exact point of firmness required in an English garden; the marble vases, overflowing with creepers of carefully chosen and judiciously contrasted shades; and the thousand-and-one dainty little contrivances to make the most of every natural advantage, display the art of that northern land to which its very disadvantages of climate have taught the secret of enhancing every beauty and almost creating new ones by its industry. There is little to distinguish the Lake of Como beyond its beauty of atmosphere and scenery-little or no historical interest, no ruins, castles, or towns with momentous remembrances of troubled times in the past. The churches are plain, and generally in bad taste-in fact, beyond the reach either of gorgeousness or even of simple restoration; for the mountain population and the fishermen of the shore are very poor, and the inhabitants of the lake-side villas only come to Como for the summer. But these poor parishioners have spiritual riches, if not temporal comforts: the faith of the Italian, and the naïve enthusiasm of mountaineers. One day, after landing for a moment during one of our boat excursions, we fell into conversation with an old woman, her brown, wrinkled face lighted up by eyes of the intensest black, sparkling with a vigor strangely in harmony rather than in contrast with her age, and her dress, in its picturesque, but we fear uncomfortable dilapidation, quite a study for a painter. She was very devout, and, when she found that we were forestièri, anxiously asked if we were Christians. This reminds us of what happened in the North of Ireland to a Catholic English lady of distinction. Her husband was a Protestant, and she accordingly started alone one day to find the church, which she knew to be somewhere in the neighborhood

of the place at which she was temporarily staying. It was not a Sunday. She lost her way, and, meeting an old woman, asked her to set her on the right road for the Catholic "Chapel." The old dame looked very suspiciously at the elegant costume of the questioner, and well knowing, by the accent, that she was foreign to Ireland, asked her in return, with incredulity stamped on every expressive feature: "Shure, she was not a Catholic ?" And, indeed, the English convert did not succeed in persuading the old Irishwoman that she was her sister in the faith, until, opening her dress, she showed her the scapular round her neck, and put the rosary into her hand. These marks of orthodoxy quite convinced the staunch old Catholic, and the English lady reached the church at last. Having satisfied herself, with a sort of joyful surprise, on this cardinal point, our Italian friend discoursed very volubly of the Madonna, her own priest and mountain church, and the Pope. We had some beads with us blessed by the Holy Father, and offered her the choice of one of the set. She was reverently delighted with the opportunity, and with many blessings and thanks, as gracefully expressed as a poet could have wished or done himself, she made her selection. How her precious spiritual nearness to the Holy Father, rendered more palpable by the sight of the plain brown rosary, seemed realized in her mind's eye! She kissed the beads again and again in a transport of devotion, and in simple, straightforward language expressed her love and loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff. There are few women in Italy, high or low, who have not the same feeling for the head of the church; and those who have it not are by no means among the most exemplary wives and mothers.

We were at Como-or rather, on the shores of the lake-in March as well as in June. The spirit of the scene was just a little more dreamy in the former month than even in the latter, chiefly because there were very few tourists, and the steamboats went up and down the lake at longer intervals than in the summer. The great heat showed no signs of its advent; the vegetation was tender and yellow-green, yet not scant; for the hills, whose cold breath tempers the torrid heat of Lombardy, also protect the lake from the biting winds that one is used to associate with the mention of March. It was possible to go out boating and walking even at noon, though the nights were none the less beautiful and inviting; but perhaps, at that time of the year, the loveliest hour was early morning. It was with such a remembrance that we left the lake. After five o'clock Mass, we rowed over to the projecting tongue of mainland that cuts the waters in two, and got into a Light open carriage of the country, en route for Milan. The air was delightfully fresh, the sun had just risen, and a rosy, hazy tint lay over everything. It might have been the Bosporus, so tranquil and softened was the scene. Indeed, many travellers have likened this lake to the Bosporus, its narrow, river-like course between the shelving mountains being, they say, quite a reproduction of the oriental marvel, though it does not produce the oriental

