IGNATIUS LOYOLA

JULY 31.

St Helen of Skofde, in Sweden, martyr, about 1160. St John Columbini, confessor, founder of the order of the Jeauati, 1367. St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, 1556.

Born.-Princess Augusta of Brunswick, 1737. Died.-Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, 1556, Rome; Charles de Gontaut, Duc de Biron, favourite commander of Henri IV., beheaded in the Bastile, 1602; Martin Harpertzoon Van Tromp, Dutch admiral, killed in an engagement near Texel, 1653; John V., king of Portugal, 1750; Denis Diderot, French encyclopædist, 1784, Paris; William T. Lowndes, bibliographer, 1843.

IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

Ignatius Loyola, 'a Spanish soldier and hidalgo with hot Biscayan blood,' was, in 1521, assisting in the defence of Pampeluna against the French, when a cannon-ball fractured his right leg and a splinter injured his left. He was carried to the neighbouring castle of Loyola, and in the weary months during which he lay stretched upon his couch, he tried to while away the time in reading the Lives of the Saints. He was only thirty; he had a strong and vehement will; he had led a wild and vicious life; and had burned for military glory. As it was evident that for him henceforward the part of the soldier was barred, the question arose, Why might he not be a saint, and rival St Francis and St Dominic? He decided to try. He tore himself from his kindred and friends, and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the church of the Virgin at Mount Serrat, he hung up his arms, and vowed constant obedience to God and the church. Dressed as a beggar, and in the practice of the severest austerities, he reached Jerusalem on the 4th of September 1523. On his return to Spain, at the age of thirty-three, he resumed his education, which had been neglected from childhood, and laboriously from the rudiments of grammar worked his way through a full university course, making no secret of his ignorance. The rigour of his life, and the rebukes he administered to lax ecclesiastics, not unfrequently brought him into trouble as a Pharisaic meddler.

He went to Paris in 1528, and at the university he made the acquaintance of Xavier, Faber, Lainez, Bobadilla, and Rodriguez, five students whom he inspired with his own devout fervour. In an underground chapel of the church of Montmartre, on the 15th of August 1534, the six enthusiasts took the solemn vows of celibacy, poverty, and the devotion of their lives to the care of Christians, and the conversion of infidels. Such was the beginning of the famous Society of Jesus.

The plan of the new order was laid before Pope Paul III., who raised several objections to it; but, on the engagement that Jesuits should in all matters yield implicit obedience to the holy see, he granted them a constitution in a bull, dated the 27th of September 1540. Loyola was elected president, and was established at Rome as director of the movements of the society. Very opportunely did the Jesuits come to the service of the popedom. Unhampered by the routine of other ecclesiastical orders, they undertook services for which they

TWO LOVERS KILLED BY LIGHTNING.

alone were fit; and, as sharp-shooters and skirmishers, became the most annoying and dangerous antagonists of Protestantism. To a certain freedom of action the Jesuit united the advantages of perfect discipline; obedience was his primary duty. He used his faculties, but their action was controlled by a central authority; every command had to be wrought out with all his skill and energy, without questioning, and at all hazards. It was the aim of the society to discover and develop the peculiar genius of all its members, and then to apply them to the aggrandisement of the church. Soon the presence of the new order, and the fame of its missionaries, spread throughout the world, and successive popes gladly increased the numbers and enlarged the privileges of the society. Loyola brought more ardour than intellect to the institution of Jesuitism. The perfection of its mechanism, which Cardinal Richelieu pronounced a masterpiece of policy, was due to James Lainez, who succeeded Loyola as president.

Worn out with labours and privations, Loyola died on the 31st of July 1556, aged sixty-five. He was canonised as a saint in 1622, and his festival is celebrated on the 31st of July.

Senatuf

An original autograph of the founder of the order of Jesus is subjoined-taken from his signature to a document, dated 1554, preserved in the public library of the city of Treves, on the Moselle.

TWO LOVERS KILLED BY LIGHTNING.

