says that at this time an attempt was made to poison the Pope and that the mob attacked the Vatican, but were overawed by the appearance of Urban confronting them in his Pontifical vestments. He also states that Catherine quelled the popular tumults by open remonstrance, as well as by her prayers. But even if she interfered in person, it was certainly her secret prayer that conquered, for, from the moment when she heard of the threats of the citizens, she began to beseech God not to permit such a crime, and for the peace and unity of the Holy See she was offering the sublimest prayer of the creature, that of self-oblation:

O Lord (she exclaimed), if Thy Justice must needs be satisfied, inflict on my body the chastisement which this people deserves; for the honour of Thy Name and of the Holy Church, I will cheerfully drain the chalice of suffering and death.

No sooner was the prayer made, than she felt that it was answered. From that day the disturbances in the city calmed down, but at the same time, as Raymund says in the Legend, her sufferings daily became greater, she wasted away till the skin seemed to adhere to the bone, and she was as a phantom of her former self. On Sexagesima Sunday her sufferings increased to a frightful violence.

It appears that whilst still in the Church of St. Peter's, a mysterious vision or sign of her approaching death and of its cause was granted to her. She not only saw but felt the Navicella, or Ship of the Church, laid on her shoulders. Crushed by the awful weight, she sank fainting to the ground; she understood that she was in some way to give her life for the Church, as a true victim, and from that moment her bodily strength began visibly to consume away. This remarkable incident was followed on her return home by an attack or crisis of supernatural suffering.

As she herself declared, the evil spirits were furious against her, and terror was joined to her other pains. The supreme crisis is told by herself with an inimitable power of suggesting the indescribable by human language. On the following day she had left her cell to go to the chapel in her house, leaning on her son Barduccio, when the fury of the demons threw her to the ground.

"And lying on the ground it seemed as if my soul quitted the body; not in the same way as it did that other time, because then I tasted the joy of the blessed, enjoying with them the Sovereign Good; but now it seemed to me that I was a thing apart. I did not seem to be in my body, but I beheld my body as though it had belonged to some other person; and my soul, seeing the distress of him who was with me, (i.e., Barduccio), wished to know if I could use my body so as to be able to say to him: 'My Son, be not afraid.' But I found I could

not move my tongue nor any other member, any more than if my body had been utterly without life. So I left my body as it was, and fixed my understanding on the abyss of the Holy Trinity."

After narrating her communing with God, her offering of the Blood of the Lamb, and the respite of comfort that followed, her subsequent description continues:

"Then my body began to breathe a little, showing that the soul had returned to it. I was full of wonder, and there remained such a pain in my heart, that I still feel it. Then all joy, all consolation, and all strength seemed taken from me, and being carried into the room above, it seemed to me full of demons who began a fresh attack, the most terrible I ever sustained; for they sought to make me believe that it was not I that was in my body, but an unclean spirit. But I invoked the Divine Help with the utmost tenderness, refusing no suffering, but repeating, Deus in adjutorium meum intende, Domine ad adjuvandum me festina!"

Where is the recorded martyrdom that surpasses the intensity of anguish shadowed forth in these words of the virgin spouse of Christ? And for two days and nights such conflicts lasted, while her disciples mourned her as dead. The marvels of her last sufferings, which seemed to reach both physically and spiritually the verge of human endurance, can only be told by her own letter to Raymund of Capua; but there is one revelation too wonderful to be omitted-the violent taking of her heart by the Eternal God, that its life-blood might be pressed out over His Church, in answer to her prayer: "O Eternal God, accept the sacrifice of my life for the mystical body of Thy holy Church; I have nothing to give save that which Thou hast given to me; take my heart then, and press it out over the face of Thy Spouse!" It was no wonder, then, that when lying on her bed of boards she bade farewell to her son and father, Bartholomew Dominic, Prior of San Domenico, she should have assured him that she desired of God to expiate in person the sins of the schism, and that, should her life end, the cause of her death was the zeal with which she was consumed for the holy Church. So died five hundred years ago, with the triple crown of the virgin, the teacher of truth, and the martyr for the See of Rome, the Spouse of Christ, Catherine of Siena. And we leave to those who follow the pages of her history the privilege of all but witnessing, by means of graphic and detailed narrative, the closing scene of the saint's life, when, calling humbly for pardon and for "the Blood," she went forth from the circle of her weeping children and her own sorrowing mother, to meet the Spouse of her childhood's vow.

From five centuries ago her death as well as her life comes before us in her history as vividly as many a scene of actual

