was the time. Presently the thunder died down, and my little master got drowsy, so taking the blanket off the donkey I laid it on the ground and he was soon asleep. The rain fell steadily and I was getting drowsy myself when a window was raised on the side of the hut overlooking the valley, and now the voices reached me plainly and I could not get away from them without making my presence known. "Think twice, Lénore,' he said. 'I have come far to see you ; but if your answer is not ready I will go away and come again.’

No, it must be settled now,' she answered. 'I have dallied too long with temptation. I hoped and I prayed that faith would come to you, but it has not come, and I cannot and will not marry a man who believes nothing.'

"You do not love me,' he said.

"She took a step nearer to him, only one step, and then paused. 'I love you so much,' she breathed, in a low, passionate, intense voice, that it is like madness. Against my love for you I may be, and am, powerless, but not against the indulgence of it.'

"Ah, Lénore,' he answered, 'think how happy we can be. I shall never interfere with your religion; in all that concerns it you will be free. But as regards my own position I have had to tell you the truth. I have gone with you to church so as to be near you, but I cannot accept baptism without being a dishonest man. But think,' he urged, as she said nothing, 'how little that matters, after all. Look around in the world; how many you see who are happy without religion, and who lead useful lives.'

"Then the Señorita's sweet voice spoke again, so sad it was and almost hopeless. They have nothing to lose,' she said, 'because they have never known possession. With us it is different. Our faith is a pearl beyond price. How could you and I be one if we were not one in that religion which is above all and beyond all to me?' "You should be a nun,' was his answer.

"No, John,' she said, very low, this divine love, high and eternal, can exist in the world. Some day you will know it, but not now. To urge me any further is useless. Now I am very weary and

would bid you go.'

"Not to leave you alone here, Lénore.'

"'Yes,' she replied; 'no harm can happen to me. I would have

a little time to pray at the shrine of our Lady, and then I can go

home alone. I often came here by myself in the days before you came.'

"Her voice trembled and almost broke, but I seemed to feel that she pulled herself together, like the proud, brave woman she was; as to the young Señor, he was divided between love and pain.

"If I do not believe in your God, Lénore,' he said, 'I believe in you,' and then he seemed to kneel down at her feet, and I, as it were, saw her lay her white hand on his dark head.

"Heaven bless you, my love,' she said, ' and grant you that faith which is above all, and beyond all gifts.'

"Amen,' he answered, much to my surprise, and then he leaped from the window, and I heard his rapid step down the mountain trail, as if his only safety lay in flight.

"But the poor Señorita! Now that he was gone, her strength seemed to leave her. I heard her lie down on the bare earth of the hut. "O my God!' she moaned, 'I would give my life to win his soul.'

་་

"I knew by the silence that followed that she was praying, and then I remembered that to reach the shrine of our Lady she must pass the shed, and would see me there, so I knew I must leave at once. The rain had ceased. Though my little master still slept, I gathered him up in my arms, and taking the donkey by the bridle, we left the quarry as softly as possible. I do not think the young Señorita heard us; but then-I never knew.

"Something urged me to get home as quickly as possible, and leaving my young master, I started back to the quarry with the donkey, thinking to meet the Señorita as if by accident.

"I would I did not have to relate what follows Caro, but so it was, and the good God knew what was best. I was only at the foot of the trail when I saw another storm was coming up, such as often happens in these regions, when one fierce disturbance of the elements will follow on the heels of another. I hurried on, but the storm broke, with ten times more fury than the other, the donkey, too, was frightened, and needed repeated blows to urge him on. Then I heard a sound behind me of a rapid springing step that seemed to take no heed of the rain, or to be held back by the wind.

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Santos,' he shouted, as he came near-'Santos,' and then he told me, what I already knew-that the Señorita was up there on the mountain, alone in the fearful storm.

"It was just as we got to the top of the trail that we saw we were too late, there was a bewildering peal of thunder, and then flash after flash of vivid light, that seemed to play all around the shrine of the

Madre Santisima to which clung a slender white robed figure, and when it passed, and we sprang forward, we saw her lying theredead.

"Alas! the poor Señor, he knelt down with the calmness of despair, feeling her heart and pulse and rubbing her hands, while all the time I knew it was useless. There were no marks on her lovely face that in death seemed more pure and holy than ever, like some great Saint of God; but on the back of her head and neck was a scar, and the lightning had scorched her dress. Death had come instantly and without conscious pain.