It was on the 31st of July 1718, that the affecting incident occurred to which Pope, Gay, and Thomson severally adverted-the instantaneous killing of two rustic lovers by a lightning-stroke. At Stanton-Harcourt, about nine miles west of Oxford, are the remains of a very old mansion, belonging to the family of the Harcourts, consisting chiefly of a domestic chapel in a tower, and two or three rooms over it. Pope spent two summers in this old building, with the hearty assent of the Harcourts, who had been lords of the manor for more than seven hundred years. One room, in which he finished the Fifth Book of his Iliad, obtained, on that account, the name of 'Pope's Study.' Gay often visited him there; and it is in one of Gay's letters that the catastrophe, which occurred in a neighbouring field, is thus narrated: 'John Hewit was a well-set man of about twenty-five. Sarah Drew might be called comely rather than beautiful, and was about the same age. They had passed through the various labours of the year together with the greatest satisfaction. Their love was the talk of the whole neighbourhood, for scandal never affirmed that they had other views than the lawful possession of each other in marriage. It was that very morning that they had obtained the consent of her parents; and it was but till the next week that they had to wait to be happy. Perhaps in the interval of their work they were talking of

their wedding-clothes, and John was suiting several sorts of poppies and wild-flowers to her complexion, to choose her a hat for the wedding-day. While they were thus busied (it was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon), the clouds grew black, and such a storm of lightning and thunder ensued, that all the labourers made the best of their way to what shelter the trees and hedges afforded. Sarah was frighted, and fell down in a swoon on a heap of barley; John, who never separated from her, having raked together two or three heaps, the better to secure her from the storm. Immediately after was heard so loud a crash as the heavens had split asunder. Every one was now solicitous for the safety of his neighbour, and they called to one another throughout the field. No answer being returned to those who called to our lovers, they stepped to the place where they lay. They perceived the barley all in a smoke, and then spied the faithful pair; John, with one arm about Sarah's neck, and the other held over her, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and stiffened in this tender posture. Sarah's left eye was injured, and there appeared a black spot on her breast. Her lover was all over black; but not the least sign of life was found in either. Attended by their melancholy companions, they were conveyed to the town, and next day were interred in Stanton-Harcourt churchyard.'

Pope, whether or not he was at Stanton-Harcourt at the time, soon afterwards wrote an epitaph on the hapless young couple:

ON TWO LOVERS STRUCK DEAD BY LIGHTNING. 'When eastern lovers feed the funeral fire, On the same pile the faithful pair expire: Here pitying heav'n, that virtue mutual found, And blasted both, that it might neither wound. Hearts so sincere th' Almighty saw well pleased, Sent his own lightning, and the victims seized.' 'Lord Harcourt,' says Mr Robert Carruthers, in his edition of Pope, on whose estate the unfortunate pair lived, was apprehensive that the countrypeople would not understand the above, and Pope wrote the subjoined:

'NEAR THIS PLACE LIE THE BODIES
OF JOHN HEWIT AND SARAH DREW,

AN INDUSTRIOUS YOUNG MAN

AND VIRTUOUS YOUNG MAIDEN OF THIS PARISH;
WHO, BEING AT HARVEST-WORK
(WITH SEVERAL OTHERS),

WERE IN ONE INSTANT KILLED BY LIGHTNING,
THE LAST DAY OF JULY 1718.

Think not, by rigorous judgment seized,
A pair so faithful could expire;
Victims so pure Heav'n saw well pleas'd,
And snatch'd them in eternal fire.
Live well, and fear no sudden fate;
When God calls victims to the grave,
Alike 'tis justice soon or late,
Mercy alike to kill or save,
Virtue unmov'd can hear the call,

And face the flash that melts the ball.'

This second epitaph was engraved on a stone in the parish church of Stanton-Harcourt.

Thomson appears to have had this incident in his view when he wrote the Seasons, about nine

years afterwards. beginning

PARTRIDGE, THE ALMANAC-MAKER.

The fifty lines (in 'Summer')

'Young Celadon

And his Amelia were a matchless pair,' relate an episode of the same character as the sad story of John Hewit and Sarah Drew, with the exception that the poet kills the maiden but not the lover.

TESTIMONIALS TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY
YEARS AGO.