experience in the nineteenth-century world. Well is it said that, in contemplating her and her companions, time vanishes "like the needle's point;" and while we view familiarly the saintly character, we have the advantage over her contemporaries in at least one sense, for we are able to look upon its objects and its effects as a whole. We can see that it was through the simplicity of life and aim engendered of her perfection of faith, that the weak untaught woman of a little Tuscan city became the peace-maker of the Italian Republics and the adviser of kings; and the force of consistent faith and act even in the material world, is surely the legend written across her life in letters so bold that "all who run may read." But the Saint of Siena was also the Saint of Rome; and, glancing at her career as a whole, we perceive what one might venture to call in a high sense the ruling passion of her life and death, in devotion to the person of the Vicar of Christ-the outcome necessarily of her stupendous strength of faith. It is impossible to imagine how much she actually effected for the unity of the Church, not only by her prayers and sacrifice for healing the schism of the West, but still earlier by her instrumentality in restoring the seat of the Papacy to Rome. nearly forty years the seamless garment of Christ was rent after the restoration; but who can compute how long the scandal of the anti-Popes might have been prolonged, had a disputed election taken place at the Court of Avignon, where the influence of the schismatical party in France might have supported interminably, on ground consecrated in the popular eyes by the tradition of more than half-a-century, a Pope of Avignon against a Pope of Rome. It was a contingency which Catherine's prophetic clearness of sight may well have dreaded. But this is surmise, not history; the historical facts remain that Catherine Benincasa was foremost in effecting the longedfor return from the captivity of Avignon, and that this inestimable service to the Holy See was crowned by the voluntary offering of her life for the welfare of the Church. May she who saw Christ in His Vicar, and was led thereby to such royal-hearted devotion to the See of Rome, strengthen in these days the loyalty that centres in the successor of Peter, of Gregory, and of Urban, and inspire a fresh enthusiasm for the Rome of captivity and humiliation.

For

ART. VII. THE SUPPRESSION OF THE

CONGREGATIONS IN FRANCE.

1. Les Congrégations Religieuses en France; leurs Euvres et leurs Services: avec une Introduction. Par EMILE KELLER, Deputé. Paris: Poussielgue Frères.

1880.

2. Les Décrets du 29 Mars, 1880, sur les Congrégations nonautorisées. Etudes rétrospectives sur les Consultations de MM. H. de VATIMESNIL et BERRYER, &c. Paris: Durand et Pedone-Lauriel. 1880.

3. L'Expulsion des Jésuites, et des autres Religieux au nom des Lois Existantes. Par ANTONIN LERAC. Paris: Librairie de la Société Bibliographique. 1880.

4. Enseignement Secondaire Congréganiste. 3ième ed. Paris: Lecoffre. 1879.

5. Les Erreurs de M. Spuller. 3 ème. ed. Paris: Lecoffre. 1879.

N the 15th of March, the famous "Article 7" of M. Ferry's

ΟΝ Education Bill was rejected by the Senate of the French

Parliament by a majority of 18 in a house of 282. At the last moment, and when M. Eugène Pelletan had made a final effort to carry the Government proposal by once more bringing forward the original Clause in the shape of an amendment to the Report of the Committee-at the moment when the vote was about to be taken, M. Freycinet, the President of the Council of Ministers, ascended the tribune and made the following declaration :

Gentlemen :-I have but a single word to say to the Senate. At the end of the first discussion M. Dufaure made an appeal to the Government which we could not leave without a reply. M. Dufaure expressed his hope that, before the discussion was resumed, the Government would be able to find a compromise (transaction) by means of which an agreement might be arrived at. Notwithstanding that appeal, and in spite of our respect for the illustrious man from whom it came, we did not propose any fresh form of words, because we really believed that Article 7 was itself a compromise. (Approval from the Left.) That compromise has been rejected, and we cannot see any other solution than to put in force existing laws; and the Government has no choice but to accept the situation in which it finds itself placed by the vote of the Senate. (Applause from the Left. Excitement on the Right.)

These words were the first sounds of that persecution which

was to be begun in a few days with all the formality of Presidential decrees. At the moment, they produced on the Senate no effect whatever, and the amendment was rejected with virtually the same majority with which the Report of the Committee had been carried.

The defeat of the Government project for taking the education of France out of the hands of the "congregations," roused the whole revolutionary party to fury. The opportunists" (that is, M. Gambetta's intimate circle, who are quietly arranging the future of France) for once broke out into a noisy rage, hardly surpassed by the demonstrations of the Extreme Left themselves. Jules Simon and Dufaure, staunch republicans as they had proved themselves, were abused as violently as the Catholic Chesnelong and Lucien Brun. Since legislation had failed, executive measures must take its place. The "congregations" must be proscribed, if they could not be tied up. The Jesuits, above all, must be dealt with speedily and summarily; the Senate had refused to banish them from the ranks of French teachers; the Government must simply banish them from France itself. Acts of Parliament, it was discovered, were quite unnecessary; there were old laws still in force, shreds and tags of disreputable "decrees" owning all sorts of different authors -Bourbon kings, revolutionary tyrants, dictators, constitutional monarchs-that could be patched together for so good a purpose. M. Gambetta's organ, the République Française, frankly declared on March 16th that troubles were about to begin :

Yesterday's vote seriously changes the situation. For ourselves, we must get ready once more for war. As for the Government-it must assume at once that new attitude, that attitude of firmness and of energy, rendered necessary by the vote of the friends of Simon and Dufaure. For we have the Government still, we Republicans of the Left. The eighteen voices of the Senate do not shake the Government; they strengthen it. Neither the Cabinet, nor the President, who has so boldly pledged himself to action, nor M. Ferry, who has become the bearer of a flag, has lost one particle of authority or of power. The Chamber will soon give them a renewed lease and the plainest directions what to do. . . . No legislation is required. An administrative ordinance is enough; and the administration depends on the Cabinet, and the Cabinet on the Chamber.

The Ferry Bill was bad enough, even without Article 7. It suppressed the admission of Catholic authorities on the Examining Boards of the University; it prohibited all denominational (or "free") establishments from assuming the title of " University," and it decreed that no fees could be charged for the admission of members to any establishment of superior education-thus ruinously handicapping the Catholic Universities in their com