the saint, not merely as he is when the world has acknowledged his merit, but as he was, in the immaturity of his youth, before even his nearest and dearest relations suspected the gifts by which that merit was hereafter to be attained.

We can visit him in his cradle, a child perhaps of many hopes, but with dangers such as await all human beings looming in the distance; we can follow him amid the joys, and sorrows, and faults of childhood; we can sympathise with him in the struggles, and trials, and perhaps real follies of his youth; and, having done so, we shall be compelled to acknowledge, both to others and to ourselves, that he became a saint, not because of the absence of temptation but because of the vigour and courage with which temptation was repelled.

So few years have elapsed since she, whose early life of study and of prayer we are about to record, was yet dwelling in the midst of us, that the traditions of her youth are still vivid in the memories of her religious daughters, and they have naturally felt it both a joy and a duty to preserve from oblivion all that tended to the honour and veneration of their mother.

Sophie Barat was a native of the town of Joigny, in Burgundy, and her parents belonged to that thrice-blessed class who are poor enough to be compelled to work for their own subsistence, and yet not so poor, as to exclude all ideas of education and refinement from their homes.

Her father, Jacques Barat, was a cooper by trade, but he was also the possessor of a sunny little vineyard, the inheritance of the family, placed upon the heights of Sauvilliers and Larry, and this, in the intervals of more profitable labour, he cultivated with his own hands.

He is described as a man patient, laborious, and loyal (when so many proved false and treacherous) to religion and his God, while of his wife it is averred, that she possessed a higher order of intellect and had received an education far superior to her husband.

This may have been; nevertheless, it seems to me that, in foresight and sound good sense, he infinitely surpassed her; for he not only silenced her womanly opposition to the plan of education traced out for Sophie by her brother, but he induced her to consent likewise to that memorable journey to Paris which decided her career, and without which, her especial vocation to the apostleship of souls, by means of education, could never have been accomplished.

The house in which she was born, and which for twenty years sheltered her young life, is still in existence; and though, of course, really different in most respects, there is something in the description given of it, in her life, which reminds us indistinctly of that Nazarean home where Jesus dwelt for thirty years, with his Mother and Saint Joseph.

The ground floor contained the workshop of the father, and the common room of the family where the children played, and worked, and studied, and had their meals, and where the mother spent her days (as mothers will) in the thousand-and-one occupations which

are at once so needful for comfort in a poor man's house, and yet so humble and unobtrusive, that, unless she be called away by death, and the family be left to its own devices, no one will ever dream of the unremitting toil which, up perhaps to the very last day of her existence, she expended on its welfare.

Over these lower chambers were two others, one of them, decorated with pious pictures and cheap articles of furniture, being destined for the parents, while the second, with the addition of a garret over head (which Sophie was not long in appropriating to herself), was set aside for the younger members of the family.

A small court at the rear of the house, planted here and there with shrubs and with two or three neat flower-beds laid out among them, completed the picture of the modest abode, where under the direction of her saintly and talented brother, Sophie unconsciously prepared herself for her future mission as mother of many spiritual daughters and foundress of a new Order in the Church of God.

She was the youngest of her family by a good many years, her brother, Louis Barat, being eleven, and her sister, Marie Louise Madeleine, nine years of age at the period of her birth.

The event was premature and caused by fear.

On the night of the 13th December, 1779, a great fire broke out in a house not far from the Rue du Puits-Charbon, and though it never reached that street, the terror which it awakened in the mind of Madame Barat, hastened the birth of her expected little one, and placed the life of both mother and child in imminent danger for many hours.

Her parents were, of course, extremely anxious that the little soul, thus hovering on the borders of eternity, should be bathed at once in the waters of baptism, and thus entitled after death to take her place among those who, having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, stand for ever around his throne.

Early on the morning of the 14th, therefore, they carried the apparently dying babe to church; the young brother, who, at a later period, was to act as her tutor and director, being by a singular coincidence appointed to answer for her as godfather at the baptismal font.

