"Janua coli, ora pro nobis," she pressed her mother's hands, and smiled. Did she then see the eternal doors opening? The Prior of San Sisto, her confessor, was by her bedside. She asked for Extreme Unction, and answered distinctly to all the prayers. Then she cried, "This is the Christian's resurrection; thanks be to Thee, O my God. Oh, now I am very happy." A wonderful grace of peace and strength seemed from this moment to have filled her soul. She no longer needed comfort: it was she who consoled and comforted those around her. The poor mother, wild with grief, threw herself on her bosom. "Still do I hope," said she, sobbing. "Yes, my Rosa, I hope still you will recover; but if God does not will it, pray Him, implore Him, to take me also. I will not, I cannot live without you." And Rosa replied, "No, mother, you must not desire death; you have too many duties to perform on earth; remember the mother of the Maccabees." Then, stretching out her hand, and laying it on her sorrowing parent's head, she said, "I bless her who so often has blessed me. O Mary, change the sorrow of this poor mother into the consolation of the poor, the afflicted, and the sick; and do Thou, O my God, grant that unto the end we may adore Thy Divine decrees." She drew a little ring from her finger, and said, "Mother, keep this in remembrance of me." Then, placing in her hands the ring of her betrothal, she said, "Give it to you know who-it is a noble soul." But she never named him.

The end drew near. Her relations and friends surrounded the bed; and every one was weeping. She said, smiling, "You are all around me; I am very glad-thanks." Then, suddenly, "Who wishes to have my hair?" No one ventured to answer. She cast a long half-reproachful look on the weeping faces round her. A voice cried, "I do!" Rosa recognized it, and said "My mother shall have it!"

She made a sign to the Prior to come to her, and said to him in a whisper, "Pray return this evening to my poor mother, and do all you can to console her." And then she seemed to retire to the feet of God, henceforth to speak to Him alone. "I suffer, my Jesus; but all for Thy love! I fear not hell, because I love Thee too much! I am on fire! I am in flames! Jesus, do Thou burn me, do Thou consume me in the flames of Thy love!" These holy ejaculations with difficulty found utterance-her voice was fast failing. Yet once again, and for the last time, she rallied: death had a hard struggle with the strength of her innocent youth. This time the dying girl spoke the very language of the saints; and her farewell to earth was worthy of a S. Catherine of Siena: "Lord,"

she said, "bless all men; bless this city of Pisa; bless her people, her bishops, and her pastors; bless the Catholic Church; bless her Sovereign Pontiff; bless her ministers and her children. Have pity on poor sinners; enlighten heretics; be merciful to those who believe in Thee; be merciful also to those who believe not. Pardon all; be a loving Father to the good, and to the wicked. O Immaculate Virgin, have pity on my soul! O Jesus, give to all Thy peace!-peace I leave to them." She was silent; a veil came over her eyes; they no longer beheld the things of earth, but a better light began to dawn upon them. "Yes, yes," she murmured, "I see now; I begin to see the holy Jerusalem. O the angels! O how many angels! how beautiful! Yes, certainly, willingly, my God! Where am I? Who calls me? Where then? Let us go, let us leave this, O my God! Let us go-on, on! Andiamo! andiamo! avanti!" The words died on her lips; she made the sign of the cross, kissed the crucifix, and, while mortal eyes still sought her on earth, she was following the Lamb in the eternal choirs of the Virgins.

Many words would but mar the impressive solemnity of the scene at which we have just been present; but one remark we will venture upon. Rosa Ferrucci is an example of how saints live and how saints die. The annals of sanctity abound in examples of divine love triumphing over earthly affections; but here we have an example of its triumph in the midst of earthly affections. For it is the glory of Christianity to have made the heart of man capable of loving more, and better than ever, all that is loveable on earth, and at the same time capable of always loving it less than God. The death of the just is not a mere act of resignation, it is a sacrifice; and Rosa Ferrucci's earthly love only furnished the matter of that sacrifice. The young bride of Pisa gives up her nuptial crown to embrace her Heavenly Spouse. There are tears-there are the pangs of a last farewell-there is one dear name that lingers on her lips almost to the confines of Eternity. She wished not for death, she did but obey its call; yet even here we meet with the same unvarying signs that mark the departure of God's chosen ones; even here there is a willing sacrifice and a victim of love.

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ART. V. THE WORK AND THE WANTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

An Account of the State of the Roman-Catholick Religion throughout the World. Written for the use of Pope Innocent XI., by Monsignor Cerri, Secretary of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide. Now first translated from an authentick Italian MS. never published. To which is added a Discourse concerning the State of Religion in England; written in French in the time of King Charles I., and now first translated. With a large Dedication to the present Pope, giving Him a very particular account of the State of Religion amongst Protestants; and of several other matters of importance relating to Great Britain. By Sir Richard Steele. London: Printed for J. Roberts, near the Oxford Arms, in Warwick Lane. MDCCXV.