"We bore her home and laid her away to the chanting of the Alleluia and the De Profundis. So beautiful she looked, Caro! Her tender hands clasped, as if somewhere her soul were interceding for him she so loved. And the young Señor? Ah, yes! he became a loyal Catholic, and a great priest. In the cities he worked, among the poor, the sick, the unfortunate; and thousands came to hear him when he raised his voice to comfort, to warn, to command; for indeed he spoke as one who knew all our sorrow, as one who had himself felt the wound-prints of Christ, and the sword that pierced the heart of the Blessed Mother. Often at night when I am out on the plain, and repose does not come, for I am old and cannot sleep as in my youth, I look up at the shining firmament, whose vast dome forms my canopy, and sometimes it seems as if all the stars left their orbit, and circled in one pure brilliant arc, and within this magic circle, now faint and shadowy, and anon clear to view, will appear the divinely tender face of the Mother of Sorrows, and near her-sorrowful no more, but united for time and eternity-the Señor, Padre John, and his lost love, the Señorita Lénore."

G. P. CURTIS.

INSINCERITY IN ANGLICAN CONTROVERSY.

A FEW days ago a friend brought me a couple of tracts from a neighboring Ritualistic church. Their titles are: "The Reserved Sacrament," and "About Incense:" their object to convince Episcopalians that the reservation of the bread of the Lord's supper and the ceremonial use of incense are not contrary to the mind of the Episcopal Church, but rather in harmony with it.

These tracts are not of great importance in themselves, for the domestic controversies of Episcopalianism are of narrow interest. But since their author had set himself a task as difficult as the demonstrating of Anglican continuity, and may reasonably be supposed to have availed himself of all the helps to be gathered from writers of his own school, it occurred to me that they might contain striking examples of Ritualistic methods of controversy. I was not deceived in my expec

tation, as my readers will see.

Insincerity is not a pleasant word. To be accused of it does not soothe the ruffled spirit. Nevertheless, it is quite possible for insincerity in some particulars to co-exist with a general uprightness. Nobody would like to assert the flawless integrity of Wilkins Micawber; still, on the other hand, everybody will admit that he was an honest man. One does not refuse to take in the more important affairs of life the word of a man utterly untrustworthy with respect to his prowess in athletic sports, his skill in fishing and hunting, or his ancestry, In these the objective truth does not correspond with what he would gladly have it; and so his yearnings after the impossible lead him into inveracity, and may even bring him to a vague notion that the phantasms of his disordered imagination are the expression of outward realities. He is a man of honor. But he has acquired a habit of insincerity in certain matters, much as George IV. became wholly unreliable concerning his personal history during the time of the Waterloo Campaign. His weakness is his misfortune. The obstinacy of facts that will not be moulded according to his abnormal desires is responsible for it.

Such, too, may be the case with controversialists of the Ritualistic subdivision of Anglicanism. They have undertaken to defend what all the world sees clearly to be indefensible. Like a fisherman who, having whipped an empty stream all day long, fills his creel at a stall on

the way home, they are driven by the exigencies of their case to shifts that deserve pity rather than blame. I am about to charge them with insincerity in argumentation; and although they are outspoken in accusing Catholics of the deliberate and malicious committing of this greatest of crimes against literary virtue, it is my earnest desire to excuse them as far as possible from all moral guilt, and to profess my belief that they may be honorable men, and worthy of implicit confidence in every other respect.

Each tract is begun with a Sacrament" has the following: men, and he shall dwell with them; and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God." (Rev. XXI. 3). "About Incense" opens with this : "From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my Name shall be great among the gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my Name and a pure offering; for my Name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord." (Mal. 1. 11). By quoting these the author seems to insinuate that he has Holy Scripture on his side against the Low Churchmen. He might know, however, that the "tabernacle" of the former quotation, is not the tabernacle of reservation on the altar, but the Church Triumphant, which, as regards men, is God's special dwelling place, and which, when the new heaven and the new earth shall have replaced what now are, will be that of all the elect. The latter text is a prophecy of the Holy Eucharist. The offering of incense, mentioned in it, is a strictly sacrificial act. It expresses the Divine Sacrifice no less than "the pure oblation"; and therefore has nothing to do with a ceremonial use of incense Hence in their literal sense, these texts have no bearing on the question at issue; and can be applied to them, only by the largest accommodation.

text of Scripture. "The Reserved "Behold the tabernacle of God with

The author of the tracts will reply, no doubt, that he intends to make this accommodation. Let us see then whether he can do so. An accommodated interpretation of Scripture supposes two things, a foundation in the text itself, and an aptness in the term of the accommodation to receive the application. Thus the common Protestant accommodations of, "The word of the Lord was precious in those days" (I. Kings III. 1), "Search the Scriptures" (John V. 39), "Touch not, taste not, handle not," (Col. II. 21) are all vicious, because without foundation; while from a non-Catholic point of view, the accommodation of Genesis XLI. 55 to St. Joseph is intolerable because, according to non-Catholic ideas, the head of the Holy Family