And that ship in vain pursue it. 164. DEATH OF CHARLES II. OF ENGLAND. ROBERTSON. 1. On Monday, the 2d of February, 1685, the king, after a feverish and restless night, rose at an early hour. Though the remedies administered to him were attended with partial success, it soon became evident that the hour of his dissolution was rapidly approaching. 2. His brother, the Duke of York, whose persecution he had sometimes weakly consented to, was in his last illness destined to be his ministering angel of consolation. James knelt down by the pillow of the sick monarch, and asked if he might send for a Catholic priest. "For God's sake do," was the king's reply; but he immediately added, "Will it not expose you to danger ?” 3. James replied, "that he cared not for the danger," and sending out a trusty messenger, shortly afterwards introduced to his majesty the Rev. Mr. Huddleston, with these words "Sir, this worthy man comes to save your soul." The priest threw himself on his knees, and offered to the dying monarch the aid of his ministry. 4. To his inquiries Charles replied, "that it was his desire to die in the communion of the Roman Catholic Church; that he heartily repented of all his sins, and in particular of having deferred his reconciliation to that hour; that he hoped for salvation from the merits of Christ his Saviour; that he pardoned all his enemies, asked pardon of all whom he had offended, and was in peace with all men; and that he purposed, if God should spare him, to prove the sincerity of his repentance by a thorough amendment of life." 5. The Rev. Mr. Huddleston, having heard his confession, administered to him the holy viaticum, anointed him, and retired. About two o'clock in the night, looking on the duke, who was kneeling at his bedside and kissing his hand, the monarch called him "the best of friends and brothers, desired him to forgive the harsh treatment which he had sometimes received, and prayed that God might grant him a long and prosperous reign"-words the truest which Charles had ever spoken, uttered on the threshold of that eternity, where all dissimulation is vain. 6. At noon on the following day, the 6th of February, 1685, the monarch calmly expired. For this singular grace of a death-bed repentance, after a life so scandalous, I have often thought that Charles was indebted to the prayers of a holy priest whom, under peculiar circumstances, he had during his exile met with in Germany. The anecdote, with your permission, I will now state. 7. A few years before the restoration, Charles was on a visit to the ecclesiastical elector of Mayence. In the course of conversation the elector said to the prince, "There is in my arch-diocese a saintly priest, called Holzhause", possessing the gifts of prophecy and miracle, and who, many years ago, and long before the event, foretold the tragic end of your royal father, and is deeply interested in English affairs: would you like to see him?" "By all means," replied Charles. 8. The priest was accordingly sent for, and though the night was stormy, he traversed in a boat, at the risk of his life, the Rhine from Bingen to Mayence. Having been introduced to the English prince, the latter questioned him much as to the prophecy relative to his father's death. All that passed in this secret interview, which was prolonged far nto the night, is not known. 9. But Holzhauser declared, that on taking leave, of the prince he invited him over to England, in case he should ever be restored to the throne of his ancestors. In reply, the holy man observed, he had long burned with the desire to preach the faith in England, and that if his duty to his congregation allowed him, he would accept the invitation. Charles shook hands with him in bidding him farewell, and he in turn strongly commended to the future king the protection of his English and Irish Catholic subjects. 165. RELIGION AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION. STAPF. VERY REV. J. A. STAPF, a German priest, and Professor of Moral The 1ogy. From his admirable work on The Spirit and Scope of Education" we extract the following: 1. To educate is not merely to awaken by some means or other the dormant faculties of the soul, and to give them any training which may happen to strike the educator's fancy. To educate a child, is to rescue the rising man from the perdition entailed upon him by Adam's fall, and to render him capable of attaining his true end in this world and in the next. citizen of this world, he has to fit himself for the sphere of ction in which Providence intends him to move; and as a candidate for the kingdom of heaven, with his hopes in eternity, he has to produce fruits which will last forever. As a 2. To imagine that it is impossible to bring up a child at once for earth and for heaven, is to betray very little knowl edge of things. God himself has placed us on earth as in a preparatory school and a place of probation, and it is His |