When the Apostles entered upon the provinces which had been severally assigned to them after the Ascension of Christ and the Day of Pentecost, St. Bartholomew travelled as far as Northern India, where his advent was signalised by a miraculous and restrictive power over the gods of the country, and where he made many converts to the faith of Christ. The fruits of his labours were seen in the second century, when Pantænus, a convert from Stoicism to Christianity, who visited India under a commission from the Bishop and Church of Alexandria, found a Hebrew copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which the tradition of the Christians in whose hands it was, affirmed to have been left with their ancestors by St. Bartholomew.*

From Hither India, the Apostle returned to the more Western and Northern parts of Asia. At Hierapolis, in Phrygia, he was in company with St. Philip, and engaged with him in instructing the people in the doctrines of Christianity, and convincing them of the folly of their blind idolatries. The magistrates of the city, enraged at the success which attended their labours, destined them for a common martyrdom. But this purpose took effect only in the case of St. Philip; for after St. Bartholomew had been fastened to a cross, with a view to his execution, a panic apprehension of the Divine vengeance seems to have dismayed his persecutors, who took him down from the cross and set him at liberty.

Afterwards St. Bartholomew prosecuted his Apostolic labours in Lycaonia, the people of which, according to a Homily ascribed to St. Chrysostom, he instructed and trained up in the Christian discipline.+ Finally he journeyed into Armenia, where, as a tradition reproduced by Hospinian avers, he converted Polemon the king, with his wife and subjects, to the Christian faith. But his

*Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History; lib. v., c. 10.
+ In Sanctos Duodecim Apostolos.

success was fatal to him; for it caused so much envy on the part of the priests of the country, that they used their influence with Astyages, the brother of King Polemon, to have the Apostle brought to execution. They were successful in their application; and St. Bartholomew, in accordance with a custom formerly in use among many Oriental nations, was sentenced to be flayed alive, and then beheaded.

An alternative tradition as to the mode of his martyrdom, is to the effect that he was crucified, like St. Peter, with his head downwards. But he may, living or dead, have been the object of each of these three most cruel operations; as it is possible, with perfect consistency of the two accounts, to suppose crucifixion to have supervened upon his excoriation, and to have anticipated his beheading. He was interred at Albanopolis, a city of the Greater Armenia, which was the scene of his passion; and from thence his remains were afterwards translated successively to Daras, a city on the confines of Persia; to the island of Lipari; to Beneventum; and finally to Rome.

The sentiments of devotion and self-sacrifice, the real tortures-the two martyrdoms, one in will, and the other in both will and deed-of this much-suffering Apostle encourage us to append to our remarks upon his festival a poem which seems to breathe the identical spirit by which he was actuated. It is entitled "Cupio dissolvi;' and is the last poem in the third part of William Habington's " Castara," which he opens with a delineation. in prose of the character of "A Holy Man." Habington was a gentleman," to use the words of Langbaine, "that lived in the times of the late civil wars; and, slighting Bellona, gave himself up entirely to the Muses." He was a quiet and retiring member of a family remarkable for its political restlessness; and his greatest poetical effort was the chivalrous and noble celebration of "Castara "Lucia, daughter of the first Lord Powis-whom he after

wards married. Habington both entered and quitted life at Hendlip, in Worcestershire; the dates of his birth and death being respectively 1605 and 1654.

The soul which doth with God unite,
Those gaieties how doth she slight
Which o'er opinion sway!

Like sacred virgin wax, which shines
On altars or on martyrs' shrines
How doth she burn away!

How violent are her throes till she
From envious earth delivered be,

Which doth her flight restrain !
How doth she doat on whips and racks,
On fires and the so dreaded axe,

And every murdering pain!

How soon she leaves the pride of wealth,

The flatteries of youth and health

And fame's more precious breath;

And every gaudy circumstance

That doth the pomp of life advance,
At the approach of death!

The cunning of astrologers

Observes each motion of the stars,
Placing all knowledge there :

And lovers in their mistress' eyes

Contract those wonders of the skies,
And seek no higher sphere.

The wandering pilot sweats to find
The causes that produce the wind,
Still gazing on the pole.

The politician scorns all art

But what doth pride and power impart,
And swells the ambitious soul.

But he whom heavenly fire doth warm,
And 'gainst these powerful follies arm,
Doth soberly disdain

All these fond human mysteries

As the deceitful and unwise

Distempers of our brain.

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He as a burden bears his clay,
Yet vainly throws it not away
On every idle cause;

But with the same untroubled eye
Can or resolve to live or die,

Regardless of th' applause.

My God! If 'tis Thy great decree
That this must the last moment be
Wherein I breathe this air;

My heart jobeys, joyed to retreat

From the false favours of the great,
And treachery of the fair.

When Thou shalt please this soul to enthrone
Above impure corruption;

What should I grieve or fear,

To think this breathless body must
Become a loathsome heap of dust
And ne'er again appear?

For in the fire when ore is tried
And by that torment purified :
Do we deplore the loss?

And when Thou shalt my soul refine,

That it thereby may purer shine,

Shall I grieve for the dross?

St. Matthew the Apogile.

SEPTEMBER 21.

NCIENTLY there was a tradition which discriminated Matthew and Levi, and named the latter, in addition, among the prominent heralds

of the Gospel. It is not impossible that this tradition may have been founded on the truth; but the more generally received opinion is that Matthew and Levi were the two names of the same individual. If we take the identity for granted, we find that St. Matthew was the son of Alpheus (Mark ii. 14); and are therefrom led to the safe inference that he was a Hebrew, and probably a Galilæan. Matthew, or Levi, was a publican, a collector of the Roman taxes, whose peculiar office it appears to have been to collect the customs paid upon exports and imports at the Sea of Tiberias. The office and person of a publican were obnoxious to the Jews for several reasons; the principal of which was that the publicans were native representatives of a foreign supremacy, men who-having farmed the taxes from a Roman superior,. who had before farmed the entire revenues of a province from the Senate-were constantly tempted to injustice, cruelty, and extortion. To this temptation they appear to have so habitually yielded, that both by Jew and Gentile they were cited as monsters of insidious theft, oppression,