about to say, so scanty in its accommodations-that it seems to me less like a peaceful and permanent dwelling, than a frail ship beaten by the storms of three oceans -the sea of waters round about, the sea of air above, the sea of fire underneath! Once already it has foundered in the waves; may it not, peradventure, be sometime swallowed up in the flames? For "the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.'

Was this calamity the presage of that day? And must I needs repeat the fearful story of it in your ears?' See those happy populations, on the evening of one of their most cherished festivals, the Assumption of the Virgin, their well-beloved patron-saint. While for the Mother of Christ the shadows of death are shot through with beams of happiness and radiant life, for them life itself is on the point of changing suddenly to death. Their beds are made their tombs; their cities, in a moment, are transformed to ruins. Convulsed with internal fires, the earth reels like a drunkard in his cups; the sea rears itself in sudden rage, and leaps upon the shore, flinging the ships in wild wreck among the crumbling houses.

See them now, these decimated families, camping out in tents, hiding in caves, houseless and homeless, and without the implements of labor! Look upon it, that nation in mourning, its cities overthrown, its harbors choked with sand, its roads obstructed, its country ravaged, plunged in misery! This I call their trial-a trial rather than a punishment; an occasion for religious resignation, but at the same time of manly energy; a

2 Peter, iii. 10.

life-and-death struggle with the powers of nature, in which man, overcome at first, and always the weaker party, triumphs at last, by force of intelligence and bravery and virtue!

It is our trial, too, brethren-the trial of our charity. I have spoken of the solidarity of mankind in sin and in punishment. I have done so with hesitation, almost with violence to my own feelings, so that I might come at this nobler solidarity of the world in love. The love that is in Christ Jesus binds together not individuals alone, but nations. It cannot rest save in the grand unity of the human family. Ah! how fain was I, also, to rest, before my task was done, at that vital point where meet, at last, after so many a conflict, the spirit of my church and the spirit of my age! Need was for me to set forth in my words, what you are about to set forth in action, the doctrine taught nigh two thousand years ago by the apostle to the Gentiles, which now, at last, is just beginning to come to the comprehension of mankind. "By revelation," says he, "there has been made known to me a mystery which in other ages was not made known to the children of men." What is this mystery which Saint Paul calls "the mystery of Christ ?" "That the nations should be fellow-heirs and concorporeal"-O sublime barbarism of speech!" of one body, one humanity, sharers together in the promises of God in Christ Jesus by the Gospel."* Henceforth, then, there is no longer stranger nor foreigner in mankind such as the Gospel conceives it, such as some day the Gospel will make it. Henceforth there shall be no more sea, nor intervening mountains, to keep asunder the nations, but mutual love and mutual helpfulness in the advancement of their common work.

Ephesians, iii. 3-6.

Nevertheless, let me add, since I am speaking as a Frenchman to Frenchmen, that the populations of Ecuador and Peru have more special claims on our sympathy and assistance. Like us, they are both by blood and by language of the Latin stock. Like us, they belong to the Catholic church. Amid the mingling of races, their blood, like ours, has been kept with a purer pedigree. Our languages grow together out of the illustrious stock of ancient Rome, and are derived through that from the speech of Homer and Plato, the finest, perhaps, the most philosophical and melodious, that ever ennobled human lips. They have abode with us in the old religious edifice, in that Catholic church which guards amid its ruins, with the grandest traditions of the past, the grandest hopes of the future. Ah, well I know--and many a time have I groaned within myself to think of it-these nations of the Latin race and of the Catholic religion have been of late the most grievously tried of all! Not only by intestine fires, by the quaking of the earth, by the inrushing of the sea. Look with impartial eye, with the fearless serenity of truth, with that assurance of faith which fears not to accept the revelations of experience, and then tell me where is it that the moral foundations quake most violently? Where does the current of a formidable electricity give the severest, the most incessant shocks to republics as well as monarchies? Among the Latin races; among the Catholic nations. Yes, by some inscrutable design of Providence, they, more than others, have had to "drink of the cup deep and large;"* they have wet their lips. more deeply in the chalice in which are mingled "the wine, the lightning, and the spirit of the storm;" and they have become possessed with the madness of the

* Ezekiel, xxiii. 32.

drunkard. It is not a decadence, as some have said; it is a crisis, and the violence of it bears witness, not only to the potency of the poison which consumes them, but to the strength of vitality which is to save them. If these races could perish, there would have been an end of them three centuries ago. Nay, the hour is at hand! "Awake! awake! Stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury! thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out!"* "when thou shalt have taken forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as the mouth of Jehovah himself."+

....

O Frenchmen, Catholics, let us come to the rescue of our Spanish-American brethren! In their material trials, let us help them with our gold; in their moral trials, with our heart and soul.

And you, to whatever blood and whatever faith you belong-all you who have come hither to this feast of charity, my friends, my brethren, forget the things that divide us, and think only of the things that unite us. As we join hands for the relief of this great calamity, let us labor to speed on the day of the Lord. O blessed day, when, in the vast and irresistible movement that is bringing men together and mingling them in every part of the world, all races shall flow together in one race, and all religions shall be transfigured, and shall embrace each other in that religion which is free from all error, rich in all truth-in Catholic Christianity. "There shall be one flock and one shepherd,"‡-one humanity in one Church, with one Christ, and under one God!

*Isaiah, li. 17.

+ Jeremiah, xv. 19.

John, x. 9.

LETTER,

PREFIXED TO "THE SELECT WORKS OF CHARLES LOYSON."

[Charles Loyson, uncle to Father Hyacinthe, was a pupil of the Ecole Normale, and was regarded by his schoolmates, Cousin and Jouffroy, and by his illustrious contemporaries, Guizot, RoyerCollard, Maine de Biran, and de Serre, as the most remarkable young man of the generation which came into public life about that very critical and hopeful era of French history, the year 1817. A man of wide versatility, and generous sympathies with the interests of human liberty and of the Christian faith, he was at once poet, orator, and statesman. His name shone for a brief time with rare brilliancy, and was then suddenly extinguished in death.

Fifty years afterward, a gentleman who was much interested in the history of the province of Brittany, the native province of the Loyson family, felt moved, in part by an honorable local pride, to rescue from oblivion the history of so bright though brief a career of one of his fellow-citizens, by compiling a volume of his works in prose and verse. The volume was prefaced with critical notices from the distinguished pens of MM. Patin and Sainte Beuve, and with the following Letter to the Editor by Father Hyacinthe.

In a brief review of this memorial volume, M. Augustin Cochin, known to multitudes of Americans by his constant and most intelligent vindication of our national cause before his own countrymen, remarks thus concerning the deceased poet:

'Let us not spend too much pity on the unknown orator, the forgotten author, the poet whose song was broken off by death, but whose memory now, let us hope, is about to be revived in the hearts of new readers. His life was not long, but it was lived at