have fallen, but Eily caught her in her strong young arms, When Biddy opened her eyes again they rested on the face her "little boy" had loved so dearly, and Eily's tears were falling like rain on her brow. The arms that upheld her then shielded her while she lived, and Thady's love was repaid to his mother. JESSIE TULLOCH, MUTE MANDOLINE, my little mandoline, Hanging dusty on the wall, Thrushes sing with poignance harrowing: Mandoline. Blackbirds tune the lute, Thou art mute Thou hast been In an old time sweeter, sweeter, sweeter than them all. Mandoline, my little mandoline, Mandoline, While the sunset gold, As of old, Now is seen Red, the darkening tragic poplar boughs between ? Mandoline, my little mandoline, It were but to blow the dust away; Fingering at thy heart, With love's art, Had I been, Thou wouldst sing me back again another glamorous day. Mandoline, my little Mandoline, 'Tis not thou that failest of the tune Happy ears have heard from lute and bird Mandoline. 'Tis my finger numb Leaves thee dumb Through the keen Sweetness of the songbirds singing all the joyous June. Mandoline, my little mandoline, Hang thou in the dust upon the wall. Mandoline, All too sweet before: Sweetness is no more, Heard or seen; Twilight, midnight shadows now upon thy silence fall. ROSA MULHOLLAND GILBERT. "THE "SOME CATHOLIC CELEBRITIES" HE world knows nothing of its greatest men ;" and many members of the Catholic community in these countries know nothing of some of its celebrities, or at least of the persons who have been thus labelled in the Catholic Fireside. Pages 16 and 17 of its second last Christmas Number give vignette portraits of "Some Catholic Celebrities of the United Kingdom in Arts, Science, Letters, Oratory, Parliament, Judicature, Bar, Army, Navy, etc." There are forty members of the French Academy; an Academician is called l'un des quarante. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Catholic Fireside's selection of prominent Catholics is confined to 40. Pictures are given of all, which seem to be excellent likenesses, as far as we can judge from the twelve with whose features we are familiar. We venture to transcribe the names without any omission. Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Francis Burnand, Madame de Navarro (Mary Anderson), Henry Gordon Shee, K.C., Sir James Mathew, Chief Baron Palles, Professor B. C. Windle, Madame Albani, Lord Edmund Talbot, The Marquess of Ripon, Monsignor Molloy, D.D., W. Campbell, K.C. (Edinburgh), Lord Brampton, The Duke of Norfolk, Hilaire Belloc, M.P., Lord Walter Kerr, Lord Mark Kerr, Judge Walton, Sir William Butler, John Redmond, M.P., Monsignor Croke Robinson, Rev. Basil Maturin, Mrs. Alice Meynell, Rev. Robert Kane, S.J., Rev. Matthew Russell, S.J., Rev. John Gerard, S.J., Rev. R. H. Benson, Mrs. Craigie, Rev. H. I. D. Ryder, Rev. John Norris, Wilfrid Ward, Canon Sheehan, Mrs. Katharine Tynan Hinkson, Rev. Bernard Vaughan, S.J., Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B., Rev. William Barry, D.D., Charles Devas, Mrs. Francis Blundell, Charles Santley, Bernard Partridge. Miniature biographies of most of these follow, but we cannot transfer them to our pages. See how many gaps Death has made already in a year and a half. Dr. Gerald Molloy, Lord Brampton, Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes), Father Ryder (whose successor is named beside him in this list), and Mr. Devas. How may these five vacancies be filled? If the hierarchy be not ineligible, how were Bishop Hedley and Archbishop Healy passed over even as mere men of letters? Other names "conspicuous by their absence"-as Lord John Russell said in an election address-are Lady Gilbert (Rosa Mulholland), Mr. Montgomery Carmichael, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Mrs. Bancroft, Mrs. Hamilton King, Miss May Probyn, Miss Emily Hickey, Count Plunkett, Father Herbert Thurston, S.J., Father David Bearne, S.J.