moment of understanding which now we sighed after; were not this, Enter into thy Master's joy? And when shall that be? When we shall all rise again, though we shall not all be changed? Such things was I speaking; and even if not in this very manner, and these same words, yet, Lord, Thou knowest, that in that day when we were speaking of these things, and this world, with all its delights, became, as we spake, contemptible to us, my mother said, 'Son, for mine own part, I have no further delight in any thing in this life. What I do here any longer, and to what end I am here, I know not, now that my hopes in this world are accomplished. One thing there was for which I desired to linger for a while in this life, that I might see thee a Catholic Christian before I died. My God hath done this for me more abundantly; that I should now see thee withal, despising earthly happiness, become His servant. What do I here?' What answer I made her unto these things I know not. For scarce five days after, or not much more, she fell sick of a fever; and in that sickness, one day she fell into a swoon, and was for awhile withdrawn from these visible things. We hastened round her; but she was soon brought back to her senses; and looking on me and my brother standing by her, said to us inquiringly, 'Where was I?' and then looking fixedly on us, with grief amazed, 'Here,' saith she, 'shall you bury your mother.' I held my peace, and refrained weeping; but my brother spake something,—wishing for her, as the happier lot, that she might die, not in a strange place, but in her own land. Whereat she, with anxious look, checking him with her eyes, for that he still savoured such things, and then looking upon me,

'Behold,' saith she, 'what he saith;' and soon after to us both, 'Lay,' she saith, 'this body anywhere; let not the care for that any way disquiet you; this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be.' And having delivered this sentiment in what words she could, she held her peace, being exercised by her growing sickness.

"But I, considering Thy gifts, Thou unseen God, which Thou instillest into the hearts of Thy faithful ones, whence wondrous fruits do spring, did rejoice and give thanks to Thee, recalling what I before knew ; how careful and anxious she had ever been as to her place of burial, which she had provided and prepared for herself, by the body of her husband. For, because they had lived in harmony together, she also wished (so little can the human mind embrace things divine) to have this addition to that happiness, and to have it remembered among men, that after her pilgrimage beyond the seas, what was earthly of this merited pair had been permitted to be united beneath the same earth. But when this emptiness had, through the fulness of Thy goodness, begun to cease in her heart, I knew not, and rejoiced, admiring what she had so disclosed to me; though, indeed, in that our discourse in the window, when she said, 'What do I here any longer?' there appeared no desire of dying in her own. country. I heard afterwards also, that when we were now at Etia, she, with a mother's confidence, when I was absent, one day discoursed with certain of my friends about the contempt of this life, and the blessing of death; and when they were amazed at such courage which Thou hadst given to a woman, and asked, Whether she was not afraid to leave her body so far

from her own city? she replied, 'Nothing is far to God; nor was it to be feared lest, at the end of the world, He should not recognise whence He were to raise me up.' On the ninth day, then, of her sickness, and the fifty-sixth year of her age, and the three-andthirtieth of mine, was that religious and holy soul freed from the body."

PRAYER.

Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of Thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with Him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for His merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

PASSAGES FROM THE ACTS AND WORDS OF OUR BLESSED

LORD'S PASSION.

"These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee."

"And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as we are.

"While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name: those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

"And now come I to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves.

"I have given them Thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

"I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

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Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth."

MEDITATION.

"The great saints who have experienced the mystic death caused in them by the excess of divine love, have carefully described it, in order to awaken in us a desire for it; and the apostle, who was often in this blessed state, gives an admirable portrait of it, when he says of himself, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'

"The first Christians formed by this skilful master had, like him, attained to it; he praises them for it, when he says to them, 'Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.'

"This blessed death, a thousand times more desirable than the most delightful life, occurs, says a holy man, 'when the soul, by the secret violence of her love, is so withdrawn from the corporeal senses, that it is no longer conscious of itself, because its exquisite sense of the presence of God absorbs all other feelings.' 'Attracted, then,' says St. Bernard, 'by the ineffable sweetness of this love, it flies and escapes from itself; it is ravished, and carried away to enjoy the word in whom it lives and dwells; it is unable to act, because God acts; it feels its body no more, because it feels and possesses its God.'

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"But this delightful death presupposes another which costs many struggles. The soul must first die to its passions, its attachments, its desires, and itself. This death being passed,' says a holy doctor, 'charity begins by wounding the heart; being wounded, it binds it strongly to God; being bound, it makes it sicken; at last it gives it this blessed death.'

"The bride had passed through all these stages before she arrived at the mystic death of divine love. She says, indeed, to her companions, Stay me with flowers, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love. But to prepare herself for this death by that of all her passions, she takes a noble resolution to go to the mountain of myrrh, which is the figure of Calvary, where she must crucify herself with Christ: being dead to herself, the divine language of the bridegroom is heard in her heart; and she loves it, that she says her soul melted and dissolved when he spake. At length she happily attains this mystic death, and after having experienced it, she unfolds its mystery, and declares its prodigious effects, when she says that love is strong as death."

PASSAGES FROM THE LIVES AND DEATHS OF HOLY PERSONS.

Death of Bishop Bull.

"His valuable life was drawing to a close. During his whole residence in Wales, he had been more or less an invalid. In the autumn of the year 1709, he caught a severe cold, and being one day seized with a fit of coughing, violent hæmorrhage was the consequence. This was succeeded by great weakness, which confined him to his room. The few re