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against the pagans that they were "without affection." The Son of Mary was not so, the Mother of Jesus was not so. They who for the love of Jesus give up mother, and home, and all, are never so. world turns up the whites of its eyes in horror at such hard-heartedness; but it is the world itself that is hard-hearted, selfish, cruel. True "love is strong as death," nay, stronger. The human affection that does not look beyond death and consult for the eternal interests of the beloved may be as amiable and innocent as the instinctive fondness of the sheep for her lamb, or of the cat for her kitten, but hardly more worthy of a rational creature and an immortal soul. How much practical paganism there is in current literature that thinks itself Christian, ay, and in Christian hearts!

There is no doubt that in that struggle which took place in the little convent chapel of our Lady of Victories at Tien-Tsin, and which I have made the text of too long a homily, one of the doubts and misgivings that rose up in Sister Alice's bosom must have been, "But how can this be kept up for years to come? Shall I be sorry next year not to have let things take the easier course marked out for them? If I am taken at my word, how shall I go on thus for thirty years ?"

Thirty years! She was not to be required to go on thus for thirty days. But she made her brave choice as if for years instead of days, and she has her reward accordingly. Thus does God act towards us often. He knows how to take the will for the deed. He not seldom allows us far easier terms than we bargained for. So it proved with Alice O'Sullivan. Before her substitute reached Europe, she, as we must believe, had already reached heaven. Soeur Marquet, who was to die along with her, wrote of her a few days before the end: "This new companion of ours is most devoted, and does all in her power to take the place of the sisters who are not able for their work." But their work and hers was done.

The era of martyrdoms is not yet over in China. From time to time the demon of paganism has his victims. Soon after Sister Alice had ended her last letter to her brother with the words, "You see I have not yet had the happiness of finishing this life," the rumours of danger began to increase. We have seen in a previous page how a Scotch Freemason, a patient in the sisters' hospital, was warned of his peril. The Christians (Catholics only bear the odium of that name when there is question of dying for the faith) put themselves in readiness by receiving the sacraments as an immediate preparation for death. About one o'clock on the 21st of June, the sound of the tam-tam was heard, and a furious mob, safe in the connivance of the mandarins, attacked the convent. * Seven of the nuns were murdered

in the chapel to which they had fled, and three just beside it. The heathen ruffians mangled and insulted the holy remains, pillaged the convent, and then set fire to the whole building, which was burnt to the ground. Though most of the Chinese orphans had been sent to

* The cruel farce of a pretended investigation and money-compensation, &c., was afterwards gone through by the government officials.

secure places in the country, ten or twelve of them perished with their saintly guardians.

The following are the names of the martyred Sisters of Charity, the years after each name being the dates of their entrance into the religious state:-Sisters Marquet, 1843; Chavelin, 1846; Violette, 1852; Legras, 1853; Pavillon, 1854; Lenn, 1854; Andrisin, 1855; O'Sullivan, 1856; Adam, 1858; and Tillet, 1861.

Many of the foregoing details, and others into which we cannot enter, are given not only in the private letters which have been placed at our disposal, but also by the correspondent of the Times, writing from Shanghai a fortnight later (July 8, 1870). The same journal published a letter of the Protestant British chaplain, the Rev Charles Butcher, M. A., in which he thus refers to the subject of our paper: "The murder of the Sisters of Charity is an outrage not on a nation or a Church but on humanity itself. As chaplain to the British community of Shanghai, I have had opportunities of seeing the noble and devoted work of some of those women, when taking care of the sick at the hospital. One lady, who has been murdered with every circumstance of horror, was an Irish lady whose memory is cherished with affection and gratitude by many of the community here."

Here I ought to end. But I will venture to confess that one of my wishes in drawing up this paper was to help some, perhaps, to take a more personal interest in that drama of the Propagation of the Faith, of which this is a single scene. When we "untravelled islanders" read accounts-and even this we too seldom do-of missionary achievements in China, or Madagascar, or Japan, is it not a fact that we fail to make ourselves at home amongst the missionaries, as if they were not quite of our own race? We English-speaking Catholics are prone to be a little too British on one side of the channel, and on this side, perhaps, just a little too Irish-if excess be possible in so eminently desirable a quality. Irish we must be, devotedly and enthusiastically Irish; but we must at the same time be thoroughly, and truly, and heartily Catholic, with no insularity of soul but with hearts as wide as the earth, and wider.

Let, then, the gentle memory of this martyred Irish maiden* recall for me the fact that in that land which sent Sister Alice by so summary a process to heaven, others whom I know are travelling to the same goal by a slower route. The first decade of their Chinese exile has gone by since the little band of missionary recruits went forth from that happy and hospitable home of St. Michel, on the banks of the Mayenne, with its three hundred inmates gathered from all the nations of Europe. The only Irish heart that was there bade them God speed in the lines which follow this paper in a language

* As another link between Ireland and China, some of my readers will be glad to be reminded of one whom they must still hold in affectionate remembrance, their amiable fellow-student of old Maynooth times, Father Thomas Fitzpatrick, C.M. who died some ten years ago on the Chinese mission. Another Irishman, son of the authoress of "A Protestant Converted by her Bible and Prayerbook," is at this moment toiling in the same mysterious region among his brothers of the Society of Jesus who are referred to above.

not quite unknown to them; while one of their countrymen sang his farewell thus in the common language of all :

-

"Nobis tristis adest, lætus apostolis,
Qui longe a patria vos rapiet dies :
Frater fratre procul dissociabitur
Immenso marium sinu!

