Life in City and Country.

It is very strange that children raised in the country, so much long for the bustle of city life, and before they are capable of distinguishing the good or evil results of the change, betake themselves away from their homes of innocence in the country, to join the army of street-corner loafers, who, beg, steal, and tramp for a livelihood. The average young man or woman who leaves the country to live in the city badly misses his or her vocation. In the country, few but can make an honest living, while every city is overcrowded with men and women trying to keep the wolf from the door without success.

Again, the dangers that beset life in the city, surrounded as one will be with every species of temptation, urging on to deeds of violence, of drink, of theft, and the other crimes, the result of idleness and bad company, the too frequent companions of city life, should deter the uninitiated from leaving the quite scenes of rural life to mingle in the city's strife. The crowded condition of the city, the impure atmosphere ari ing from over-crowded dwellings and tenements, tend to shorten life and beget habits of dissipation foreign to country homes. Many a young man and woman too, whose future life in the country was bright in anticipation, was sorrowfully wrecked by removal to city scenes. The life and surroundings in the country may not be as entertaining nor as fruitful of amusement as in the city, but one thing is certain : it does not lead to vice as quickly as the attractions that surround life in the city, where money is lavishly spent to attract the unwary to spend his money and acquire bad habits.

All these dangers, and more than we would wish to write, are ever present with the young men and women in the city, while in the country nothing influences to evil, and much tends to virtuous life and abundance of comfort. Fathers and mothers who strive to support and raise a family in the city are specially to be commiserated. Of course we mean those who have to do this by their daily toil. They are huddled together in close apartments, where the air of heaven seldom enters, and where disease and death lurk in every nook and corner; hence the wonderful death rate of children in every city greatly exceeds that of the country. How many a poor man, who settles down in the city to earn a living, is deprived of nature's smiles and of the bounteous provisions which nature supplies those living in the country. When work, through any cause, ceases in the city, distress awaits the poor laboring man, who, to keep body and soul together, has to spend his daily earnings as soon as received, while in the country none is ever allowed to suffer, no matter how poor he may be.

The great difficulty of raising children in the slums of city life, and the temptations that lure them to dissipation, should of itself prevent parents from making an effort where so many are known to have miserably failed. Everything that surrounds children raised in the city dens is calculated to lead them astray, and invite them to lives leading to the jail and poor-house. Where else do the thousands of orphans that fill our asylums come from, and who are annually picked up by prosely

tizing societies, and sent here to the West to be raised men and women on the broad acres of a pure and healthy atmosphere their fathers discarded? There is no greater drain on our Church membership than that of lost children through the fault of parents trying in vain to raise families in crowded cities, according to virtue and the dictates of conscience. Those who have acquired homes in the country can scarcely realize the blessings they enjoy which the denizens of the city are altogether deprived of.

Church Progress, Marshall, Ill.

The Great Catholic University.

WE briefly announced in our last issue the meeting of the trustees and the election of Rt. Rev. John J. Keane, D. D., as the Rector of the University. He was born in Ballyshannon, county Donegal, Ireland, Sept. 12, 1839. He was brought to America when seven years of age, his family settling in Baltimore in 1848. He received his elementary education in Baltimore schools, made his classical studies at St. Charles' College, Howard County, Md., and his theological course at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore. He was ordained in 1866, immediately after which he was stationed at St. Patrick's Church, Washington, where he remained twelve years. He was consecrated Bishop of Richmond, Aug. 25, 1878. As it will probably take a year to build the theological department, a successor to Bishop Keane for the Diocese of Richmond will not be named immediately.

Bishop Ireland Explains the Scope of the University and the Objects to be Attained.