languor characteristic of the other Our road for some time lay in a direction in which we could see both branches of the lake; then, swerving to one side, we passed through miniature mountain passes, green meadows with many water-mills, and pretty villages embowered in trees. There was somewhat of northern dampness in the atmosphere, but its effect on the pasturage was certainly satisfactory, the turf in many places being almost worthy of the Emerald Isle. As the hours sped on, our appetite began to make itself felt; we had brought nothing with us, not even sandwiches, and the drive was lengthening beyond our original calculations. The wayside inns were practically useless, the wine was like vinegar, and bread not always forthcoming. At length, at a place where we changed horses for the last time before reaching Milan, and after we had been enjoying the beauties of nature for ten hours on an empty stomach, we found something eatable, though not in a superfluous quantity. fluous quantity. Not long after, we were regaling ourselves on a banquet of fish fried in oil, and an adequate supply of bread and butter, served in the irreproachable Milan hotel, once the palace of a fallen family, and where our privato dining-room had formerly been the Sala di Giustézza, in which feudal lords sat dispensing justice to their clan of retainers or hangers-on! And with this, farewell to the queen of Italian lakes!

ONE thousand three hundred and ninety-seven years ago, the city of Cadiz was startled by rumors of the presence of a mysterious person, whose irrepressible activity was the fear and wonder of many. Perhaps, from a certain dusk which pervaded his countenance, it came to be gossipped that he was an Indian by birth, and had arrived in Spain by way of Africa. If, however, his color was no fair sign of his origin, the manuscripts found in his apartments betrayed his affinity with the Oriental stoics. Be this as it may, the devices and doings of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma had so impressed the traditions of Cadiz that the maker of ballads, Gil Cantor, sung of him in language the puzzling quaintness of which we have endeavored to smooth out as follows into modern English:

Oft have I seen, e'en now I see,
The presence I would ban;
'Tis he, the Afreet of my dreams,
The India-rubber man!

I pick him out among the crowd
As nimbly he goes by,
And points his gum-elastic nose,

And blinks his vitreous eye.

'Tis said he prowls the streets at night,
And, spite of the police,

With India-rubber case commits
Ingenious robberies.

Abounding Mephistopheles

On stealthy tiptoe comes,

And, as he chokes you for your purse,
He shows his frightful gums.

Avoid, my friend, his outstretched hand-
That hand of gum and glue;
And, ere he catches you, beware
The friend of caoutchouc.

Fate tries in vain to crush him out,
She studies how to kill;
But, no-this grim contortionist
Is standing, springing still.

One day, ten ruffians clubbed him down-
He wasn't dead for that;

Up, grinning in their faces, sorang
That horrid acrobat.

An agile politician, now

The public back he mounts, And much the rabble like him for His gumption and his bounce. He rises with the rise of stocks, No crisis keeps him down; And, dancing on a dividend, He goes about the town.

He pesters busy men of trade,

And on their beds at night
A gum-elastic nightmare sits,
And will not quit their sight.

Oft have I marvelled at the man,
And searched his meaning more;
So many people set him down
A terror and a bore.

Elastic, everlasting soul !

In gloomy ages back

They must have tried to stretch him out A martyr on the rack!

Victor, alas! and victim he

His wretched fate I scan;
And much I pity, if I scorn,
The injured rubber-man.

Doubtless the whimsical Gil has here turned a venerable legend to a subtle purpose of satire; for it appears, from a number of traditions, that Don Ruy distinguished himself as a trader, courtier, gallant, and knight-errant. He grew rich, because no debtor ever got rid of him till payment, and, as a cavalier, the grace and flexibility of his carriage and motions were the admiration of ladies. Thus it was that, though denounced by jealous grandees as one sprung from the vulgar, and, in fact, an upstart, his first appearance at court was a triumph, and all the more so from the great ease of his genuflexion, and the modest liveliness of his manner and deportment. The fact, however, which first drew

the general attention of Cadiz to the new cavalier was an open insult which, it was alleged, he had cast upon the proud escutcheon of the fair Doña Gumesinda Vinagrilla de Miraflores de Albujuera y Albuquerque, Countess Delamar and Marchioness Delcampo.

