scious preparation which poor, blind paganism was making for the more rapid circulation of the fresh blood that should spring up and stir that monstrous empire, and be an element at once of health and of destruction, may not the wings of modern power be intended for the wings of the weary dove to rest upon as she speeds from one recess of the Church towards the other? When there is an emotion in Christendom, when all at once, and in many places, and in disconnected circles, and with unconscious similarity of design the parts of the Church shall edge forward towards each other, and be fain to piece themselves together once more, and begin to dream again of one spiritual unity, typifying by outward communion that mystically compacted life which it has never lost within, then perchance the Church will gain by the world being in wonderful, unheard-of communication, one country with another. A movement here will be backed up and urged forward and answered by a movement there; the sympathies of nearer circles will cease to be indispensable to success; partial persecution will not be able to put down what a voice from each of the four winds declares to be neither partial nor local; and the earthy sediment, which the rough mixing of man's art produces, will be rapidly and innocuously precipitated by some antagonist purity in another of the moving circles of the Catholic population of the world. When those times come, tendencies, which a hasty dislike, armed with the weapon of accidental authority, may prune

away, shall sprout, as in a healthy spring-tide, lustily and many-headed. When those times come, the elements of a better revolution may be crushed, but when crushed they will explode, as things in nature do, and each atom be a new element complete in itself, separate, energetic. When indifference ceases, when men will no longer bear to stand calmly by and look upon active opinions, new emotions, and high-hearted changes, when persecution becomes the lot of an ancient-featured novelty, and, as of old, multiplies the objects of persecution, then, it may be, are better times at hand. For "these are the beginnings of sorrows," sorrows which are in travail of the End.

O vain world, the cheat of your own activity! you are toiling for your enemy. The days may come when these new powers and yet inadequately explored means shall be the weapons of the Church to subdue you back unto herself. The communication of nations is fast growing up into a miracle: but the mechanical unity is only levelling the barriers, wearing down the partitions and carving out the heritage of a spiritual unity. The world's most independent toil is that of a dishonest and blind trustee, ever over-reaching himself, and the fruit of whose speculations flows at last into the coffers of his ward.

The morning broke beautifully over Mentone; and our voyage was most lovely. We kept close in land a considerable part of the distance. It was like the passing of a scene in a play. The color of

the sea was the true Mediterranean blue, and the mountains were bright in the early dawn, and studded half-way up with white villas, which the sun kept touching and bringing out as it rose higher. Vintimiglia, St. Remo, Oneglia, Langueglia, Alassio, Albenza, Loano, Finale, Noli, Savona, Cogareto, all passed before us in the most enchanting panorama, as we kept shifting our place along the smooth sea. We entered the harbor of Genoa, delighted and amazed. But Genoa from the sea cannot be described. It depends upon light and shade. We had them perfectly mingled, and the view was superb. And now we set foot upon the shore of Italy, after Palestine, the great land of pilgrimage for the world.

It was now in Italy that we began to experience painfully on Sundays the feeling of being what Lord John Manners calls "an outward infidel." In France, Sunday wore a common, dusty work-day appearance. Here it is far otherwise. The very steamers are arrested by the holy day in their voyage from Marseilles to Leghorn, to the amusing mortification of some impatient English. Too true indeed it is that we only know the value of common blessings by being deprived of them. Each Sunday which follows seems to us now more and more forlorn. It is, at times when no excitement is upon us, a sorry thing to be exiled from all we love and know best; but it is worse a hundred times to be exiled from consecrated places. The very psalms seem tame and com

fortless on Sundays, when read alone, or in a consul's room. Their music is gone out of them. Sunday abroad is really an unhappy, restless day, and one almost rejoices when it is past. One yearns for a home-Sunday, for the Church privileges and domestic joyousness of an English Sunday houshold. The very bells, with which Genoa was alive, seemed to sound reproachfully in our ears. There are churches enough to enter, where we can say our secret prayers; for it is an evil thing to gaze and peep while others around you are kneeling and believing.

Forlorn as our Sundays are, let us put our own case alongside that of a missionary. We are absent for a short while only, and wandering where Christian or historical interest shall make it seem most profitable. It is almost always easy to find countrymen with whom we can read portions of Holy Scriptures, and those national Church services to which we are restricted abroad by the present state of Christendom. We are without any external hindrance to private religious offices, or the observation of holy times, and we have a speedy prospect of returning, if God permit, once more into the bosom of our own branch of the Church Catholic. The missionary, on the contrary, in many cases at least, is absent for an indefinite number of years, fixed in one region, where mostly there is not only no historical interest to afford subjects of thought to an ecclesiastical scholar, but not even civilization. He is often quite alone,

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except invisibly. He has frequently daily external hindrances, even insults and vexatious persecutions, to his common prayers or marking of holydays; and he is worn down by harassing perils, undignified, probably, by any remote prospect of martyrdom. His Sundays must indeed, without special grace, be forlorn, so like each other all the year round, even from Advent to Whit-Sunday; yet, doubtless, endured, as the rest of his trials are, only by mighty, simple faith, as it is, not imposed upon him, but given him in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him," which is a high privilege, "but also to suffer for His sake," which is higher still. A good missionary is, indeed, a character of great religious dignity, and deservedly of much esteem in the Church. Yet is his loneliness less irksome, from the very necessity of action; and it is a harder task, more difficult to flesh and blood, to ride tranquilly at anchor in a monastery, than to be an isolated missionary. The monk and the missionary have two very different offices, except where the monk foregoes his monastery, as many have done, and received the crown of martyrdom. But, for the most part, the missionary has to extend the frontier of the Church, or to recover its lost possessions; whereas the monk's office is to keep the heart of the Church pure, to inform it with intelligence, to detain by intercession jealous blessings ready to withdraw themselves, because they are slighted or abused. People, who never tried them, say lives of monastic