The following present made to the new recorder of Nottingham, 1603 A. D., by order of the Hall, affords a curious instance of the taste and habit of the times, Testimonials. It is agreed that the town shall, on in respect to what are now dignified by the name of Wednesday next, present the recorder, Sir Henry Pierrepont, with a sugar-loaf, 9s.; lemons, 18. 8d.; white wine, one gallon, 28. 8d.; claret, one gallon, 28. 8d.; muskadyne, one pottle, 28. 8d.; sack, one pottle, 28.; total 20s. 8d.'

Another testimonial was presented by the same town, in the year following, the object of public admiration and bounty in this instance being no less a personage than the Earl of Shrewsbury. Of course the present, intended to convey to his lordship the sense entertained by the burgesses of his high description than that bestowed on the recorder. worth and character, must be of a more weighty Accordingly, it was ordered that 'a veal, a mutton, a lamb, a dozen of chickens, two dozen of rabbits, two dozen of pigeons, and four capons, should be presented to his lordship.'

Ours is a day beyond all others for the presentation of Testimonials, but we have never yet heard of a celebrity of the nineteenth century being invited to a public meeting to receive from his friends a testimonial of their esteem, and then having laid at his feet sundry bottles of wine, with sugar and lemons to flavour it; or a good fat calf, a weddersheep, and a lamb of a year old, with dozens of chickens and rabbits to garnish the same, as appears to have been the favourite course with our 'goodliving' ancestors.

Yet

green flowerless after-math. Many of the birds that sung in the green chambers which she hung for them with her richest arras, have left her and gone over the sea. What few singers remain are silent, and preparing for their departure; and when she hears the robin, his song comforts her not, for she knows that he will chant a sweeter lay to autumn, when she lies buried beneath the fallen leaves. Musing at times over her approaching end, upon the hillsides, they are touched by her beauty, and crimson up with the flowers of the heather, and long leagues of wild moorland catch the reflected blush, which goes reddening up like sunshine along the mountain slopes. The blue harebell peeps out in wonder to see such a land of beauty, and seems to shake its fragile bells with delight. In waste-places, the tall golden-rod, the scarlet poppy, and the large ox-eyed daisy muster, as if for a procession, and there wave their mingled banners of gold, crimson, and silver, as summer passes by, while the little eyebright, nestling among the grass, looks up and shews its white petals, streaked with green and gold.

But, far as summer has advanced, several of her beautiful flowers and curious plants may still be found in perfection in the water-courses, and beside the streams-pleasanter places to ramble along than the dusty and all but flowerless waysides in August. There we find the wild-mint, with its lilac-coloured blossoms, standing like a nymph knee-deep in water, and making all the air around fragrant. And all along the margin by where it grows, there is a flush of green, fresh as April; and perhaps we find a few of the grand water-flags still in flower, for they often bloom late, and seem like gold and purple banners hanging out over some ancient keep, whose colours are mirrored in the moat below. There also the beautiful arrow-head, with its snow-white flowers and arrow-pointed leaves, may be found, looking like ivy growing about the water. Many a rare plant, too little known, flourishes beside and in our sedge-fringed meres and bright meadow streams, where the overhanging trees throw cooling shadows over their grassy margins, and the burning noon of summer never penetrates. Such pleasant places are always cool, for there the grass never withers, nor are the paths ever wholly dry; and when we come upon them unaware, after having quitted the heat and glare of the brown dusty highway, it seems like travelling into another country, whose season is spring. And there the water-plantain spreads its branches, and throws out its pretty broad leaves and rose-tinted flowers, which spread up to the very border of the brook, and run in among the pink-flowers of the knot-grase, which every ripple sets in motion. Further on, the purple loosestrife shews its gorgeous spikes of flowers, seeming like a border woven by the moist fingers of the Naiads, to curtain their crystal baths; while the water-violets appear as if growing to the roofs of their caves, the foliage clinging to the vaulted-silver, and only the dark-blue flowers shewing their heads above the water. There, too, is the bog-pimpernel, almost as pretty as its scarlet sister, which may still be found in bloom by the wayside, though its flowers are not so large. Beautiful it looks, a very flower in arms, nursed by the yielding moss, on which it leans, as if its slender stem and prettily-formed leaves were too delicate to rest on common earth,

