for a little space from his labours, his habitual dwelling-place was the hermitage on the Bass. No one who has ever read the beautiful account of the last hours of St. Cuthbert, the Abbot of Melrose and Lindisfarn, can forget his end on Holy Island. How he was visited by the weeping Brothers, who vainly sought to carry him back to Lindisfarn to die among them; how they prayed beside him, tended him lovingly, sought to make him swallow food, and were forced to leave him, slowly sinking, with death and eternal life meeting on his angelic face, that they might hurry across the tide-washed sands in time to reach their abbey in safety. This helps us to realise St. Baldred's lonely hours on the Bass Rock, where no pathway was ever opened to the shore for any one to visit and cheer him, and where, in stormy weather, he was in danger of perishing of absolute want.* It is true that these hermits of the sixth and seventh centuries, whose lives resembled that of the Camaldolese and Carthusians of a later day, had a small garden attached to their cells, in which such roots as would sustain life were produced, but the growth of the Bass could not have been luxuriant, and the hermit's time to cultivate his garden must have been small indeed. It is good, in these days of lavish indulgence, of inventive selfishness, and of boundless craving, to stand within the narrow walls of St. Baldred's chapel, or the stricter limits of his dwelling, and try to realise what it must have been to face death there unhelped and alone. Cast away, as it were, on a desert rock, amid the sound of the dashing breakers, the shrill pipe of the wind, and the screams of sea-fowl, there was everything in nature to dismay the strongest mind and cause the stoutest heart to quail. Nevertheless, we can believe, without undue imagining, that having given so royally of what he had, St. Baldred received royal gifts in return, and that, like a great Apostle of a later day, when stretched upon the sands of Sancian, the hermit of the Bass also grasped his poor wooden crucifix with "In Te Domine speravi, non confundar in æternum," and gave back his soul without fear to God.t * The two old Scottish impossibilities were to— Ding down Tantallan; + It was customary for the Cistercian Nuns of North Berwick abbey to make an annual pilgrimage to a little chapel on "Feddery” (Fidra) Islet, and another to the Bass. This convent was burnt in 1529. Thus, by little and little, the holy places of the earth are de-sanctified, and all but mere natural beauty is taken out of them. Sirtus the Fifth. WHATEVER part of Rome the English traveller may be engaged in exploring, his eye is constantly attracted by the name of Sixtus V. If he turns round from gazing on the glorious façade of St. Peter's to examine the obelisk of the Vatican by his side, he reads, "Sixtus V. Pont. Max.," and had an inscription been suitably placed there, the magnificent dome itself might well have borne on its swelling breast the name of him who commanded and urged on its erection. Over the great door of the Vatican library he observes again the arms of Sixtus, and below these his name, in letters of gold on a dark ground. In the placing of the obelisk in front of St. Mary Major, and again in the Chapel of the Holy Crib, we have his work. On the Loggia of St. John Lateran he has planted his name; and it occurs over and over again in different inscriptions in the Lateran Palace, strangely mixed up with those of heathen deities. You have wandered, perhaps, to the centre of the piazza, and are looking at the pedestal of its obelisk-the same characters meet your eye. Curiosity leads you to examine its rival in the Piazza del Popolo, and, as you almost expect, there the now familiar Sixtus V. is once more before your eyes. It occurs in two or three places on the Aqueduct of the Aqua Felice. It waits for you in the Fountain of Moses by the Baths of Diocletian, and above some baths erected by the Pope for public use. The fountains of Quattro Fontane, that near the Quirinal, those of the Capitol, of Ara Coli, of S. Maria in Portico, of S. Maria de' Monti, of St. John Lateran-all these bear his name. That same name marks for him the columns of Trajan and Antoninus. The street from Trinità de Monti to St. Mary Major's, presents it again to you, and you read it in a second street close to the same spot. As you pass from the gate of San Lorenzo, or as you approach the Quirinal, there it is before you; it is on the Esquiline, and finally on a street from St. John Lateran to the Coliseum. Sixtus V. rescued from the ruins of the Baths of Constantine the two famous horses that look down upon Rome before the gates of the Quirinal Palace, and having placed them where they now stand, left that well-known name engraved on one of the pedestals. Within the Palace of the Vatican it may be read in the Court of St. Damasus, it shows his care to preserve the pictures of Raphael in the Hall of Constantine, it marks a private staircase made by him between the Vatican and St. Peter's, and again, the principal entrance into the Cancellaria. On the Tiber, close by the Ripetta, stands the Church of St. Jerome, rebuilt by him and surmounted with his name; the Church of St. Sabina was restored and almost built anew by him, while, many miles up the