draws one by one from the universe its eternal secrets. If laborious and persevering knowledge merited no credit, we should be obliged to despair of truth; and never, gentlemen, in addressing you shall we regard despair as a thing worthy of our attention. Knowledge is incontestably a title, yet it is not of itself sufficient to found the moral authority of a teaching. Now the Church possesses knowledge, she was born in knowledge, she has saved knowledge, she has wrestled against false knowledge, she is in every point of view a learned body.

4. The Church understands what she teaches; she does not act from blind faith, but from faith founded, as we have seen in our second Conference, upon the most elevated general ideas; upon historical records of the highest antiquity and of the most certain authenticity; upon the experience of the happy and civilizing influence which she exercises in the world; and finally, upon a tradition, and an accumulation of accomplished facts of all kinds, which she unceasingly explores and increases by her labors. If knowledge, application, experience exists anywhere, it is assuredly in an association where the display of all the powers of the mind play so conspicuous a part, and which has possessed, from the commencement of time, and above all, since Jesus Christ, an innumerable multitude of enlightened men, who have filled the earth with their sayings and their writings.

5. And how was it possible for the Church to be other than learned? She was born in knowledge, in one of the brightest epochs in history, in the Augustar

age, preceded by others which had brought literature, the arts, and philosophy even to perfection, that it might not be said that Christianity was engendered in darkness. Knowledge received us in the cradle, watched over us, studied us, contended with us, gave us defenders from amongst the philosophers whom we came to dethrone, very many of whom bore to the Crucified the triple testimony of their genius, their knowledge, and their errors.

6. Afterwards, when knowledge was in danger of being extinguished in Europe by the invasion of the barbarians, who saved it from shipwreck? Who prepared new nations, worthy of possessing truth? Was it your fathers? Ah! your fathers!-they drew the sword, the sword yesterday, the sword to-morrow, the sword continually! See what was your share in them, men now so proud of your knowledge, and we do not blame you for it. You were there, in the persons of your ancestors, forming an armed barrier against which new invasions came to their destruction-an immense European square to protect from without that which developed itself within; whilst we, peaceful and laborious, in the persons also of our ancestors-we reconstructed knowledge from its own ruins, in order that you might one day receive that heritage from us, and that truth, finding again an age worthy of it, might not command slaves, but might shine in an empire founded upon the legitimate convictions of intelligent minds. It came that age which we prepared-it came, and Knowledge, like an ungrateful and unnatural daughter, scarcely fallen from our hands into yours, raised herself

ap against us and denounced us, who had labored fif teen centuries for her, who received her again when saving herself, bloody from the sword of Mahomet II., she threw herself all dismayed into the robes of our popes! What did we then? Did we betray knowledge, or did we subunit to bear its yoke? Neither the one nor the other: we resisted, we opposed ourselves like a wall of brass, not to knowledge, but to its errors; and now, children of knowledge, saviors of knowledge, protectors of knowledge, we arrive at an epoch not less glorious for the Church, that in which knowledge, recognizing the vanity of its efforts against us, will come into our temples to seek us, and to offer to us the kiss of reconciliation and of justice, which she (we to us, and which she will give us.

THE NUN OF NIDAROS.-Longfellow.

In the convent of Drontheim,

Alone in her chamber

Knelt Astrid the Abbess,
At midnight, adoring,
Beseeching, entreating
The Virgin and Mother.

She heard in the silence
The voice of one speaking,
Without in the darkness,
In gusts of the night-wind
Now louder, now nearer,
Now lost in the distance.

The voice of a stranger
It seemed as she listened,
Of some one who answered
Beseeching, imploring,
A cry from afar off
She could not distinguish.

The voice of Saint John,
The beloved disciple

Who wandered and waited
The Master's appearance,
Alone in the darkness,
Unsheltered and friendless.

"It is accepted

The angry defiance,

The challenge of battle!

It is accepted,

But not with the weapons

Of war that thou wieldest!

"Cross against corslet,
Love against hatred,
Peace-cry for war-cry!
Patience is powerful;
He that o'ercometh

Hath power o'er the nations!

As torrents in summer,

Half dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, though the
Sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;

*So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o'erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not

That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining!

"Stronger than steel

Is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows

The light of the truth is,
Greater than anger
Is love, and subdueth!

"Thou art a phantom,
A shape of the sea-mist,
A shape of the brumal
Rain, and the darkness
Fearful and formless;
Day dawns and thou art not!

"The dawn is not distant,

Nor is the night starless;

Love is eternal!

God is still God, and
His faith shall not fail us;
Christ is eternal!"

UNION LINKED WITH LIBERTY, 1833.-Andrew Jackson.

Without Union, our independence and liberty would never have been achieved; without Union, they can never be maintained. Divided into twenty-four, or even a smaller number of separate communities we shall see