so had a soft pillow provided for its exquisite flowers to repose upon. Nor does it change, when properly dried, if transferred to the herbarium, but there looks as fresh and beautiful as it did while growing-the very fairy of flowers. Nor will the splendid silver-weed be overlooked, with its prettily-notched leaves, which underneath have a rich silvery appearance; while the golden-coloured flowers, which spread out every way, are soft as velvet to the feel. Then the water has its grass like the field, and is sometimes covered with great meadows of green, among which are seen flowers as beautiful as grow on the inland pastures. The common duck-weed covers miles of water with its little oval-shaped leaves, and will from one tiny root soon send out buds enough to cover a large pool, for every shoot it sends forth becomes flower and seed while forming part of the original stem, and these are reproduced by myriads, and would soon cover even the broad Atlantic, were the water favourable to its growth, for only the land could prevent it from multiplying further. Row a boat through this green landlooking-like meadow, and almost by the time you have reached the opposite shore-though you have sundered millions of leaves, and made a glassy course wide enough for a carriage to pass through the water, not a trace will be left, where all was bright and clear as a broad silver mirror, but all again be covered with green, as with a smooth carpet. Beside its velvet-meadows, the water has its tall forests and spreading underwood, and stateliest amongst its trees are the flower-bearing rushes, one of which is the very Lady of the Lake, crowned with a red tiara of blossoms. The sword-leaved bur-weed, and many another aquatic plant, are like bramble, fern, and shrub, the underwood of the tall sedge, which the nodding bulrushes overtop. Nor is forest or field frequented with more beautiful birds or insects than those found among our water-plants.

Then we have the beautiful white water-lily, which seems to bring an old world before us, for it belongs to the same species which the Egyptians held sacred, and the Indians worshipped. To them it must have seemed strange, in the dim twilight of early years, when nature was so little understood, to see a flower disappear at night, leaving on the surface no trace of where it bloomed-to reappear again in all its beauty, as it still does, on the following morning. And lovely it looks, floating double lily and shadow, with its rounded leaves, looking like green resting-places for this Queen of the Waters to sit upon, while dipping at pleasure her ivory sandals in the yielding silver; or, when rocked by a gentle breeze we have fancied they looked like a moving fairy-fleet on the water, with low green hulls, and white sails, slowly making for the shore. The curious little bladder-wort is another plant that immerses itself until the time for flowering arrives, when it empties all its water-cells, fills them with air, and rises to the surface. It may now be seen almost everywhere among water-plants. In a few more weeks it will disappear, eject the air, fill its little bladders once more with water, and, sinking down, ripen its seed in its watery bed, where it will lie until another summer warns and wakens it to life, when it will once more empty its water-barrels, fill them with air, and rising to the light and

sunshine, again beautify the surface with its flowers. Sometimes water-insects open the valves of these tiny bladders, and get inside; but they cannot get out again until the cells are once more unlocked to receive air. Many another rare and curious plant may be found by the water-side in August, where sometimes the nieadow-sweet still throws out a few late heads of creamy-coloured bloom, that scent the air with a fragrance delicious as May throws out, when all her hawthorns are in blossom, for though June is a season

'Half-pranked with spring, with summer halfembrowned,'

August is a month richly flushed with the last touches of summer, toned down here and there with the faint grays of autumn, before the latter has taken up his palette of kindled colours.