The scheme for the new Catholic University, which has been sanctioned by Pope Leo XIII., and approved by the last Plenary Council, held in Baltimore, is being quietly but energetically advanced under the direction of Cardinal Gibbons, who takes a deep personal interest in the subject, and who is known as a most untiring laborer in Church work. As already announced, it is proposed to expend in the building and equipment of the institution about $8,000,000, and, as less than one-eighth of this sum is in hand, it will be seen that considerable energy must necessarily be expended in order to bring the vast sum into the treasury of the Church, when it is recollected that the regular Church work and her institutions consume an immense revenue. But the success of the new enterprise is fully assured, and as the work must necessarily be slow, there will be no delay on account of funds. selection of a site for the University buildings in or near Washington, as directed at the recent conference of Catholic Archbishops and Bishops here, has not yet been made, but the Building Committee, which is composed of Archbishop Williams, Bishop Keane and Thomas. Waggaman, of Washington, are giving the subject their earnest attention, and are clothed with authority to make the selection. After work on the University has been begun, Bishop Keane will, it is thought,

resign the Bishopric of Richmond in order to enable him to devote his entire time to the new duties that will devolve upon him in connection with the supervision of the work, and in familiarizing himself with the duties that will devolve upon him as Rector of the University, for which position he was recently chosen.

Bishop Ireland, of St. Paul, is very enthusiastic on the subject of the work of the University, and expressed his views freely as to the scope of the proposed work, and of the aid the institution will be to the Church in this country. He said that while the University, when finished, is to cost about $8,000,000, yet it is not proposed to wait until that sum is subscribed or pledged before beginning the work. On the contrary, it is expected that the divinity buildings or theological department will be in readiness for educational work by the end of 1889. This will cost about $1,000,000, to meet which the sum of $700,000 is now in hand, including the gift of $300,000 made by Miss Caldwell, of New York. Bishop Ireland said it was proposed to build one department at a time, and before collecting the money for another to have all the details perfected. It may require twenty years to finish the work. The ecclesiastical discipline will be under the direction and care of the Order of St. Sulpice, but not the educational part. The faculty will be the most learned men that can be obtained from all parts of the world, with a view of making the institution the first of its kind in existence. One object in the building of the University is to disabuse the public mind of the popular error that the Church is opposed to general education. A part of the plan is the higher education of the priesthood, and to enable them at least to rank intellectually with the priesthood of the Church in Europe. It will be a sort of postgraduate course.

The faculty of the university will, Bishop Ireland explained, consist of ten professors, three of whom have already been secured - Pastor, the great German historian, from the University in the Tyrol, who will be lecturer on history, and Verdat, from one of the Universities in Rome, as lecturer on Assyriology and Egyptology. The name of the third professor has not yet been made public, but he is an eminent man of letters. The University, as further explained by Bishop Ireland, will, in a way, be non-sectarian. It will have schools of law and medicine, and courses in the sciences and classics, which will be open to all without regard to religious preferences. The members of the faculty will, however, all be from within the Catholic Church, and all who enter the institution will have thrown around them the distinctive influence of the Catholic Church.

Many Protestants are interested in this great educational scheme, and it is expected that some of them will be among the subscribers to the fund. In January next Bishops Ireland and Keane will journey through the country explaining the scope and plans of the University in order to arous the interest necessary to secure subscriptions to the fund.

THE ORIGIN OF CANNED FRUITS. IT is a singular fact, observes a contemporary, that we are indebted to Pompeii for the great industry

of canned fruits. Years ago, when the excavations were just beginning, a party of Americans found, in what had been the pantry of a house, many jars of preserved figs. One was opened, and they were found to be fresh and good. Investigation showed that the figs had been put into jars in a heated state, an aperture left for the steam to escape, and then sealed with wax. The hint was taken, and the next year fruit-canning was introduced in the United States, the process being identical with that in vogue at Pompeii twenty centuries ago. The old ladies in America who can tomatoes and peaches for domestic use do not realize that they are indebted for this art to a people who were literally ashes but a few years after Christ. There is nothing new under the sun. Canned tomatoes and loaded dice- the people of Pompeii had both.

The Best Way to Sleep.

