they hid themselves in a cave. Being discovered, the tyrant ordered that they should roll great stones to the mouth of the cavern, in order that they might die of hunger. They, embracing each other, fell asleep.

2. And it came to pass in the thirtieth year of the reign of the Emperor Theodosius, that there broke out that dangerous heresy which denied the resurrection of the dead. The pious emperor, being greatly afflicted, retired to the interior of his palace, putting on sackcloth and covering his head with ashes: therefore, God took pity on him, and restored his faith by bringing back these just men to life-which came to pass in this manner:

3. A certain inhabitant of Ephesus, repairing to the top of Mount Cœlian to build a stable for his cattle, discovered the cavern; and when the light penetrated therein, the sleepers awoke, believing that their slumbers had only lasted for a single night. They rose up, and Malchus, one of the number, was dispatched to the city to purchase food. He, advancing cautiously and fearfully, beheld to his astonishment the image of the cross surmounting the city gate. He went to another gate, and there he found another cross. He rubbed his eyes, believing himself still asleep, or in a dream; and entering the city, he heard everywhere the name of Christ pronounced openly and he was more and more confounded.

4. When he repaired to the baker's, he offered in payment an ancient coin of the time of the Emperor Decius, and they looked at him with astonishment, thinking that he had found a hidden treasure. And when they accused him, he knew not what to reply. Seeing his confusion, they bound him and dragged him through the streets with contumely; and he looked round, seeking some one whom he knew, but not a face I all the crowd was familiar to him.

5. Being brought before the bishop, the truth was disclosed, to the great amazement of all. The bishop, the governor, and the principal inhabitants of the city, followed him to the entrance of the cavern, where the other six youths were found. Their faces had the freshness of roses, and the brightness of a bly light was around them. Theodosius himself, being in

forraed of this great wonder, hastened to the cavern; and one of the sleepers said to him, "Believe us, O Emperor! for we have been raised before the Day of Judgment, in order that thou mightest trust in the Resurrection of the Dead!" Anu having said this, they bowed their heads and gave up their spirits to God. They had slept in their cavern for 196 years

6. Gibbon, in quoting this tradition, observes that it may be traced to within half a century of the date of the miracle. About the end of the sixth century, it was translated from the Syriac into the Latin, and was spread over the whole of western Christendom. Nor was it confined to the Christian world. Mahomet has introduced it, as a divine revelation, into the Koran. It has penetrated into Abyssinia. It has been found in Scandinavia ;-in fact, in the remotest regions of the Old World this singular tradition, in one form or another, appears to have been known and accepted.

7. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, extended in their cave side by side, occur perpetually in the miniatures, ancient sculp ture, and stained glass of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Thus they are represented in the frieze of the chapel of Edward the Confessor, at Westminster. In general, the name of each is written overhead.

14.-TIMES GO BY TURNS.

SOUTHWELL.

ROBERT SOUTHWELL was born, A. D. 1560, and underwent his martyrdom, A. D. 1595. Of all the hundred and twenty-eight Catholic priests put to death in Elizabeth's reign, not one was more worthy of pious commemoration. Descended from an ancient family in Norfolk, he was educated on the Continent, and became a Jesuit at Rome. While on the English mis sion, he resided chiefly at the house of Anne, eountess of Arundel, who died in the Tower of London. He was thrown into prison in 1592, wher he remained three years, during which time he was put on the rack ten Beveral times. Nothing could be proved against him, except what he coufessed:-that he was a Catholic priest, and prepared to die for his faith. Such was the condition of the dungeon in which Southwell suffered his long captivity, that his own father petitioned that he might be released from it, although but to die. On the 21st of February, 1595, he was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, being subjected, during a prolonged death, to those horrible tortures commonly undergone by the martyrs of that reign, tortures to which he replied only by repeatedly making the

Bign of the cross. Besides his poems, which possess a solid energy of dietion, as well as a noble spiritual elevation, Southwell left behind him two works in prose, which abound in beauty and pathos, Mary Mu plalene's Funeral Tears, and the Triumphs over Death.