The story runs that the marble heart of Doña Gumesinda had never yielded except to the blandishments of the bold and nimble Don Ruy. One day, addressing her at the court in terms of insinuating gallantry, he stretched out his arms with so fine a gesture of command and entreaty that the noble maid all at once resolved that no one should win her love save the flexible and fascinating philosopher; being well assured of the softness of his heart and the tenacity of his affections. Good right, then, had Don Ruy to stand one night under her leafy bower, and, according to the fashion of the times, sing a piteous ditty:

Mi corazon es suave
Como la goma dulce,
Mis lagrimas se corren
Con la resina triste ;
Oid mi cancion elastica,
Oid mi cancion, señora! *

Having thus appealed to the fair Gumesinda, he ascended at a leap into a leafy refuge formed by the vines and trees near her window, and prepared to finish his song, when he felt that one of his legs was being pulled violently from below.

My heart is soft

As sweetest gum, My tears they flow With resin sad; Hear my elastic song, Hear my song, lady!

A

Nothing daunted, he allowed his covert enemies to pull it quite to the ground, while, still seated near his lady's bower, he sang in strains that moved her heart to more purpose than his disturbers had moved his limbs. Tired of their vain attempt to budge him, they let go of his leg, to their no small surprise at the suddenness of its springing back. Immediately he leaped down, and laid about him; and, though twice he was hit in vital parts by the infuriated relatives, and, in fact, should have been run through, he was so invulnerably spry and spirited that he killed a dozen or more of them before he embraced the terrified Gumesinda with his outstretched arms, and carried her away, bending somewhat under his burden. large force of alguacils barred his path, however, and he was brought, not without trouble, before the chief magistrate of the city, who, being also a relative of Doña Gumesinda, put him immediately to the rack. Vain, and all too vain, was the cruel act of torture to extenuate the body and bones, or conquer the irrepressible being, of Don Ruy Gomia de Goma. Gliding on tiptoe behind his jailers, he one day escaped, and in the night danced a fandango on the bed and body of the Governor of Cadiz. Who was he? the good folk of Cadiz asked themselves time and again. Some few visionaries said that he was the spirit of free inquiry, that could never be put down or put out; and other wiseacres averred that he was the veritable spirit of mischief, always upturning and turning up.

HISTORICAL SKETCHES. Third Series. By John Henry Newman, D.D. THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY, defined and illustrated. By the same. London: Basil Montagu Pickering. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It would perhaps be proper to say that the revised edition of Dr. Newman's writings bears the same relation to their original publication that fulfilment and prophecy sustain to each other. In the one we see the germ, the promise, and in the other the matured and mellowed fruit. In the former, we foresee the inevitable result of the principles set forth, on a mind so single and intent on the truth. And it is because they do not reflect the perfect image of the truth he now holds that he would blot some of the lines therein written. In the latter, readers will again meet the same wise simplicity and transparency of style which charmed them before, and which mark all the products of his pen.

As a study of diction, Dr. Newman's works are richly worth whatever they cost. We doubt if any author of the time has done more to bring both writers and speakers down from the stilts formerly thought essential in the expression of thought. Almost unconsciously, the leaven of his pure idiomatic English has worked, until its influence is shown in a large number of written and spoken productions, both at home and abroad. As a reflex of a truthful, honest soul, deeply solicitous for the spiritual welfare of his kind, they have a pathos and unction which will have an ever-increasing influence as time goes on.

The first of the above-mentioned volumes embraces the matter which bore the title, The Church of the Fathers, on its first appearance in the British Magazine; and the latter was published as The Scope and Nature of University Education.

SACRED ELOQUENCE; OR, THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PREACHING. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter. Troy: P. J. Dooley. 1873.

This work is too well known to require any notice at our hands, having received the warmest commendation of the hierarchy and press on its first appearance in England. While this edition will hardly please those who are fastidious in the matter of print and paper, it presents an argument to the pockets of purchasers which many of our seminarians will highly appreciate. Our clerical readers are already aware that the Sacred Eloquence was prepared for the author's own class in the Missionary College of All Hallows, and resulted from the necessity felt for a work adapted to English-speaking students in that department.