POSITION affects sleep. A constrained or uncomfortable position will often prevent repose. Lying flat on the back, with the limbs. relaxed, would seem to secure the greatest amount of rest for the muscular system. This is the position assumed in the most exhausting diseases, and it is generally hailed as a token of revival when a patient voluntarily turns on the side; but there are several disadvantages in the supine posture which impair or embarrass sleep. Thus, in a weakly state of the heart and blood-vessels, and in certain morbid conditions of the brain, the blood seems to gravitate to the back of the head, and to produce troublesome dreams. In persons who habitually, in their gait or work, stoop, there is probably some distress consequent on straightening the spine. Those who have contracted chests, especially persons who have pleurisy and retain adhesions of the lungs, do not sleep well on the back. Nearly all who are inclined to snore do when in that position, because the soft palate and uvula hang on the tongue, and that organ falls back so as to partially close the top of the windpipe. It is better, therefore, to lie on the side, and in lung disease to lie on the weak side, so as to leave the healthy lung free to expand; it is well to choose the right side, because when the body is thus placed the food gravitates more easily out of the stomach into the intestines. A glance at any plate of the visceral anatomy will show how this must be. Many persons are deaf in one ear, and prefer to lie on a particular side; but, if possible, the right side should be chosen, and the body rolled a little forward. Again, sleeping with the arm thrown over the head is to be deprecated; but this position is often assumed during sleep, because circulation is then free in the extremities, and the head and neck, and the muscles of the chest, are drawn up fixed by the shoulders, and thus the expansion of the thorax is easy. The chief objections to this position are that it creates a tendency to cramp and cold in the arms, and sometimes seems to cause headaches during sleep and dreams. These small matters often make or mar comfort in sleeping. Medical Journal.

The Wonders of Lourdes.

THE history of the struggles of the Grotto of Lourdes to become a place of recognized pilgrimage among Catholics, is the history of the glorification of the Mother of God, whose anxious wish to succor poor needful sinners on earth, her own Divine Son would not allow to be fruitless or sacrilegiously set aside. "I wish that people should come here that they come in procession: " "You must pray for sinners and kiss the ground for them :" "You will drink at the fountain and wash yourself there:" "You will tell the priests to build a chapel here: " "I am the Immaculate Conception.' These words, spoken in 1858 by the Mother of God to a child so ignorant, that not even in a court of justice, where allowances are seldom made for the degrees of knowledge which separate the judge and jury from the understanding of the children under examination, could Bernadette have been made answerable for this meaning and purpose; these words have come true to the letter. In less than eighteen years more than ten million pilgrims have come to the Grotto, as Mgr. Billère remarks, with a zeal which reminds one of that which animated the Crusaders of yore in answer to the sweet wish that "people should come to the Grotto." One thousand seven hundred and eighty-four processions have reached the Grotto from France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, England, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Canada, and the United States, in reply to the words, "they must come in procession." From the earliest days of the apparitions, the Grotto has become the sanctuary of prayer, and in that hallowed spot self-respect is lost in self-humiliation, self-sacrifice, and fatigues of all sorts: prostrations and arms extended mark the penance character of the invocations, and are significant signs enough of the desire of humanity to respond to the Divine call "that people should pray and kiss the ground for sinners." The waters are drunk and bathed in, while in the sole year 1885 no less than ninety-six thousand bottles of this innocent water was exported in token of the faith that lives in those who cannot come themselves to the miraculous spring, and yet are mindful of the words, "drink of the water and wash yourself at the fountain." Lastly, a basilica is being completed, instead. of the simple chapel which was enjoined, and though a double church has risen above the rock, both are too small to contain the surging crowds that flock for help, for grace, for mercy, at the wonderful Grotto of Manabielle.

OUR minds prepare for God a mortified flesh free from the rebellion of the senses, prayer free from distraction, a loving heart free from all bitterness, a humility free from all taint of vanity. All this is very good, an excellent preparation: but who carries it out? Alas! when we come to the practice of it, we fall short. Must we on this account be disquieted, troubled, or afflicted? No, certainly not. Must we apply ourselves to exciting a multitude of desires to stimulate ourselves to attain this perfection? By no means. - Saint Francis de Sales.