"So I-I-am bear-bearing it for my Blessed Saviour," sobbed out the little martyr through her loud weeping, with more breaks than I have indicated. Do you smile at this? If so, I trust that it is with that twitching of the mouth, and that moistening of the eyes, and that gulping in the throat, which poets call "smiling through tears." However, the poor child was right. A little weeping, even though somewhat too loud, is no proof that we are not striving to bear our painful cross gracefully and cheerfully after the Crucified, in the strength and for the love of his Most Sacred Heart.

VIII.-SHE DIES.

And Death, the last cross, the last pain-she bore it also well for her Saviour's sake "In the worst of her agony, down to her last moment of consciousness (so one wrote at the time), saying and doing tender, touching little things to all around her." But she died—

"Ah! Consumption has no pity

On blue eyes and golden hair."

And here, too, Death, coming under another name, whieh would not fit so well into verse, had no pity for the mild, deep, dreamy eyes and the golden curls that crept over the pure forehead. Nay, rather, he had pity, and fulfilled his blessed mission of "bringing the little children to Jesus."

And so little Lilian went home to Jesus, and became a Little Angel. Does the mother ever tell the other little ones how good their elder sister was, and how the good Angels of God, to reward her for being so good, took her up to their own sister in heaven? Let her beware of meeting with the obvious retort which Uhland puts into the mouth of a child on a similar occasion:

"Blicke zum Himmel, mein Kind! dort wohnt dir ein seliger Bruder.

Weil er mich nimuner betrübt, führten die Engel ihn hin.'

'Dasz kein Engel mich je von der liebenden Brust dir entführen,

Mutter, so sage Du mir wie ich betruben Dich kann.""

On the two pleas urged with regard to my tiny and last morsel of Latin, let me slip into the very tranquil immortality of this nook the version of Uhland's epigram which a Sicilian friend once extemporised for me:

"Mira il ciel, fanciul diletto,

Là dimora un tuo fratello :
Chè giammai turbommi il petto,
Grato un angiol sel portó.
Cara madre, dal tuo seno
Nessun angiolo m'involi!
Dimi dunque in che il sereno
Del tuo cor turbar potrò.

"Look up to heaven, my child. There dwelleth thy happy brother:
Because that he vexed me never, the angels bore him away!'
"That no angel snatch me thus from this loving breast, my mother,

Tell me, O mother, tell me how may I vex thee, pray?""

Though quite arch enough to be capable of this mot, my little Angel would have been incapable of fulfilling the threat contained in it. Can so young a child really vex a mother? It is too much a part of herself, too close to her, too dependent on her, to be able to forget her; and for the motherly heart there is no anguish except the anguish of being forgotten. The child cannot indeed understand the depth of the sacred, almost sacramental love which the parents have cherished so long before there was the slightest return; yet, in its own way, it is grateful, and begins to return love for love. And when the frail creature, nestling in her bosom, smiles up into the mother's face, and presses its tiny arms more tightly round her neck, and draws her lips closer down towards its own rosy little mouth, the mother's yearning is satisfied, and her heart blesses God, and bids God bless her babe. And if not here, the arrears of love will be discharged there. In heaven the little angels come to know how much their mothers loved them, and they love them in return better a thousand times than hearts can love on earth, and they prove their love a thousand times better: for they are in God, and God is Love. "Those who die in grace go no further away from us than God, and God is very near."

FAITH.

AY, hast thou faith, my soul? Dost thou believe?

SAY,

Oh! ponder well ere thou wouldst give reply,
Nor on the accustomed answering rely:

Unmeditated words too oft deceive.

I do.

These ardent throbs my doubts relieve;
My lips are quivering, and aloud would cry:
"I feel, I know the words of the Most High
Fail not-for trusting Him I ne'er can grieve."
But is thy faith alive, or is it dead?

What fruits of holiness adorn this tree?

The damned believe, though with repugnance dread.
Do thoughts and words and actions all agree

With thy belief, like members with the head?
If such thy faith, 'tis well. Such may it be!

G. J. B.

“HE

THE CENTENARY OF MADAME BARAT.

BY THE EDITOR.

E that liveth for ever, God only, remaineth an invincible king for ever. The number of the days of men at most are a hundred years: as a drop of water are they esteemed; and as a pebble of sand, so are a few years compared to eternity. Be not afraid to be justified even to death, for the reward of God continueth for ever. From the morning until the evening the time shall be changed, and all these are swift in the eyes of God."

These words are all found in the eighteenth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, but they do not occur exactly as I have quoted them. Omitting several intermediate phrases, I have grouped them together thus for the sake of the special meaning which I wish to attach to them in reference to the venerable servant of God whose memory is linked with this day. On this day, exactly a hundred years ago, on the 12th of December, 1779, at the town of Joigny in that province of France which then was still known by its historic name of Burgundy, was born Sophia Magdalen Barat, who was destined by Divine Providence to be the foundress of the religious Sisterhood of the Sacré Cœur.

To a life beginning then and ending only fourteen years ago may be applied the last of those words which I have quoted from Ecclesiasticus. "From the morning until the evening the time shall be changed." Mighty changes, indeed, took place between the morning and the evening of Sophia Barat's long and full day. The France in which she died was very different from the France into which she was born, just ten years before 1789, the year from which the Revolution dates its code of principles-les principes de '89. That famous Quatrevingt-Neuf was the year of her First Communion. How many governments have risen and fallen in beautiful Paris since then! But God reigns for ever—cujus regni non erit finis. "God alone remaineth an invincible king for ever." Neither Bourbon nor Bonaparte can secure their courtiers from the reverses of fortune to which princes and kings and emperors are themselves subject; but the King whom Sophia Barat chose for her Lord and Master, "He liveth for ever and his reward continueth for ever."