"Cur nobis alacri non liceat pede
Quo vos cunque viam dirigitis sequi ?
Cur corpus rapido non volet impetu
Quo mentes et amor volant?

"Si Jesu socios plurimus hic labor,
Paupertas gravior, plura pericula,
Si matura premit mortis acerbitas,

Si vos tanta probant mala:

"Felices nimium! Qui Ducis ad crucem
Stat cum bella fremunt, it Ducis æmulus,
Et cum, Christe, tuos hostibus objicis,
Primo pugnat in agmine.

"Hanc vitam, Socii, vivite, Galliæ

Et nostri memores. Quos freta dividunt,
Fratres unus amor fratribus alligat:

Jesus vivit in omnibus."

J. D.

Vivite, Galliæ et nostri memores. Don't forget la belle France. It seemed harder to leave her then than it might have been since. The dark clouds did not seem at that time to loom over her which have since burst with such fury. One of those who would gladly have gone forth that day with his brave young brothers, little dreamed that, staying behind, and in a spirit of obedience devoting himself earnestly to the study and the teaching of mathematical science, he was securing for himself an earlier crown of martyrdom than they. Yet so it fared with the genial and holy Father Alexis Clerc, who, in the gay capital of their own beautiful France, was shot down as a martyr of the Commune.

But let us end rather with the name of that Irish Sister of Charity whose charred relics consecrate the ungrateful soil, which, perhaps, some of these also shall yet fertilise with their blood. And may not our last word be a prayer? Pray for us, Sister Alice!

M. R.

TO THREE YOUNG MISSIONARIES SETTING OUT

F

FOR CHINA.

AR away from Sicily the sunny,

*

Far away from France the gay and fair,

Far away from home, and friends, and kindred,
'Mid the heathen, exile, death ye dare;

For apostle's toils and martyr's perils

Are your bosom's fondest hope and care.
So ye flee from home, and friends, and kindred,
Far away but Jesus will be there;

And his Mother smiles on you from heaven,
And the saints a joyous envy bear,

Praying for you-most of all, great Xavier:

"I, too, yearned to preach the glad news there."

Thus on high. On earth below, God's faithful
Bless your names, and offer alms and prayer ;
While your brothers, linked with you more closely,
We who bear the slandered name ye bear-
Wheresoever Jesus bids us serve Him,

In Sicily the sunny, France the fair,
Or Ireland the holy and the patient-
Toil we in the cool shade or the glare,
We your memory will proudly cherish,

As we cherish something pure and rare.
And I think that ye, too, O my brothers!
In your hearts a nook for us will spare.

Thus, though thousand foamy leagues asunder,
Let us in each other's fortunes share.
So, farewell! Away from home and kindred—
But God's love goes with you everywhere.
Shall we see your smile again? No, never,
Till in heaven-ah! pray for us—yes, there!

Laval, June, 1865.

W. L.

* Father Alphonsus Rizzo, since dead, was a Sicilian.

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ON THE LITERARY STUDIES OF LADIES.*

AN AFTERNOON LECTURE.

BY THE EDITOR.

(CONCLUSION.)

THE questions which were put, without any attempt to answer them, at the end of the first part of this lecture, bear a very practical significance for all of you, whether your lot in life is already finally settled, or whether you are still in uncertainty more or less dense as to which of the three fates await you: the fate assigned to poor Dora in the last line of Tennyson's most pathetic idyl which bears her name, or the fate which is the legal perquisite of the ordinary novel-heroine at the end of the third volume, or else that destiny, the crisis of which has seldom been described more feelingly than by Count Montalembert in a famous page of his Monks of the West, though he throws around it too sad a tinge of French sentiment.

"One morning she rises, she comes to her father and mother'Farewell, all is over,' she says; 'I am going to die-to die to you and to all. I shall never be either a wife or a mother; I am no more even your child; I am God's alone.' Nothing can withhold her. 'Immediately they left the ship and their father and followed Him.' And lo! she appears, arrayed for the sacrifice, brilliant and lovely, with an angelic smile, blooming and beaming, fervent and serene, the crowning work of creation. Proud of her last beautiful attire, bright and brave she ascends to the altar-or rather she flies, she rushes like a soldier to the breach, and hardly able to restrain the impassioned fervour which consumes her, she bows her head to receive the veil which is to be a yoke upon her for the rest of her life, but which will also be her eternal crown."

On some points, as here, Montalembert shows not quite so true a Catholic instinct as his gifted and generous Protestant biographer, another ornament of your sex. See how his slightly false colouring in this picture of a "Reception-ceremony" is toned away by Mrs. Oliphant :

"We must add that when the first sharp shock of the severance was over, the sacrifice began to bring with it its own gentle recompense. Many of us have known the suffering and sacrifice involved in the transference of a cherished and beloved daughter to be some stranger's wife, the head of a new household, the centre of another family. We call this a happy event and the other a sad one—but we doubt whether the happy young wife [is she always happy?], whose very happiness is founded upon her separation from her native home, can remain such a steadfast and sweet consoler to her parents as the gentle young nun, whose human interests still centre in her father's house. Montalembert, at all events, was consoled by the constant tenderness and sympathy of his cherished daughter; and in the

* The title given to the first part in our preceding number is retained, but a somewhat less ambitious subject has been treated of in the lecture.

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