1. THE lopped tree in time may grow again,

Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower,
The sorriest wight may find release of pain,

The driest soil suck in some moistening shower.
Time goes by turns, and chances change by cours
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

2. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow;
She draws her favors to the lowest ebb;
Her tides have equal times to come and go;

Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

3. Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring;.
Not endless night, yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing;

The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus, with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.
4. A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
That net that holds no great takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are cross'd;

Few all they need, but none have all they wish.
Unmingled joys here to no man befall;
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.

15. CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN THE NORTHWEST.

EXTRACTS FROM BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

GEORGE BANCROFT has written the only work that deserves the title of story of the United States. From a Catholic point of view some objec tions can be made to the first volumes, but on the whole it is a noble monument of the genius of the author and the genius of his country.-Dr Brownson.

Bancroft was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3, 1800.

1. Religious zeal not less than commercial ambition had influenced France to recover Canada; and Champlain, its governor, whose imperishable name will rival with posterity the fame of Smith and Hudson, ever disinterested and compassionate, full of honor and probity, of ardent devotion and burning zeal, esteemed "the salvation of a soul worth more then the conquest of an empire."

2. Thus it was neither commercial enterprise nor royal am bition which carried the power of France into the heart of our Continent; the motive was religion. Religious enthusiasm founded Montreal, made a conquest of the wilderness of the upper lakes, and explored the Mississippi. The Roman (Catholic) Church created for Canada its altars, its hospitals, and its seminaries. . . . The first permanent efforts of French enterprise in colonizing America preceded any permanent English settlement on the Potomac.

...

3. Years before the pilgrims landed in Cape Cod, the Roman (Catholic) Church had been planted, by missionaries from France, in the eastern moiety of Maine; and Le Caron, an unambitious Franciscan, had penetrated the land of the Mohawks, had passed to the north of the hunting-grounds of the Wyandots, and, bound by his vows to the life of a beggar, had, on foot, or paddling a bark canoe, gone onward, and still onward, taking alms of the savages, till he reached the rivers of Lake Huron.

4. While Quebec contained scarcely fifty inhabitants, priests of the Franciscan Order-Le Caron, Fiel, Lagard --had labored for years as missionaries in Upper Canada, or made their way to the neutral Huron tribe that dwelt o the waters of the Niagara.

5. To confirm the missions, the first measure was the estab lishment of a college in New France, and the parents of th Marquis de Gamache, pleased with his pious importunity, assented to his entering the Order of the Jesuits, and added from their ample fortunes the means of endowing a Seminary for education at Quebec. Its foundation was laid, under happy auspices, in 1635, just before Champlain passed from among the living; and two years before the emigration of John Har

vard, and one year before the General Court of Massachusetts had made provisions for a College.

6. The fires of charity were at the same time enkindled. The Duchess D'Aguillon, aided by her uncle, the Cardinal Richelieu, endowed a public hospital dedicated to the Son of God, whose blood was shed in mercy for all mankind. Its doors were opened, not only to the sufferers among the emigrants, but to the maimed, the sick, and the blind, of any of the numerous tribes between the Kennebec and Lake Superior; it relieved misfortune without asking its lineage: From the hospital nuns of Dieppe, three were selected, the youngest but twenty-two, to brave the famine and rigors of Canada in their patient mission of benevolence.

7. The same religious enthusiasm, inspiring Madame de la Peltier, a young and opulent widow of Alençon, with the aid of a nun of Dieppe and two others from Tours, established the Ursuline Convent for girls. . . . . Is it wonderful that the natives were touched by a benevolence which their poverty and squalid misery could not appall? Their education was attempted; and the venerable ash-tree still lives beneath which Mary of the Incarnation, so famed for chastened piety, genius, and good judgment, toiled, though in vain, for the education of the Huron children.

8. The life of the missionary on Lake Huron was simple and uniform. The earliest hours, from four to eight, were absorbed in private prayer. The day was given to schools, visits, instructions in the catechism, and a service for proselytes. Sometimes, after the manner of St. Francis Xavier, Brebeuf would walk through the village and its environs ringing a little bell, and inviting the Huron braves and counsellors to a conference. There, under the shady forest, the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic faith were subject to discussion.

9. Yet the efforts of the Jesuits were not limited to the Huron race. Within thirteen years, the remote wilderness was visited by forty-two missionaries, members of the Society of Jesus, besides eighteen others, who, if not initiated, were yet chosen men, ready to shed their blood for their faith. Twice or thrice a year they all assembled at St. Mary's; during