And ye'll sometimes come and see me where I am lowly laid;

I shall not forget ye, mother, I shall hear ye where ye

pass,

With your feet above my head in the long and pleasan

grass.

♦ I have been wild and wayward; but you'll forgive me now

You'll kiss me, my own mother, upon my cheek and brow: Nay, nay; you must not weep, nor let your grief be wild; You should not fret for me, mother, you have another child

Oh, I will come again, mother, from out my resting-place; Though you'll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your face:

Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what you say,

And be often, often with you, when you think I'm far away

5. Good-night, good-night! When I have said good-night for evermore,

And ye see me carried out from the threshold of the door, Don't let Effie come and see me till my grave be growing

green;

She'll be a better child to you than ever I have been.

She'll find my garden tools upon the granary floor;

Let her take 'em, they are hers; I shall never garden

more.

But tell her, when I'm gone, to train the rosebush that J

set,

About the parlor window and the box of mignonette.

6. Good-night, sweet mother! call me when it begins to

dawn;

All night I lie awake, but I fall asleep at morn.

But I would see the sun rise upon the glad new yea;

So, if you're waking, call me

call me early, mother dear?

ANECDOTE OF KING CHARLES II. OF SPAIN. 361

123. ANECDOTE OF KING CHARLES II. OF SPAIN.

CATHOLIC WEEKLY INSTRUCTOR.

1. On the 20th of February, 1685, this king went to take a drive in the environs of Madrid. The day was remarkably fine, and the place was crowded with people. Suddenly, a priest in surplice, attended by only a boy, approached; and the king, doubting whether he was going to give the holy communion, or only extreme unction, questioned him, and was answered that he was bearing the holy Viaticum to a poor man in a cottage at some distance, and had been able to procure no better attendance, owing to the fineness of the day, which had left no one at home.

2. In an instant, the king opened the carriage-door, and leaping out, fell upon his knees and adored the Blessed Eucharist; then, with most respectful words, entreated the priest to take his place, shut the carriage-door, then walked at the side, with his hat in his hand. The way was long and tedious, but the good king went it cheerfully, and arrived at the cottage, opened himself the carriage, handed down the priest, and knelt while he passed. He entered into the poor house, and after the Holy Sacrament had been administered, went up to the bed, consoled with kind words the dying man, gave him an abundant alms, and made ample provision for an only daughter whom he left.

3. He now insisted on the priest again taking his place in the carriage. But the good curate, seeing how fatigued the king was, entreated him not to think of walking back, and at length, yielding to his importunities, he consented to go in the second carriage, while the priest went alone in the first. When they reached Madrid, the king got out, and again took his place, uncovered, by the carriage door.

4. But by this time the whole city was in commotion. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament came forth with lighted tapers, and the nobility came forth in crowds, to follow the footsteps of their sovereign. In magnificent state, the procession reached the church of St. Mark, where benediction was given, and when the king came out, a vast multitude as

sembled there, greeted him with a burst of enthusiastic ap plause, which showed how far from lowering himself in his subjects' eyes, is a sovereign who pays due homage to the King of kings.

134. SPIRITUAL ADVANTAGES OF CATHOLIC CITIES.

K. H. DIGBY.

1. In a modern city men in the evening leave their houses for a banquet; in a Catholic city they go out for the benedic tion. The offices of the Church, morning and evening, and even the night instructions, were not wanting to those who were still living in the world; and if the intervals were passed in study, or other intellectual exercise, it was a life scholastic and almost monastical. The number of churches always open, the frequent processions, and the repeated instructions of the clergy, made the whole city like a holy place, and were, without doubt, the means of making multitudes to choose the strait entrance, and to walk in the narrow way. There are many

who have no idea of the perfection in which great numbers, in every rank of society, pass their lives in Catholic cities, not even excepting that capital which has of late been made the nurse of so much ill.

2. But wherever the modern philosophy has created, as it were, an atmosphere, that which is spiritual is so confined, closed, and isolated, that its existence is hardly felt or known. The world appears to reign with undisputed possession, and that, too, as if it had authority to reign. And yet there are tender and passionate souls who have need of being unceasingly preserved in the path of virtue by the reign of religious exercises, who, when deprived of the power of approaching at the hour their inclinations may suggest to the sources of grace, are exposed to great perils, and who perhaps sometimes de incur in consequence, eternal death.

"Ah me, how many perils do enfold

The righteous ran, to make him daily fall !"

3. House of Prayer, why close thy gates? Is there an hour in all nature when the heart should be weary of prayer? when man whom God doth deign to hear in thee as his temple, should have no incense to offer before thy altar, no tear to confide to thee? Mark the manners, too, of the multitude that loiters in the public ways of every frequented town. See, how it meekly kneels to receive a benediction from the bishop who happens to pass by; and when the dusk comes on, and the lamp of the sanctuary begins to burn brighter, and to arrest the eye of the passenger through the opened doors of churches, hearken to the sweet sound of innumerable bells which rises from all sides, and see what a change of movement takes place among this joyous and innocent people :

4. The old men break off their conversation on the benches at the doors, and take out their rosaries; the children snatch up their books and jackets from the green in token that play is over; the women rise from their labor of the distaff; and all together proceed into the church, when the solemn litany Loon rises with its abrupt and crashing peal, till the bells all toll out their iast and loudest tone, and the adorable Victim is raised over the prostrate people, who then issue forth and retire to their respective homes in sweet peace, and with an expression of the utmost thankfulness and joy.

5. The moderns in vain attempt to account for the difference of manners in these Catholic cities, and in their own, by referring to their present prosperity and accumulation of wealth; these cities in point of magnificence incomparably surpassed theirs, and with respect to riches, they were not superior, for peace was in their stre igth, and abundance in their towers.

135. ON LETTER WRITING.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

1. EPISTOLARY as well as personal intercourse is, according to the mode in which it is carried on, one of the pleasantest

or most irksome things in the world. It is delightful to drop In on a friend without the solemn prelude of invitation and acceptance, to join a social circle, where we may suffer our minds and hearts to relax and expand in the happy consciousaess of perfect security from invidious remark and carping criticism; where we may give the reins to the sportiveness of innocent fancy, or the enthusiasm of warm-hearted feeling; where we may talk sense or nonsense, (I pity people who cannot talk nonsense), without fear of being looked into icicles by the coldness of unimaginative people, living pieces of clockwork, who dare not themselves utter a word, or lift up a little finger, without first weighing the important point in the hair balance of propriety and good breeding.

2. It is equally delightful to let the pen talk freely, and unpremeditatedly, and to one by whom we are sure of being understood; but a formal letter, like a ceremonious morning visit, is tedious alike to the writer and receiver; for the most part spun out with unmeaning phrases, trite observations, complimentary flourishes, and protestations of respect and attachment, so far not deceitful, as they never deceive anybody. Oh, the misery of having to compose a set, proper, well-worded, correctly-pointed, polite, elegant epistle one that must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, as methodically arranged and portioned out as the several parts of a sermon under three heads, or the three gradations of shade in a school-girl's first landscape !

3. For my part, I would rather be set to beat hemp, or weed in a turnip field, than to write such a letter exactly every month, or every fortnight, at the precise point of time from the date of our correspondent's last letter, that he or she wrote after the reception of ours; as if one's thoughts bubbled up to the well-head, at regular periods, a pint at a time, to be bottled off for immediate use. Thought! what has thought to do in such a correspondence? It murders thought, quenches fancy, wastes time, spoils paper, wears out innocent goose-quills. "I'd rather be a kitten, and cry mew! than one of those same " prosing letter-mongers.

4. Surely in this age of invention something may be struck