Mo

ORE than a generation of men has passed away since the emancipation of the Catholic Church in Great Britain from the persecution of the penal laws; and nearly half a generation since the restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy. We have reached, therefore, a time when we may review the condition of the Church in this country. The silent and gradual expansion of a tree may escape the eye from moment to moment, but in a series of years its breadth of shadow and its rising stature reveal the accumulation of its life and power. So with the Church in England. After a series of vicissitudes more rapid, abrupt, and various than Christianity has ever known in any other land, the Catholic Church goes forth once more to evangelize the English people. England has been Pagan and Christian, then Pagan and Christian again, then Catholic in all the docility of childlike obedience, then indocile in all the pretensions of its national pride, though Catholic still; then reformed (so-called), with all the alternations of action and re-action from continental Protestantism to Hierarchical Anglicanism, from Latitudinarianism to Pietism, from an imitative Catholicism to a thorough Rationalism, which is now spreading on all sides under the foundations of English society. Meanwhile the Church has been twice all but extinct, and twice restored in power.

For the purpose of bringing out more clearly these facts of Divine Providence we have prefixed to this article the title of a work which was published in the last century. It presents us with one of those historical pictures which read like a fiction. To the Catholics of this day, and even to our

Protestant antagonists, it will seem hardly credible that the account of the Roman Catholic religion in England, which now would fill a volume, should be despatched in about a dozen octavo pages; and even of these, three-fourths at least are occupied with an account of the schism under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, and of the appointment of first an Archpriest, and then of a Vicar Apostolic for the whole of England. The description of the actual state of religion in England is contained in a few sentences: "I shall only say, in general, that there are many Catholics in the country at this present time; but that their number is not very considerable if compared with that of the heretics, who are divided into Church of England men, Presbyterians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Independents, and several other sects. The exercise of the Catholic religion is wholly prohibited both in public and in private. The Catholics meet together in some few places to perform Divine worship, but they do so with the utmost secrecy, and not without great danger." It seems incredible that such should have been our state only a century ago. What we purpose in this article, then, is to take a slight survey, by way of contrast, of our present condition, and that rather with a practical view, and for the sake of stimulating zeal and activity, than as a matter of mere literary speculation.

The history of England exhibits in a wonderful way the action of the Church upon the world, and their irreconcilable conflict. It was the Church that civilized England, united its races, founded and consecrated its monarchy. The Church has a twofold mission to mankind. Its first and primary, indeed, is to save souls, to lead men to eternal life. Its second, but no less true, is to ripen and to elevate the social and political life of men by its influences of morality and of law. As the Church is not a mere school of opinion for the enlightenment of the intellect, but a true kingdom for the government of the will, so its mission is not only to direct the conscience and the will of individuals as units, but of fathers as the heads of households, and of princes or governors as the rulers of people and of nations. Hence, by the Divine law of its mission to mankind, arises what is called the social and political status of the Church. The Holy See, in creating Christian Europe, contracted social and political relations with the civil society which it had called into existence. The Church in England formed an integral and vital part of the social and political order of the Saxon races,-permeating its whole structure and life it anointed their princes, legislated in their parliaments, judged in their tribunals; and being thus intimately united with the whole public life and social order

of the people, the Church accomplished more pervadingly and more uniformly its spiritual mission in guiding men to eternal life. The theory of unconsecrated civil powers, occupied only with the temporal welfare of the people, was unknown to our Saxon forefathers, and would have been rejected by them as an impiety and a folly. True, indeed, it is that civil society has no Divine mission to the souls of men, no custody of revealed truths or laws, no supernatural discernment of what is for the eternal welfare of its members, no faculties to apply itself to the care of souls, nor any authority to direct the conscience. Nevertheless, a State has higher duties than that of conferring purely temporal benefits; and the Church, in consecrating the civil order by the grace of Christianity, enables it to promote the welfare of its people by a discernment and by means which are above its own. Such was eminently the state of Saxon England.

The Anglo-Saxon monarchy belongs to a Christian and patriarchal period, and hardly enters into the text of modern history. It is, like the source of the Nile, hidden but prolific, a mighty and productive cause, but withdrawn from sight. From it descend the unwritten laws, traditions, customs, and characteristic spirit of England in all its ages and in its full maturity. The Norman period, if it be more historical, and more within the range of our cognizance and our criticism, is, nevertheless, a time of culmination and of decline. The English monarchy grew strong; the English Church grew weak. The Saxon period expired in S. Edward, King and Confessor, who symbolized the spirit of that most beautiful age; the Norman reached its full development in Henry VIII., the offspring and the representative of its anti-Catholic spirit and traditions. Nevertheless, in the five centuries of the Norman-English rule, the Church created for itself a vast, mature, and powerful organization for the discharge of its civil mission to the people of England. It participated in all the political life and action, the domestic and foreign policy, the legislative and judicial power, of the monarchy. It had a rich inheritance of ecclesiastical endowments, it accumulated a vast multitude of cleemosynary foundations, it formed and directed a noble and abundant system of education in all its branches and for all classes of the people. The grammar-schools of England, the higher, or, as we call them, the public schools, and the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, were an ample and worthy provision for the education of a people less than three millions in number.

Now, of all these the Reformation robbed the Catholic Church at one blow. It was simply exiled from political