density of the atmosphere of illusion, what sort of ending one wishes to the stories he reads: and as most people read stories now-a-days (and many read nothing else) the test and the measure would be of almost universal application. We all want, I suppose, "poetical justice," but poetical justice varies as the calibre of the mind that conceives it. Real poetical justice falls in marvellously with the moral order of the universe. Sham poetical justice would make itself a necessary appendix to the great scheme of things, which, according to this programme, has been left lamentably incomplete. But it is hazardous to retouch a masterpiece. Poetical justice of the baser stamp is very summary and must see itself out within very limited compass. It is the justice of persons who cannot believe in any action of justice that does not fall within the scope of their personal observation. They want results, and want them more quickly than the conditions of the universe can afford to grow them. They want to remake a world which, on the whole, has been very well made as it is. A "hero," born of this sort of poetical justice, is one who gets everything by the expenditure of nothing; produces effects without adequate causes. Young people, and some people are never old, will have their novel made up after the fashion in which children make their flower gardens. No waiting for the slow process of nature; for a child is as yet incredulous about long spaces of time-no seedsowing and culture; above all, no delay. The child, then, plucks the gayest and gaudiest flowers and sticks the broken stalks into the little patch-happy if he forget all about them before they wither, as wither they surely must.

The boy and girl will have the villain punished in the last chapter and a (material) paradise of earthly felicity expressly created for a hero and heroine, who perhaps, on analysis, have little to recommend them except persistent self-seeking. But in any case, a paradise that is expressly created must be the work of a magic of which the real world has lost the secret since the days of Aladdin's palace. Later on we find such a paradise an unreality. If paradise there be it must have been the growth of time, and suitable material, and skilful construction. It must have antecedents. It must not be merely "stuck on." You think perhaps these things are of little importance, but you forget the effect on character of the persistent setting up of false standards. Never lose sight of the fact, which this juggling strives to hide, that there is a higher success than worldly success, a higher prosperity than material prosperity. "Because a man lives well he shall have pudding stuck all over with plums." This is a child's reading of the moral order. A man's-a wise man's-is different. "Because a man lives after the eternal laws of the universe his character shall be harmonised with these laws-because he has lived nobly, the nobility has grown into his character and his soul." Once it is so with him it matters not at all what comes to him from without. life come he is fit to live, if prosperity, it will not spoil him; if adversity, his nobleness will be enhanced by the frolic welcome he can afford to give it; and if death come, then he who does not know that death is the hero's very crown knows not what a hero is. Nahum

If

Tate would have had Lear live on to enjoy the earthly counterbalance to his misfortunes. But Shakspeare sternly says no

"Vex not his ghost; O let him pass. He hates him

Who would upon the rack of this rough world

Stretch him out longer."

And poor old Lear was not a hero-far less-and far less fit to die. Illusions you see I come back, however circuitous my routeillusions serve to very beneficent purposes. They are nature's toys for children of all ages, from four to fourscore. They serve to ease the strain of life, and to stimulate the flagging spirit. How could we get on at all if we had eyes to see nothing but the bare, hard realities of things? We do not see our own illusions, but they are present among the conditions of our existence. We easily see those of others. Watch men engaged in pursuits alien to your own-pursuits with which you have no manner of sympathy. At first you wonder where in the unsightly machinery can be hidden the mainspring of their energy and their eagerness. But after a little time you will be conscious that they see something which you do not see. These pursuits present themselves to them wrapped in a golden mist of illusion that lends them all their charm. Everyone creates, or at any rate, helps to create, the atmosphere in which life and the world present

themselves to him.

We all

I go into a house where there is a large family-father, mother, boys, and girls. All ages are represented down to the infant in arms; and to make the picture complete, there is the old grandfather laden with the somewhat obsolete wisdom of a bygone generation. These interest me, because among them I can go through the whole gamut of illusion. Take first the most important member of the family— the baby. I hold up before baby some glittering bauble, and immediately the little eyes are astare, and the little hands astretch. Is it not manifest that there is around the worthless bauble a halo which neither I nor anyone see. But baby sees it, and that is enough for him. All his little life is gathered up in a passion of desire. laugh at the eagerness that is so unmeaning to us. His mother laughs, but if she could only see it, her laugh is premature. So far as illusion is concerned, she and baby might change places. As around the bauble for him, so around him for his mother is a halo which nobody sees but herself. Anon comes little miss who is beatified by a new dress, the lustre of which lights up the very world. Then young master has got a pony; an elder brother has got a gun. Presently a young lady enters. Just now she is seeing life through a Tennysonian medium, and life has a pathetic sadness and sweetness with which the moods of boisterous brothers are scarcely reconcilable. father is making his everyday work poetical with illusions made up of the home memories that haunt him even upon 'Change, and out of which he weaves a golden future of sons and daughters settled to his wish. And as for the old grandfather, he lives in the illusion that he is the earthly providence from which all these things came, and by which they are kept together; and, though he is eighty, there is one illusion that never leaves him, nor ever will till he be laid in the coffin-that he is sure to live, at all events, another year.

The

TH

TO A FRIEND IN ITALY.

BY WILFRID MENNELL.

HOUGH since we parted I have shed
In secret many a tear,

And deemed earth's flowers for me were dead,

Because thou wert not near,

Yet still, sweet friend, I would not have thee here.

Here, where our noblest art is mean—
Here, where love links with lust-
Here, where men toil and fret to glean
Their darling golden rust,

And have no thought of honour, truth, or trust.

Here, where romance is out of date,

And ardent love a dream;

And truth a thing for fools to prate,
And faith a wild extreme,

And sight of gold-life's one delicious beam!

