But with a placid energy to dare

All that thy well-trained strength could do-whate'er
Might serve God's glory in thy time and place.
Yet keen thy glance that aim divine to trace
In humblest fellow-creature's humblest good:
Work for the toiler-for the hungry, food.
If thou but learn where merit suffers need,
Word of encouragement and generous deed
Are sure to come. From learned toil or play
To weep with those who weep thou turn'st away.
And as the Eye-yes, in our measure we
Must Him resemble who hath deigned to be
Our Father-as that Eye, which guides the race
Of star and comet over lonely space,

Marks every flutter of the tiniest wren:

So from plain Duty's pettiest task thy ken
With earnest sympathy can range apart

Through all that thrills or pains the world's great heart.

But God's own word that order has assigned

Which guides us best in working for our kind:

Chiefly for those at home, by faith and blood

Thy kin," thou livest. Whatsoe'er of good

Thou canst or others, moved by thee-thou dost,
Hast done, wilt do, through lengthened years, I trust,
For this dear land, for holy Faith and Truth,
And Her, till now unnamed in song-Maynooth.
Maynooth, unhallowed yet by hoary hair,
Mother of myriad souls! lo, by her care
The faith of Peter and of Patrick sown
In distant regions, fostered in her own.
May true apostles, trained by her, each year
Speed on their glorious mission far and near,
To waft abroad, at home to guard from taint
The faith that made this land the martyr-saint
Of Christian lands, the suffering Holy Isle
Which greener from the stormy waves doth smile-
To feed the love our Erin aye displayed

For Jesus' Mother, that each Celtic maid

May smile in virgin dignity and be

What generous strangers have rejoiced to see
In the poor homesteads of our scattered race-
Rich in God's gifts of purity and grace.

* "Maximé domesticorum fidei." Gal. vi. 10.

On reading a Page in Cardinal Newman's "Apologia." 189

With these three names, names prized in heaven at least

Maynooth, the Irish race, the Irish priest

Long with these names close linked shall be thy name,
And grateful blessings shall thy memory claim.

"Uncontroversial, unobtrusive, mild"-
Gentle, unselfish, simple as a child.

True cheerfulness from serious thought has birth,
Natures the gravest bend to gayest mirth.

Courteous alike to menial and to peer,

Kindest of hearts to those who see thee near,
Though some might deem thee from afar austere.*

My courage fails me when I fain would paint
A nineteenth-century gentlemanly saint.
True sanctity respects the where and when
The Saints of God are truly gentle men.

This purse-proud age, with its galvanic heat,
Votes many of God's wonders obsolete,

And from the noonday glare smiles back with scorn
Coldly benignant at the dewy morn

Of Christendom-if all this garish light

Be noon, indeed, and not mere gaslit night.
Yet God is still of his poor earth the Lord-
True progress with his law must still accord.

strain.

Stay! such grave fancies misbeseem my
I scan the Oratorian's page again,
And marvel how in all those years no word
To such noteworthy incident referred,
Though oft the easy context of discourse
From lips least egotistical might force
Some tiny crumb of personal anecdote,
A" Thus I heard him say" or "Once he wrote."

And what high privilege, dear Friend, was thine,
Guiding Faith's pilgrim to her one true shrine!

"Il n'y a que les personnes qui ont de la fermeté qui puissent avoir une véritable douceur. Celles qui paraissent douces n' ont d'ordinaire que de la faiblesse qui se convertit aisément en aigreur." After Rochefoucauld let me cite Tennyson:

Such fine reserve and noble reticence,

Manners so kind but stately, such a grace

Of tenderest courtesy-that gentleness

Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man."

I have often applied to the subject of these lines this phrase from Tacitus: "Neque illi (quod est rarissimum) aut facilitas auctoritatem aut severitas amorem diminuit."

Pilgrim far-famed, in whom God deigned to see
Fit instrument for work sublime-to be
For many in our day and through all days
Himself a guide from out the dreary maze
Of error and half-truth and crumbling creeds—
Himself a "Note" for all whom candour leads.
Not such as he grope blindly in God's sight
From light to darkness, but from dark to light,
When helped by such as thou. Had he not all
The faculties, the graces which might call
God's blessing on his painful years of thought
And prayer and study? Found he what he sought?
Happy who have so much to sacrifice,

Happy who buy the pearl at such a price!
Rare intellect, rich culture, marvellous pen,
A gently potent sway o'er thinking men-
Humble and pure, his tale proclaims anew,
"The clean of heart have eyes to see the True.'

He pays thee tribute thou wouldst fain forbid.
Blessed are they whose best from men is hid.
Oh! that the vain and selfish understood,
Like thee, "the luxury of doing good,"t
And how its zest is ne'er so exquisite
As when the All-seeing only seeth it.

