Tate would have had Lear live on to enjoy the earthly counterbalnce 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.

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 familythe 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. We all 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. The 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.

TO A FRIEND IN ITALY.

BY WILFRID MENNELL.

HOUGH since we parted I have shed
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 appeal. ing 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.

school, the Sunday walk to Mass, and the sharing in all the struggles and contrivances of the frugal, laborious peasantry to maintain life, to keep soul and body together. This system affords the best substitute for family ties and the sacred spell of home, and it gains indeed for many of the poor orphans more than a temporary home. For, true to an old trick of the kindly Celtic nature-the historic influence of fosterage-a strong affection is sure to spring up between the poor children and the good people who have charge of them; and accordingly more than two hundred of the orphans have already been finally adopted into the families of their foster-parents, and are thus absorbed into the rural population of Catholic Ireland-a class and a country (let me dare to say what I firmly believe) a class and a country which in proportion to their extent send more representatives to heaven than any other class or country on the face of God's earth.

On the other hand, no doubt, as another of the Reports candidly observes, this way of rearing the orphans requires much vigilance and constant superintendence to make it really effective. Such vigilance and superintendence are not wanting. Very great care and caution are used in the selection of nurses, who must of course have the special recommendation of their own priests. The sum, small as it is, given for the support of an orphan, is a boon which these humble people are eager to gain and afraid to forfeit; and this and worthier motives urge them to discharge well a duty which is not entrusted to them till inquiry and examination have shown them to be qualified for training up the orphans in a good Christian manner, conducive to their best interests, and suitable to their condition and prospects. The priests of the parishes through which the children are distributed watch over them with paternal solicitude; and, several times in the year, the Reverend Director of St. Brigid's Orphanage makes a visit of inspection and examines carefully everything connected with his little charges, scattering judiciously these two useful incentives to the fulfilment of duty-penalties and rewards. The latter, for instance, in last July, took the substantial form of one hundred and fifty-four halfsovereigns; each half-sovereign bearing emphatic testimony to the fact that the child whose foster-mother received it, had mastered one of the five branches of the simple orphan-education, namely-prayers, catechism, reading, writing, and arithmetic. The zealous Director* who superintends all these details with quiet, unflagging energy, has been most appropriately chosen from among the sons of that Saint whom the painter is wont to represent as clasping an infant to his bosom-recalling that well-known incident in the saint's life when, like his Divine Master, he lifted in his arms a little outcast child as his best appeal to certain pious ladies who were tempted to give up in despair a work somewhat similar to this of ours. And what fitter auxiliary could St. Brigid desire than that Saint of hard work and of various charity, Vincent de Paul?

Most of you must be aware, dear brethren, but you will all be glad to be reminded that in contributing to this Charity you save not

The Rev. John Gowan, C. M.