his elevation to the Papacy. In 1646 the confederates petitioned his Holiness that he might raise him to the dignity of cardinal.

After the return of the luckless nuncio to Italy, the connection between Ireland and Rome ceased to be official, and Wadding's duties, as Irish agent, became less numerous and pressing. The intervals of his leisure he again turned to literary account.

In his declining years he became, for a second time, president of St. Isidore's College. Here he had gathered about him Irish professors, whose names are distinguished in the Church literature of their age. In 1650 he was seized with an illness, from the debilitating effect of which his constitution did not recover. He lived on for seven years more, suffering in body, yet active and industrious in mind. On the 18th of October, 1657, he was relieved by death. His funeral was solemnly celebrated; his grave is in St. Isidore's, and over it a tomb, raised to his memory by a noble Roman, who was his friend through life: Hercules Rocconii. It bears a brief inscription in Latin.

AN IRISH MARTYR

AT

TIEN-TSIN. CHINA.*

A. D. 1870.

ALTHOUGH the murder of this saintly Sister of Charity and daughter of Ireland is not attributable to English persecution, yet it is deemed not amiss to insert here a short account of her life and death. It will serve to show that the ancient heroism of Ireland's saints still lives in the hearts and souls of the present generation.

The 21st of June, 1870, will forever be memorable in the Christian annals of China; and the blood of many martyrs which, on that day, flowed in the city of TienTsin, gives promise that a rich harvest will soon smile upon that dreary wilderness. Such days of martyrdom are days of glory for the Church of Christ, and are sure to usher in the triumph of the holy cause which the heroes of religion thus seal with their blood.

It is a privilege for Ireland, that one of her chosen daughters was included in the glorious array of that 21st of June, as one of those ten Sisters of Charity who, fired with the zeal and fervor of their great founder, St. Vincent de Paul, welcomed on that day the pagan executioners of Tien-Tsin, and, offering their lives as a holocaust to God, attained their heavenly crown.

"Irish Ecclesiastical Record."

Sister Louise was born in the parish of St. Mary's, Clonmel county, Tipperary, in the year 1835. She showed, from infancy, a great disposition for works of charity, and felt strongly inclined to devote herself to religion and the service of the poor. After her early studies, she went to complete her education to the Convent of St. Mary's, Kingstown, where her memory is still cherished, because of her piety and virtues. In the year 1854, she became a postulant of the Sisters of Charity, at their hospital in Amiens, France, and received the habit of the Congregation, after the usual novitiate in the parent-house, Rue du Bac, Paris. The first field of her charity was Drogheda, where she spent five years of loving labor amidst the poor of that town. Her only pain was that she had not adequate resources to meet the pressing demands of the numbers who appeared as objects of her devoted charity. From Drogheda Sister Louise was sent to the house of the Sisters at Hereford, the difficulties and privations of which mission were a suitable preparation for her future sacrifice.

The Jesuit father (at Shanghai, in China) asked for some Daughters of Charity to take charge and direction of a hospital about to be established there; and Sister Louise, having frequently made known to her superiors. her readiness and desire to labor in any distant mission, was selected to join other sisters from Italy, Algiers and France, for this good work.

Sister Louise was very useful in the hospital at Shanghai. Being the only Sister able to speak English, her time and exertions were in constant demand in laboring for the English, Irish and American sailors. and soldiers. These recipients of her kind and untiring attention will long remember her who so tenderly nursed them when suffering in a far-distant land.

The last work in which Sister Louise was engaged, was the Institute of the Immaculate Conception at

Pekin: an orphanage for the support and education of poor children rescued from death, when abandoned by their Chinese mothers, in consequence of the inhuman and savage objection the Chinese have to rear female children.

From this house Sister Louise proceeded, in company with her superioress, as far as Tien-Tsin, when an adorable Providence arranged that she should prepare to sacrifice her life in her loving Master's service. She was on her way to Europe when, making a short stay at Tien-Tsin, she went to visit the Catholic church, and, praying before the statue of our Lady of Victories, she felt an irresistible impulse to request of her superioress to take another companion to Europe, and to leave her to her beloved work among the Chinese.

The superioress could not fail to see in her earnestness and entreaty the work of grace, and, in accordance with her request, took another with her to Europe, leaving the Irish Sister to receive her early crown.

With renewed zeal Sister Louise devoted herself at Tien-Tsin to the orphans and the hospitals, from the end of March to the 21st of June, when, with her heroic companions, she lost her life in the cause of charity.

During the first month of 1870, the city of Tien-Tsin was a favorite resort of the leading enemies of the Christian name; and for some time previous to the day of massacre rumors were industriously set afloat that the Sisters of Charity and the priests took special delight in tearing out the eyes and hearts of Chinese children, which were afterward used for medicinal purposes. The hatred of the Chinese mob was gradually fanned into a flame; and at length, on the 21st of June, it burst forth in all its fury against the Catholic institutions of Tien-Tsin.

The French consul, seeing the gathering storm, went, on the morning of that day, to solicit the aid of the government authorities, in guarding from violence the

foreign settlers in the city. On his return from the governor, he himself and his companion were brutally assailed, and cut to pieces by the mob. "But," continues the correspondent of the Times, writing from Shanghai, on the 8th of July, "dreadful as is this death, the details are more horrible of the massacre of the priests and Sisters of Charity, which followed the attack on the mission premises. It is not clear whether this occurred before or after the attack on the French consul, but the two occurrences were very nearly simultaneous. The establishments of the Lazarists, the Jesuits and the Sisters of Charity were burnt, and their inmates murdered with circumstances of brutal atrocity. Women, whose only fault was to have devoted their lives to do good, who had earned the respect of the foreign community at Shanghai (where they were known and appreciated), as well as at Tien-Tsin, were stripped, their bodies ripped open, their breasts cut off, their eyes scooped out, and their remains cast into their own burning houses. All the native inmates of the missions were also, it is said, burned to death the children only were saved, several hundred in number; and even of these, between thirty or forty were unknowingly suffocated in a large cave, where they had taken refuge at the first approach of the mob. The body of a priest, since recovered, is so mutilated as to be hardly recognizable; and two others are missing, supposed to have been also burnt."

One of the devoted Sisters who had left Tien-Tsin only a few days before this dreadful massacre, writing from Ning-Po, on the 3d of July, to the superioress of the order in Paris, details some circumstances connected with this dreadful tragedy: "The courier of to-day bears to you intelligence which will overwhelm your maternal heart with affliction: for some days we were in great anxiety about our dear mission at Tien-Tsin, but we were in hopes that the rumors were exaggerated, and that the storm