Too much pressed for time to seek out a more responsible person for the office of godmother, they picked up the first young girl they met on the road for that purpose, and to her the child owed her first name of Sophie, while her second, Madeleine, was derived from her own mother.

Madame Barat was soon out of danger, and naturally enough she attached herself ever afterwards in a singular manner to the little creature thus born out of season, and needing all the care and tenderness of the most devoted mother to prevent the faint spark of life yet flickering in her bosom from being extinguished altogether.

Thanks to this unwearied watchfulness, Sophie not only grew and prospered, but gave, as she advanced into childhood, such evident signs of precocity both in character and intellect as more than repaid the loving cares by which her cradle had been surrounded.

She was full of life and movement, loving play and excelling in it, yet ever ready to return at the proper moment to graver occupations, and quite as eager to prove successful in them.

Passionate by disposition, and easily swayed by impulse, she was distinguished, nevertheless, by a love of truth, so ingrained into her very nature, that she would have died at any time, even in her earliest childhood, rather than have been guilty of a lie or of the slightest exaggeration approaching towards one. She was ambitious also was this little damsel of the Rue du Puits-Charbon, and would occasionally amuse herself with merry dreams of some mysterious future, when the world would crown her queen, and her young companions of the present day would be called upon to stand as ladies and maids of honour around her imperial throne.

Possibly an intuitive sense of her own superiority over those by whom she was surrounded had something to say to these tricks of fancy; and to the same cause may, perhaps, be attributed a certain tendency to remark and criticise the faults and follies of others which she exhibited in early youth.

But she soon conquered this unhappy failing. Her heart was too tender to permit of her deriving any real enjoyment from a practice that gave pain to others; and candour and good sense coming to her assistance, convinced her that her own superiority (whether real or fancied), being the immediate gift of God, she would be guilty of far greater folly than that which she mocked in her companions, if she ventured to arrogate its merit to herself.

The passionate eagerness and over sensibility of her temperament was a deeper source of uneasiness to her brother than any of these childish vanities, for he felt convinced, that if God did not take timely and entire possession of her affections they might prove a source, not only of much human suffering, but of far greater evils than mere suffering to her soul.

To avert this danger he did his best, from the moment he took her under his care, to give her habits of self-control; but his efforts in this direction were often thwarted by his mother, who not possessing the same insight into character, rather encouraged than repressed Sophie's passionate ebullitions, by seeking consolation in her own troubles in the sympathy and vehement affection of her child.

Her religious education had begun long before her brother commenced the office of instructor, and she was still so little and her voice so weak when first she attended Catechism in the parish church, that, to see and hear her at all, they were obliged to mount her on a footstool.

Young as she was, however, she contrived speedily to attract the notice of her pastor by an act of candour and generosity of which few souls, even when far advanced in virtue, would be capable.

The Cure having one day gathered his little flock around him in order to give them instructions on the sacrament of penance, closed his discourse by observing with energy, that if they made one good act of contrition they would certainly be forgiven.

This was enough for Sophie. The little creature rose at once from

her place, and in a clear, distinct voice commenced the catalogue of her own small sins, either because she fancied this would be a good act of contrition in itself, or because she hoped the Curé would help her to make one at the close of her confession.

Everyone began to laugh, and the Curé himself as he stopped her must have had some difficulty in repressing a smile. Nevertheless, he instantly recognised in this frank and innocent avowal, a soul capable of great things, and this conviction did her good service at a later period when preparing for her first communion.

She was barely ten years of age, and the Vicaire, considering her far too young for so sublime an action, wished to put her off to a later period; but the Curé, on the contrary, remembering probably his little pupil and her magnanimous confession, sent for her himself, and finding on examination that she was perfectly well prepared, admitted her at once to that personal union with our Divine Lord in the blessed sacrament, for which her young soul was sighing.