To such as these, O lady dear,

O friend, so sweetly mine,

I would not thou shouldst come too near,

Though nought of their design

Could mar, I know, that perfect heart of thine.

But I would rather thou shouldst be

Where art and nature vie

To make thy life a joy to thee;

Where earth and sea and sky
Speak to thy soul of immortality.

G

GOOD MORNING AND GOOD NIGHT.

A CHILD'S RHYME.

OOD-DAY, my Guardian Angel! The night is past and gone,
And thou hast watched beside me, at midnight as at dawn.

Another day 's before me; and, while it steals away,

Ah! help me well to make it a holy, happy day.

Good-night, my Guardian Angel! The day has sped away-
Well spent or ill, its story is written down for aye.

And now of God's kind providence thou image pure and bright! O guard me while I'm sleeping. My Angel dear, good-night.

M. R.

You

ST. BRIGID'S ORPHANS.*

BY THE REV. MATTHEW RUSSELL, S.J.

OU remember the gentle remonstrance addressed by our Divine Lord to his disciples when they would keep back the children who came clustering affectionately round Him. "Suffer the little ones to come to me," He said, "and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." This is only one out of many touching glimpses which the Gospels afford of the attraction that children felt towards the Redeemer and of the Redeemer's fondness for little children. What our Lord felt then our Lord feels now. "Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever." His " delight" is still "to be with the children of men." Nay, not in his own Divine Heart only; but, as the coming of the Son of Mary into the world raised permanently the condition of all the daughters of Eve, thus also Christianity, dating from the birth of the Divine Child, has attached to the very helplessness of childhood a dignity and a value which it had never known before. The infant Jesus has adopted as his little brothers and sisters all the children of the human race; and the cry of his Heart has ever since been the same-"Suffer the little ones to come to me!"

Dear brethren, our blessed Lord addresses the very same entreaty to you this moment on behalf of these orphans who are now appealing to your charity. These little Irish children are all just as dear to the Heart of Jesus as those Jewish children were-as dear, perhaps, as that child whom our Lord lifted up once in his arms and pressed to his Heart: although indeed a graceful legend would fain recognise in that favoured infant the martyr-bishop of after years, the first St. Ignatius. Each of these poor orphans can say as truly as St. Paul"Jesus hath loved me and delivered himself for me.' To each of them Jesus yearns with the same tenderness as of old, saying, “ My child, give me thy heart." And therefore it is that Jesus implores of you now, dear brethren, to suffer these little ones also to come to Him, to forbid them not, nay, to help to bring them to Him, to defeat the

* This Appeal was made in St. Francis Xavier's Church, Dublin. It was sug gested at the time that it should be addressed also to the readers of the IRISH MONTHLY in the hope of securing among them some new friends for St. Brigid's Orphanage. But it is right to confess that its publication at present is due to an accident which has postponed a contribution for which these pages were reserved till the last moment. This is mentioned partly as an excuse for the form, somewhat unsuited for a magazine, in which the paper has been allowed to remain. Our notes have also been transcribed too hurriedly to permit us to change the statistics of the Charity in accordance with the Nineteenth Annual Report which has since been issued.

Any of our readers who may wish to take part in this blessed work should address themselves to Miss Margaret Aylward, 46, Eccles-street, Dublin. We are glad of this opportunity of naming the lady whom God has used as his instrument in saving so many of the poor little ones of Catholic Ireland.

plots of his enemies who would rob Him of their souls-to secure as many as possible of these poor orphans in the holy shelter of St. Brigid's arms by showing yourselves generous and constant friends towards the Orphanage which bears her homely name.

A candid observer from outside the Church has said that "it would be difficult to realise a sight more richly endowed with all the attributes of moral beauty than the labours and watchings of the Roman Catholic brotherhoods and sisterhoods devoted to the regeneration of Ireland."* Amongst these not the least useful is the youngest of Irish Sisterhoods, part only of whose work comes directly under our notice to-day with its appeal for our earnest and practical sympathy. By far the most effective mode of urging its claims would be, if it were possible, to place in the hands of each of you, dear brethren, a complete series of the Reports which have been issued each Christmas since the beginning. The story told in these eighteen neat and skilful little books is more interesting than many of the ingenious fictions on which so much of mind and heart and time is squandered now-a-days by writers and readers. Even before this series of yearly Reports began, very nearly twenty years ago, in the preliminary address to the Catholic public, the plans which have since been carried out are sketched firmly from the first, and in particular this most distinctive characteristic-that of the destitute orphans rescued by means of this Charity the greatest number are placed with honest, simple peasants in the country, while the small central establishment in Dublin shelters those only who from sickness or other causes may be unfit for country training.

The most obvious but not the most important of the many unquestionable advantages of this system, is the saving of the money which would be spent on building and maintaining large and costly establishments-which saving, coupled with the fact that all is done gratuitously (not one paid officer or collector in the entire organization), enables the conductors in their last Report to declare that every shilling contributed by you and their other benefactors goes at once to gladden the heart of some poor child; or rather, they should have said, to save the soul of some poor child, and so to gladden the heart of its Father who is in heaven.

There is, manifestly, much beyond considerations of economy to commend this method of finding homes for the orphans in humble families in isolated country-places. Reared thus at a distance from the vice of cities, there is less danger of contamination for the poor children; and the social circumstances that surround them are such also as to fit them better for what is likely to lie before them when they grow up. One of the Reports (which I quote oftener even than I may acknowledge) remarks that what helps very much to develop in St. Brigid's orphans their native Celtic vigour and elasticity is the hardy training they thus receive in the home of cottiers and small farmers the country life, the bracing air, the hard work going on around, very plain fare, some privations, the fireside talk, the village

* Blackwood's Magazine.