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together for the advantage of phalanx and the strengthening of those still dispersed and unconfirmed, as well as for the prompting and awakening of hearts in which aspirations of duty and holiness are as yet only possible, not present. Who does not know how often the noble deed of another has been the spear of Ithuriel to his own conscience; or a trait of heavenly goodness, the mirror wherein he saw, in all its odiousness, his past remissness or his cherished sin? Who has not read of devotion, with a stinging sense of his own ingratitude; of disinterestedness, with secret shame at conscious selfishness; of charity, with resolutions against hoarding for the future? Not only is a man known by the company he keeps, but the company he keeps has no small share in making him what he is. The Roman Catholic Church, with its usual astuteness in the use of means, makes the reading of the lives of the Saints a primary duty. To see what has been done is one of the most powerful stimulants to action; the knowledge of what others have surmounted, helps us through many a difficulty. Next in value to the actual companionship of the good, is the study of their lives, as portrayed by kindred spirits. Biographies get nearer the heart than any other writings, as pictures which resemble ourselves are sure to be interesting. We love even egotism and garrulity in the shape of autobiography, so strong is human sympathy. Every way benefactors therefore are they who give us lives of the Saints.

Never have such books as those we are considering been so eagerly sought after as now; perhaps, because the world, conscious of being more worldly than ever, confesses the sore need of recuperative means. It is the trick of a certain class of gourmands to follow each dangerous excess by some remedial drug, because penance is preferable to abstinence, and, the balance once struck, the peril is averted. So it has been known, before our day, that the wickedest men have been, naturally enough, though rather ludicrously, the most anxious for their souls, and, without any thing like a resolve to reform, the most profuse in masses and charities. The reading of good books seems like a good work, and the admiration of good actions seems like a holy sympathy; so we get better

chiefly by the aid of those who have made the sacrifices which are too hard for us. But the best are strengthened by such reading, for who does not need help by the way?

Americans and their doings have as yet found small place in biographical dictionaries and works professing to be cyclopedic. We need the condemned word "ignore," to express the cool omissions of European writers and hashers, where American worth and worthies are concerned; for ignoring is very different from ignorance. But now we are beginning to make ourselves heard, and may one day, if we choose, be exclusive in our turn, for the whirligig of Time is no more remiss than of yore in bringing about its revenges. In Lives of the Saints, in particular, we are already rich; and when age shall have mellowed our chronicles, some homebred Allan Butler will rise up, surrounded with abundant and choice material. Some of the more recent of these we propose to examine, and we give the priority due to that Church which has always been most assiduous in holding up her Saints for reverence and imitation. She must excuse us if we forestall her in counting "one Saint more," whose name has not yet found its way into the calendar. Canonization is not, in our day, the privilege of popes and councils. We venture to claim for our countrywoman, Mrs. Seton, a niche beside that of St. Bega, who founded the religious house now known as St. Bees, sung by Wordsworth in some stanzas, from which we must be allowed to quote two or three:

"When Bega sought of yore the Cumbrian coast,
Tempestuous winds her holy errand crost;

She knelt in prayer ·

the waves their wrath appease,

And, from her vow, well weigh'd in Heaven's decrees,

Rose, where she touched the strand, the chantry of St. Bees.

To aid the votaress, miracles believed

Wrought in men's minds like miracles achieved;

So Piety took root, and Song might tell

What humanizing virtues near her cell

Sprang up and spread their fragrance wide around;
How savage bosoms melted at the sound
Of gospel truth enchained in harmonies

Wafted o'er waves or creeping through close trees,
From her religious mansion of St. Bees.

When her sweet voice, that instrument of love,
Was glorified, and took its place above
The silent stars, among the angelic quire,
Her chantry blazed with sacrilegious fire
And perished utterly; but her good deeds
Had sown the spot that witnessed them with seeds
Which lay in earth expectant, till a breeze
With quickening impulse answered their mute pleas,
And lo! a statelier pile, the Abbey of St. Bees.

There are the naked clothed, the hungry fed,

And Charity extendeth to the dead

Her intercessions made for the soul's rest

Of tardy penitents; or for the best

Among the good, (when love might else have slept,
Sickened, or died,) in pious memory kept,

Thanks to the austere and simple devotees,
Who, to that service bound by venial fees,
Keep watch before the altars of St. Bees."