That first communion was destined to prove an epoch in her spiritual life, for by the graces and lights with which it filled her soul she read distinctly her future vocation to religion. The promise made by our Divine Lord to those who "leave all to follow Him" struck home to her very heart, and regarding it as an especial invitation addressed personally to herself, it filled her at once with love and awe. Young as she was, in fact, both heart and intellect were ripe for higher instruction and more closely defined religious teaching than she could naturally have obtained in her native town. But God never calls a soul to any especial work without giving it the means of forming itself for its accomplishment, and just such a counsellor and assistant as Sophia needed at the moment, she was fortunate enough to find in the bosom of her own family.

Her brother and godfather, Louis Barat, had long resolved upon taking holy orders, and though the impending revolution made it more than probable that the Church would soon have no other preferment to offer her sons than the prison or the scaffold, he was not to be deterred from his holy resolution. He entered for this purpose the Seminary of Sens, and, having at the age of twenty-two received minor orders he was sent, as professor of mathematics, to the College of Joigny, his native town, there to wait until he was of age for priestly ordination.

He had left his sister almost an infant in the cradle, he found her on his return a lively, intelligent little girl, the inseparable companion of her mother-now walking with her to the vineyard, now trotting after her, basket in hand, as she pursued her household occupations, and acquiring almost unconsciously under her direction a love of order and economy which proved invaluable to her afterwards in the course of her foundations.

The holy disposition and great natural talents of his child-sister quite took him by surprise, and with an instinctive feeling that God had sent him to Joigny to fulfil a great duty in her regard, he at once undertook her education.

Sophia proved an apt scholar, and for the most part a willing one, though her instructor almost overstepped the bounds of prudence in the life which he required her to adopt.

She rose at dawn, while the rest of the family with the exception of her father were still asleep; and no sooner had he entered his workshop or taken his way to the vineyard than she set herself seriously to the duties of the day.

'The first and most important of these was the hearing of Mass at her parish church, but immediately on her return from thence she ascended to her favourite garret and plunged into a course of study which, with the exception of meal times and of some necessary intercourse with her family, or with perhaps the rare interlude of a holiday, occupied her till nightfall.

These holidays occurred for the most part during the pleasant season of the vintage, when the whole family turned out to assist in the grape gathering; but some few extra days of liberty were also obtained by the occasional absence of her brother. Her chief delight in such happy times of idleness was to walk with her father to his vineyard, and there she would sit for hours-now watching the river Yonne, as it wound like a silver serpent through the meadows, now gazing on the graceful amphitheatre of low hills which rise between. Mont Tholon and the Montagne St. Jacques-or she would plunge with her mind's eye into the deep forest beyond, inhaling its odours and tasting the sweetness of its solitude until her soul, rising above all material charms, dissolved itself into love and admiration for Him whose eternal beauty is, after all, but dimly shadowed forth in the works of his creation.

Sometimes, however, in the midst of these innocent and healthy recreations her schoolmaster would unexpectedly reappear, and there was nothing for it then, but to retrace her steps and bury herself once more in the garret with her books.

Sophie did this sadly enough, but she never failed in submission or obedience, taking her only consolation in the well used-up maxim "that pleasure is never unmixed with pain."

Happily for her Louis Barat was no mere schoolmaster, content if she learned well and nothing more; he possessed, on the contrary, an immense fund of unction and piety, and he knew how to soften his most rigorous exactions by holding forth the love of God both as their motive and reward.

Moreover, he was a poet before he was a mathematician, and he had a grace of language and delicacy of feeling which was sure to find its way to the heart of the young girl.

A little lamb, the plaything of her holidays, used to follow her wherever she went, and one day as she sat at work it came and laid itself down quietly at her feet.

Louis Barat saw it, and said immediately:

"Look at this lamb, my sister! What is it doing? Nothing apparently. But it loves---and all is said in that word!"

Sophie understood him at once; and this spirit of quiet love, this