The flower, the stream, the prayer, in secret springs-
God loves, as thou, "the silence of good things."+

'The ways of God are surely not men's ways.
And what of all those years of studious days
Which e'en Liguori's vow,§ from boyhood till
This reverend age, could scarce more richly fill?
The self-denying, conscientious toils
"That have amassed of many climes the spoils :
Not the harsh pedant's ill-assorted store-
Here learning's purest and most copious ore
Is in the crucible of thought refined,

Poured through a style as limpid as thy mind.

"Beati mundo corde quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt."

Even during the few days of illness which closed his life, after having, at his own suggestion, received the Last Sacraments, he did what he had been always doingstriving, for instance, to further the interests of more than one young man who had applied to him for counsel and help, ignorant as they were that his career of laborious and unselfish zeal and benevolence was very near to its end.

Jean Reboul, the baker-poet of Nîmes.

§ St. Alphonsus Liguori made a vow not to waste a moment of his time.

These, God be thanked, reap harvest scant of fame,
Though many love and more respect thy name.
So be it to the end! So shall the Lord

Reproach thee not: "Thou hadst thy due reward."
Praise from a Newman's lips must needs be rare.
May those thou servest heed thy wish, and spare
The pang of such revealings here, that they
May take us unawares upon the Accounting Day.

St. Beuno's, 1864.

VICTOR HUGO IN EXILE.

BY THEODORA LOUISA LANE TEELING, AUTHOR OF ROMAN VIOLETS."

SOME

-a little

OME years ago-from 1856 down to the fatal time of Sedan and Bazeilles, of Strasbourg and Metz, of war, disaster, and failure, which has been called, only too truly, "L'Année Terrible". rock-bound island off the coast of France, English in name, Norman by law and lineage, held, in impatient exile, one of this century's greatest poets.

Visitors to the quiet spot, wandering along its narrow quays, or threading their way amongst a crowd of battered and dirty carriages, worn old vehicles, which jolted out their last days as omnibuses, plying between the microscopic townships of St. Petersport and St. Sampsons, were often called upon by their guides to look upwards at the quaint, irregular, foreign-looking hill-slope, covered with houses and terraced gardens, and crowned with waving trees, to where, among a row of tall, well-built mansions, one stood distinguished from the rest by a curious, square kind of glass-house or conservatory on its roof. "That is Victor Hugo's house," their cicerone would tell them. And not unfrequently the poet himself might be seen, in that quaint "belvedere," or glass-room, where he always wrote, leaning from the open window, and looking straight before him out to sea, across the rippling, blue water, and the little boats dancing on it below, away beyond the long, purple-cliffed island of Serk, to where a faint coast-line melted into sky in the far distance.

"What is he looking at?" said one from among a little group of tourists who stood watching the motionless dark figure as he gazed. "France," was the answer: "France. The land whence he is exiled, the land of his fathers, and of his people, and of his child's

grave." Then, in lower tones, as though to himself, the speaker continued, in the poet's own words:

"Oh! n'exilons personne! oh! l'exil est impie!—

Cette grande figure dans sa cage accroupie,

Ployée, et les genoux aux dents!"

Years have passed since then. Paris has fallen, and the lonely figure which they saw that day, "watching for the dawn of liberty and home," no longer keeps sad vigil in a strange land, but has returned to the bustle of public life, and re-entered in triumph that Paris which, nineteen years ago, he quitted in secrecy and haste, as a proscribed exile.

His island home stands empty now; yet it is sometimes revisited by the poet during summer vacations, when, tired out by noisy debates and crowded salons, successions of dinner parties, and open house to all who seek him, he comes for rest and seclusion from the world. The house itself has been made a place of pilgrimage by many an ardent admirer from England or France, who tread with almost awe the tiny, carpeted study where Marius and Gilliatt, Jean Valjean and the saintly bishop, Josiane and Cosette, have come into being; and truly the place is worth a visit, so strong an impress of himself has its owner left upon it.

Let us climb that somewhat steep, uninteresting-looking street, the "Hauteville," or high town, which crowns the hill. Its houses command on one side a magnificent view, which was probably the poet's reason for choosing so unromantic a spot wherein to dream out his exile.

You enter the dingy, green gates before the house, and passing in by the hall-door, find yourself in what was once a mere ordinary house of no special beauty or antiquity, but which has been transformed into the quaintest of dwelling-places; thick, sombre, dustylooking carpeting lines the stairs, balustrades, and walls; the light over the door is intercepted by the ingenious device of a quantity of green bottle-ends let in pane-wise, producing a unique and not unpleasing effect, while you turn to grope your way upstairs with uncertain and muffled tread, lighted only by an open door in the distance, leading out upon the green sward of the terraced garden.

"Mais Monsieur veut voir la salle à manger, n'est ce pas ?" says the neat-handed Phillis who acts as cicerone, flinging open another door opposite.

You follow her into a room duly furnished with dining-table and chairs, the walls lined in blue-and-white tiles, plates, and rare bits of pottery well soldered in. They were so arranged long before the present mania for china display was known in London drawing-rooms, and caused a vast amount of astonishment among the aborigines when