-or (if those initials are already more than sufficiently represented) Father Harold Castle, C.SS.R., and Father Arthur Devine, C.P. THE PASSING OF SUMMER Down a valley green and wild, On it fared and would not stay, R. M. SILLard. A PRIESTS IN FICTION II. NTHONY TROLLOPE'S parsons are well-known to readers of fiction; but not so his priests. Yet the former are his own creations; he says in his Autobiography that he had never spoken to an Archdeacon in his life; while the latter are probably drawn from real priests among the many whom he must have met during the years spent in Ireland as post office inspector. Father John Magrath, the parish priest of The MacDermotts of Ballycloran, is one of the best and most lifelike of these. An educated man, with views broadened by wide reading and foreign travel, he is yet content to settle down in an obscure country parish, devoted to a flock the most cultivated members of which are poor Larry MacDermott, the ruined squire, and his children. It is in his relations to these young MacDermotts that Father John is seen to the greatest advantage. The almost motherly care with which he watches over the poor neglected girl, whose strong feelings and undisciplined mind are hurrying not only herself but her brother to disgrace and death, could be found, I think, in no man but a priest. His views on the subject of Feeney's marriage are shrewd and sensible; a little more liberal with regard to the difference of religion than seems quite natural in an Irish priest; but we must remember that we are reading of a time more than "sixty years since," when mixed marriages were more usual than they are at present. It jars upon us just a little to see a man like Father John carrying round the plate at Denis M'Governy's wedding, literally begging. The perfect simplicity with which he does it, however, goes far to reconcile us to it. In the later and more tragic scenes of the story, he shows himself not only the kind friend of the unhappy brother and sister, but the spiritual comforter as well. He is present at the deaths of both, standing with poor Thady on the scaffold, and is as evidently the holy priest as he is the kind and loving friend. He also promises to see that poor Larry MacDermott, thus deprived of his children, shall never want. It is only the outer aspects of the Catholic Church that Trollope has attempted to set forth, but he has done this so faithfully that he has unconsciously caught some of the more spiritual as well. There is a priest in one of Trollope's short stories who, living at a country hotel in the absence of any suitable house in the village, through sheer kindness allows a belated traveller to be put into a spare bed in his room. The stranger is not told of this arrangement, however, and when he is awakened by the entrance of the priest acknowledges his hospitality by flinging him downstairs. His remorse when he finds out the true state of the case, and the priest's kindly acceptance of his apologies make them fast friends. Another typical Irish priest is Father Edward O'Connor in The Collegians. He only appears once in the story of which his niece is the unhappy heroine, but that once is enough to show his character. He is the parish priest of Castleisland in Kerry, and we find him seated at his late breakfast on Christmas Day, apportioning the dues, only paid that morning among the various creditors, who had waited to send in their bills until they knew that the money to meet them was in the priest's possession. "It's a hard case, Jim," Father Edward says to his clerk, who brings in the eggs for his breakfast, "that they will not allow a man the satisfaction of retaining so much money even for a single day, and amuse himself by fancying it his own. suspect I am doomed to be a mere agent for this thirteen pound fourteen, after all; to receive and pay it away in a breath." The thirteen pound fourteen, be it noted, is the amount of his dues, probably for the half year. Of course the purchasing power of money was far greater in the early part of the nineteenth century than it is in the twentieth, and probably there were other dues paid in kind, but even allowing for this, the smallness of the sum shows the extreme poverty of both priest and people. His kindness to his unhappy niece when she comes to him for sympathy, is only what might have been expected from one who was used to dealing with worse sinners than poor Eily, and he prides himself on a non-existent virtue when he says to himself after the interview, "I was in the right to be severe with her; her conduct called for severity, and I was in the right to exercise it as I did." He presses on her the few shillings yet remaining in the linen bag which had once held the dues, but it seems strange that although he is actually at breakfast when she arrives he does not seem to think of offering her even a cup of tea; but this we may assume was a blunder on Gerald Griffin's part rather than thoughtlessness on that of the priest. Father Edward O'Connor was, like Father John Magrath, a man of culture and learning. In common with most of his |
