6 Beneath the royal tent the bier was guarded night and day, Where with a halo round his head the Christian champion lay; That talisman upon his breast-what may that marvel be Which kept his ardent soul through life from every error free! Approach! behold! nay, worship there the image of his love, The heavenly Queen who reigneth all the sacred hosts above, Nor wonder that around his bier there lingers such a light, For the spotless one that sleepeth was the Blessed Virgin's Knight! 21. THE YOUNG CATHOLIC. ABBÉ MARTINEZ. ABBÉ MARTINEZ-a native of France. His writings bear the stamp of the French national genius. His works are worthy of being ranked next to those of Moehler and Balmez. His "Religion in Society," as a popular manual against the discordant but numerous errors of the day, is unrivalled 1. WHAT commands his attention most in the temple, is the mysterious person of the priest, the spiritual father of the whole parish, and with whom he is about to form the most intimate relations,-at catechism, where, during many years, he is to receive, with children of his own age, the milk of the divine word; or in the confessional, where he will reveal the most secret movements of his heart. 2. It is to the priest he is indebted—and he is reminded of it by the sight of the sacred font-for the sublime title of the child of God and of the Church; it is from his sacred hand that he awaits the mysterious sacrament which is to unite him intimately to his Creator. Great is the influence of his pastor over his spiritual children. Napoleon, on his death-bed, confessed to his companions in exile, that the presence of the priest had always spoken to his heart. Here let every one recall the impression of his early days. 3. But to the eye of the young Catholic, the religious hori. zon exteuds, and gradually reveals itself with age. Around his parish other parishes are gathered. The common father of priests and people-the priest emphatically Бо the bishop, appears in the midst of joyful chants. His sacred hand touches the young brow, and the union, before so close, of our youth with the mystical body of the Church becomes still closer. 4. Beyond and above bishops, universal veneration points out to him the Bishop of bishops, the universal pontiff, seated upon the immovable chair of St. Peter, and forming of the one hundred and sixty millions of Catholics, scattered through. out the world, one only body, animated with the same spirit, nourished with the same doctrine, moving towards the same end. 5. He sees in the clear light of history this vast society, which no visible hand has formed or supports; and for the destruction of which, all the known forces of the physical and moral world have conspired,-surviving all human societies, resisting the most frightful tempests, and constantly bringing the immense majority of Christians into subjection to its laws so unyielding to the passions of men. 6. Who are the enemies, in every age, rising up against the House of the living God? He sees odious tyrants, the enemies of all restraint; proud dreamers, who pretend to substitute their thought of a day for universal faith; sectarians without a past, without a future, with no tie to bind them to each other but their common hatred to Catholic society ;-and all confessing, by the name they bear, their descent from one man, and their religious illegitimacy. 7. What a powerful guarantee against the assaults of doubt is presented to the young Catholic by this fact, which is as clear as the sun, and the evidence of which is more convincing every step we advance in the knowledge of the present and the past. He cannot refuse to believe in the Church, without aying: "In matters of religion I see more plainly, I alone, than a hundred and sixty millions of my cotemporaries and the eight or ten thousand millions of Catholics who preceded me, all as interested as I am in knowing the truth, and most of them with better advantages of becoming acquainted with it." 22. THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR. LAMB. CHABLES LAMB, a native of England, died in 1834, aged 59. He was both prose and poetical writer, but his fame rests chiefly on his Essays of ELIA; these are distinguished by a most delicate vein of humor and exquisite pathos. The following extract is from a series of his papers, written with much humor and taste, against the truth of certain popular proverbs-tho bject in the present instance being, "Home is home, be it ever so homely." 1 THE innocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that coL dition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. "Poor people," said a sensible old nurse to us once, "do not bring up their children; they drag them up." The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel, is transformed betimes into a premature, reflecting person. No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss up and down, to humor it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. it 2. It has been prettily said that " a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing; the return to its little baby tricks, and efforts to engage, attention, bitter, ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses; it was a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, the costlier plaything or the cheaper off-hand contrivance to divert the child, the prat tled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome fictions, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passions of young wonder. 3. It was never sung to; no one ever told it a tale of the aursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as an object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labor. It is the rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times. 4. It makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that age), of the promised sight or play, of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman-before it was a child. It has learned to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the home of the very poor is no home? 23. MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE. WILDE. R. H. WILDE was born in 1789; he passed his childhood in Baltimore, and subsequently removed to Georgia; and, although engaged in law and political life, devoted a sufficient portion of his time to literature to make it evident that he had the talents to assume a proud position in its ranks. He died, in 1847, a most edifying death, in the bosom of the Catholic Church. 1. My life is like the Summer rose, That opens to the morning sky, Is scatter'd on the ground to die! 9. My life is like the Autumn leaf That trembles in the moon's pale ray; Its hold is frail, its date is brief, Restless, and soon to pass away! 8. My life is like the prints, which feet All trace will vanish from the sand! All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud moans the sea,— 24. THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. FABER. FREDERICK WLLIAM FABER, one of the Oxford divines, is a man of great terary attainments. His works, "Growth in Holiness," "Blessed Sacrament," " Mary at the Foot of the Cross," and the "Conferences," show that he is eminently an ascetic writer. He is also a poet of high order:— "The Cheswell Water-Lily," "Sir Launcelot," 29 26 Rosary," "Styrian Lake," and many other poems, rank among the noblest and purest of the English bards; he awakens anew the lyre of the martyr Southwell and the pious Canon Crashaw.-Metropolitan. 1. LET us suppose it to be the Feast of Corpus Christi. We have risen with one glad thought uppermost in our minds. It gives a color to every thing around about us. It is health to us even if we are not well, and sunshine though the skies be dull. At first there is something of disappointment to us, when we see our dear country wearing the same toilsome look of commonplace labor and of ordinary traffic. We feel there is something wrong, something out of harmony in this. 2. Poor London! if it knew God, and could keep holydays for God, how it might rejoice on such a day, letting the chains of work fall from off its countless slaves of Mammon, and giving one whole sun to the deep, childlike joy in a mystery which is |