Still, we cannot look around, and miss so many favourite flowers, which met our eye on every side a few weeks ago, without noticing many other changes. The sun sinks carlier in the evening; mists rise here and there and dim the clear blue of twilight; we see wider rents through the foliage of the trees and hedges, and, above all, we miss the voices of those sweet singers, whose pretty throats seemed never at rest, but from morning to night shook their speckled feathers with swellings of music. Yet how almost imperceptibly the days draw in, like the hands of a large clock, that appear motionless, yet move on with true measured footsteps to the march beaten by Time. So do the days come out and go in, and move through the land of light and darkness, to the shelving steep, down which undated centuries have shot and been forgotten. Soon those pleasant meadows that are still so green, and where the bleating of white flocks, and the lowing of brindled herds, are yet heard, will be silent, the hedges naked, and not even the hum of an insect sound in the air. Where the nearly ripe harvest, when the breeze blows, now murmurs like the sea in its sleep, and where the merry voices of sun-tanned reapers will soon be heard, the trampled stubble only will be seen, and brown bare patches of miry earth, where the straw has blackened and rotted, shew like the coverings of newly-made graves. Even now unseen hands are tearing down the tapestry of flowers which summer had hung up to shelter her orchestra of birds in the hedges. What few flowers the woodbine again throws out-children of its old agehave none of the bloom and beauty about them like those born in the lusty sunshine of early summer. For even she is getting gray, and the white down of thistles, dandelion, groundsel, and many other hoary seeds streak her sun-browned hair. There are blotches of russet upon the ferns that before only unfolded great fans of green, and in the sunset the fields of lavender seem all on fire, as if the purple heads of the flowers had been kindled by the golden blaze which fires the western sky. Fainter, and further between each note, the shrill chithering of the grasshopper may still be heard; and as we endeavour to obtain a sight of him, the voice fades away beyond the beautiful cluster of red-coloured pheasant's-eye, which country maidens still call rose-a-ruby, believing that if they have not a sweetheart before it goes out of flower, they will have to wait for another year until it blooms again. The dwarf convolvulus

twines around the corn, and the bear-bine coils about the hedges, the former winding round in the direction of the sun, and the latter twining in a contrary direction. Sometimes, where the little pink convolvulus has bound several stems of corn together, and formed such a tasteful wreath as a young lady would be proud to wear on her bonnet, the nest of the pretty harvest-mouse may be found. This is the smallest quadruped known to exist -the very humming-bird of mammalia-for when full-grown it will scarcely weigh down a worn farthing, while the tiny nest, often containing as many as eight or nine young ones, may be shut up easily within the palm of the hand, though so compactly made, that if rolled along the floor like a ball, not a single fibre of which it is formed will be displaced. How the little mother manages to suckle so large a family within a much less compass than a common cricket-ball, is still a puzzle to our greatest naturalists. It is well worth hiding yourself for half an hour among the standing-corn, just for the pleasure of seeing it run up stalks of wheat to its nest, which it does much easier than we could climb a wide and easy staircase, for its weight does not even shake a grain out of the ripened ears that surmount its pretty chamber. It may be kept in a little cage, like a white mouse, and fed upon corn; water it laps like a dog; and it will turn a wheel as well as any squirrel. Often it anuses itself by coiling its tail around anything it can get at, and hanging with its mite of a body downward, will swing to and fro for many minutes together. One, while thus swinging, would time its motions to the ticking of the clock that stood in the apartment, and fall asleep while suspended.

There are now thousands of lady-birds about, affording endless amusement to children; only a few years ago, they invaded our southern coast in such clouds, that the piers had to be swept, and millions of them perished in the sea; many vessels crossing over from France had their decks covered with them. That pretty blue butterfly, which looks like a winged harebell, is now seen everywhere; and as it balances itself beside some late cluster of purple sweet-peas, it is difficult to tell which is the insect and which the flower, until it springs up and darts off with a jerk along its zigzag way. On some of the trees we now see a new crop of leaves quite as fresh and beautiful as ever made green the boughs in vernal May, and a pleasant appearance they have beside the early-changing foliage that soonest falls, looking in some places as if spring, summer, and autumn had combined their varied foliage together. And never does the country look more beautiful than now, if the eye can at once take in a wide range of scenery from some steep hillside. Patches of green, where the cattle are feeding on the second crop of grass, are all one emerald-looking in the distance as if April had come again, and tinted them with the softest flush of spring; and if you are near enough, you may still hear the milkmaid's carol morning and night, for that green eddish causes the cows to yield as much milk as they did when feeding knee-deep amid the flowers of May. Then great fields of ripe corn rush in like floods of sunshine between these green spaces, widening and yellowing out on every hand, shewing here and there a thin dark band, which would hardly arrest the eye, were it not beaded with trees that shoot up from amid these low hedgerows.