This Saint Bega is made out by her Catholic biographer to be a very lovely personage. She was an Irish princess, who left her father's house to avoid a marriage which he had planned for her; and, assisted by the virtue of a miraculous bracelet, which was given to her in a vision, she gained the English coast, though not without great danger of shipwreck among the rocks, which she escaped by a vow to build a holy house upon the same inhospitable headland on the CumberThere she constructed a cell, or, as some think, lived in a cave.

land coast.

"Beyond those beautiful mountains, St. Oswald was ruling in sanctity and peace, and St. Aidan making his episcopal visitations on foot, [it was in the seventh century,] entering the scattered farms, teaching the little children, and leaving heavenly peace behind him wheresoever he went. The king in his bright crown, the weary, foot-sore bishop, each in his way, doing the work of God, and spreading the Redeemer's kingdom. And Bega too- she in her way is doing the same work. While she sings the Divine praises, and her meditations are

differently attended, sometimes by the heavy thunder of the rolling sea, sometimes by the scarcely-whispering winds, or deep voices of the wood-pigeons in the trees, she is spreading the Redeemer's kingdom. Her prayers, her intercessions, her acts of austerity, her selfimposed loneliness, her virginal sacrifice, are communicating secret vigor to the whole church, and have power in the invisible world to bring out gifts for her fellow-men. For to love God is the first commandment, and activity for our neighbors, without the love of God, is not the keeping of the second."

Truly, this is a maxim sometimes overlooked in our philanthropic times.

But Bega did not omit the kindly duties that show the quality of this goodly trunk of love. She was skilled in medicinal plants, and applied them to the curing of the poor about her; and it is said that she tamed the sea-birds, and even the wolves, who gratefully brought her of their spoils. One hardly requires that this should be literally true, so beautifully does it typify the power of feminine gentleness and Christian love.

After some years of deep seclusion, Bega was forced to fly her sea-side caves by the incursions of pirates, and she sought and found St. Aidan, to whom, says her biographer, "as to the brideman of her Bridegroom, Bega, the bride of Christ, drawing near, disclosed every secret of her soul, and those things that were wrought about her; and sought counsel from him, after what manner she might draw the bands of love and obedience toward her heavenly spouse more tightly." St. Aidan made the recluse into a nun, subject to the rules of an order. "No sooner was she clothed in her black dress than she entered a haven of peace; she was like a pilot resigning the helm to another, now that the mouth of the harbor is gained. For obedience is like Eden, a place, if not of carelessness, at least of child-like security."

Bega built a great monastery and filled it with nuns. While it was rising, though she was not able to work in stone and timber, she made herself the servant of the workmen, cooked their provisions for them, and carried them to them with her own hands; "ever ministering," says the record, "and running backwards and forwards, like a bee laden with

honey." ("He that would be great among you, let him be your minister.")

"Soon the place was full of gentle nuns, spinning and weaving and copying patterns, yet all the while silent and recollected, their hearts stayed on God, and occupied with the sweets of celestial meditation. For she urged them most fervently to the keeping of fasts and watchings, to the singing of hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, and to the study of holy reading. Thus she did Martha's work, that she might not neglect Mary's holy rest, nor, on the other hand, contemn a necessary service on account of Mary's sabbath."

The monastery grew so large and important that Bega's conscience would not let her continue to rule over it; and she importuned St. Aidan till he permitted her to resign it in favor of the holy Hilda, better known, by name at least, to the profane world, if the world of poetry may be so called, than her predecessor. After this, Bega retired to a hermitage, making, however, an annual visit to her friend Hilda and the beloved monastery. Hilda died first, and Bega saw, in a glorious vision, the beatified soul carried to heaven, but in what semblance the chronicler does not tell us. Not long afterwards, she herself was called away, on the 31st of October, "while she was observing the vigil of All-Saints, quitting the world to join their society; that, winter coming upon the earth, all winter might pass away from her, leaving it; and the rain might cease and depart; that eternal spring might shine upon her, and the bloom of roses and the lilies of the valley might appear to her in heaven."

Some such life may have been the model of Mrs. Eliza A. Seton, the daughter of a New York physician of some eminence, who, born an Episcopalian under the spiritual reign of Dr. Hobart, became, in middle life, the foundress and first Superior of the "Sisters of Charity" in America. The immediate or more obvious cause of her conversion to the Romish faith seems to have been a residence of some months in Italy, whither she had gone with her husband, for the benefit of his health, but without success, for he died at Leghorn, in December, 1803, after a month's confinement in a wretched lazaretto, where Mrs. Seton and her dying charge had suffered

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