She chose Him early. She did not wait to be driven with a rebuke

December 12th, 1879. This sketch of part of a holy life is given here in the form in which it was put together for a little domestic festival last December. Fuller details are furnished in some papers contributed to the third volume of the IRISH MONTHLY by the late Miss Cecilia Caddell under the title of "The Early Life of Madame Barat."

into his vineyard at the eleventh hour after standing all the day idle; but she worked for Him from the earliest dawn.

Sophia had a brother ten years older. Louis Barat had the zeal and courage to become a priest at that dark time when the soutane was the best passport to the guillotine and when priests were exiled or killed or (almost as hard a fate) prevented from exercising their sacred ministry. During his own years of study in preparation for the priesthood Louis gave to his petite sœur (as he used to call her to the end) an education which in extent and accuracy went far beyond what girls of her class or of a much higher class received then or receive now; and in this and in other respects he unconsciously prepared her for the great mission which heaven was about to entrust to her. He himself, after being imprisoned for two years during the Reign of Terror and after escaping from death through the death of Robespierre, which happened just in time, was led on by degrees to become a member of the Society of Jesus, having first joined a body of priests, who, under the name of Fathers of the Faith and again Fathers of the Sacred Heart, were trying to be Jesuits as far as they could during the suppression of the Society and who were thus ready to restore the Society in France at the first moment that the restoration became possible.

This, too, was the time-the sad and evil time, yet with many gleams of hope breaking through the darkness-that Sophia Barat, who had never seen a nun till she was a nun herself, was inspired to devote herself to God's service in the religious state. How and where she was to do so it was still hard to tell; for, in these particulars especially, that word of God might be applied to her: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, that you may go and may bring forth fruit and that your fruit may remain."

One of the Fathers to whom I have just alluded, Père Tournély, felt the force (from God's point of view) of the saying attributed to Napoleon: "What France wants is good mothers." He gave to the words the meaning that the First Consul attached to them, but he gave them another meaning also. Though France was awakening from the horrible nightmare of the Revolution, society was still torn asunder, religion almost destroyed, the flocks without shepherds, convents broken up and desolate. The adult generation was lost almost irrecoverably; the only hope was to save the children.

Father Tournély died in his thirtieth year, without having been able to carry out his plans for God's glory. But God knows how to take the will for the deed; and in God's reward, which "continueth for ever," his share may be as large as that which fell to the lot of him who was left to bear the burden of the day and the heats. When Father Varin, who succeeded him both in his office and in his projects, asked Louis Barat about the ties that bound him to the world, the young priest spoke of that "little sister" whom we know. This little sister, modest

and even timid to excess, proved, after all, to be the instrument God had chosen to found a new Order of religious devoted to the regeneration and sanctification of Catholic society through the laborious apostleship of teaching.

Madame Barat was not, indeed, at the beginning of the enterprise placed in the position of foundress and superioress. She was first allowed, with three companions, to consecrate herself solemnly to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the very appropriate feast of the Presentation of Our Blessed Lady, November 21st, 1800-the opening year of this Nineteenth Century of ours, of which how many of us shall see the close? Then, when they began their work in earnest, she had a year or two to exercise humility, obedience, and simplicity under an injudicious and unsuitable superior, who soon withdrew from the enterprise altogether and whose place Mademoiselle Barat was herself, after a short time, ordered and forced to take, to her great astonishment, terror, and pain. God was with her, and her work, because it was his work, prospered and spread to an extent that the first projectors of the Institute had never dreamed of. More than a hundred houses of education and prayer scattered over the old and the new world, more than four thousand religious consecrating themselves to God under the standard of the Sacred Heart, a countless number of children of all classes reared up carefully and piously through the means of her and hers—this was something to offer to the God of her heart, the Divine Lover of souls, when she stood before his judgment-seat. Well might one of her novices exclaim: "She is volume the second of St. Theresa!" If they who instruct many unto justice are to shine—and the Holy Ghost tells us they shall shine-like stars throughout everlasting eternities, how bright a star shall she be in God's heaven for ever, the humble French maiden who was born into this vale of tears and sin just one hundred years ago to-day, and who, full of years and fuller of labours and merits, died a sweet and holy death on Ascension Thursday, May the 25th, 1865. Madame Barat's mature life, her woman's work-the work, indeed, of "a valiant woman"-thus occupied sixty-five years after the foundation had been laid in the manner to which we have briefly referred. That work of sixty-five years has been skilfully chronicled in two ample octavos by Abbé Baunard, assisted, no doubt, by many better informed collaboratrices. For the present, however, we are unable to make further use of the copious biographical details there furnished to us; and we must end hastily by congratulating her spiritual daughters, les Dames du Sacré Cœur, on the honours that the Church is beginning to pay to the memory of their holy Foundress. Lauda post vitam; magnifica post consummationem. For now she is gone, and now her humility can hide no longer her extraordinary virtues and labours; and already the Vicar of Christ commends to our love and admiration the Venerable Servant of God,