river, the Ponte Felice bears witness how his constant activity began its erection, No wonder that the traveller, whose eye grows familiar with a name so constantly recurring, is tempted often to pause and ask who Sixtus V. was, when he lived, and how long he reigned as Pope? He will certainly not be prepared to hear that this Pope reigned just five years and four months, and that his zeal in improving and embellishing the central city of the world was a very small part of what he achieved during his short Pontificate. Felice Peretti was born on the 13th of September, 1521, at Grotto à Mare, in the March of Ancona, about ten miles from the little town of Montalto. At the age of ten years he was admitted as a Novice into the Monastery of St. Francis of Montalto, and during the following year took his vows as a Religious. After passing rapidly through his studies in classics and philosophy, he completed his theology in three years, adding to it a year of metaphysics. About nine years after this we read of his being the friend of St. Ignatius, of St. Philip Neri, and of St. Felix of Cantalice. And the character that he bore was one of great strictness and severity of life, drawing to him the attachment of the good, but arousing open hostility in those who were not faithful to their Religious profession. In 1557, he was elected Provincial of his Order in Hungary, and Regent and Inquisitor at Venice. In his fulfilment of this latter office, the Venetian Senate accused him of over-zeal and severity, while they themselves interfered with his diligence in restoring ecclesiastical discipline. They sent their accusations to Rome, demanding his recal. Pius IV. hesitated, but at last yielded the point, and Peretti returned to Rome, bearing with him this high character from the Doge, that he was held in very great esteem both by the Doge himself and the Republic, and that he hoped within ten years to see him Inquisitor, while he assured him that he would always receive him again with pleasure. After this time, Peretti, or Montalto, as he was generally called, held the offices of Theologian of the General Council, Consultor of the Sacred Office, and Professor at the College of the Sapienza in Rome, and was then made Vicar-Apostolic and General of his Order by Pius V. In the year 1567, he was created by the same Pope Bishop of S. Agata dei Goti, in the kingdom of Naples, and the 17th of May, 1570, saw him at length promoted to the dignity of Cardinal, taking his title from the Church of St. Jerome of the Sclavonians, though he retained the name of Montalto. During the succeeding fifteen years of his Cardinalate, Montalto lived in great retirement, and dedicated all his spare hours for twelve years to the completion. of a new and amended edition of the works of St. Ambrose. This adds one more to the proofs we already have of his learning and persevering application, but it scarcely prepares us for the stirring energy and versatility of those subsequent five years of a Pontificate that engraved the name of Sixtus V., not only on the walls and columns of Rome, but in still deeper characters on the page of history. The career of Cardinal Montalto up to this point had certainly awakened great interest in him. None could doubt his ability and learning, and we should think that few of the Houses of his Order that he visited would be inclined to accuse him of any want of energy or firmness of character on his departure. They might well say with Father Tempesti, himself a Franciscan, that the "visits of Father Montalto were by no means visits of routine or idle compliment, nor was his government one of outward show, but on the contrary, well calculated to eradicate abuses, and to indicate pretty plainly what would be the chief character of his Pontificate." Mingled, however, with his severity, was evidently a great sincerity of purpose. In all his strictness of discipline he seems to have set the example himself. And, as we have seen at Venice, even those who feared and wished to be rid of him, had not only very little to lay to his charge, but felt themselves actually constrained to express their esteem and admiration of his rectitude. Cardinal Montalto has been accused of ambition, more especially of aiming through life at that supreme dignity itself to which he was afterwards raised. It may have been so. He certainly availed himself of all the opportunities of promotion that came in his way. But if he really affected the Papacy, he sought to rise by steps most honourable and conscientious. He recommended himself only by acts that increased his merit, and we can see nothing but the highest of claims in an uncompromising zeal, in a devotion to learning, and a life of submission and studious retirement during fifteen years, which were quite as likely to stand in the way of, as they were to help on a mere selfish ambition. In the conflict of motives that led the Cardinals to be almost unanimous in electing him to fill the Holy See, we can find no trace of any real intrigue on his part, though he had no hesitation in accepting the onerous post as soon as it was offered to him. It has been said, indeed, that he had recourse, while the election was pending, to the most unworthy artifices, simulating humility, and tottering along with the help of his stick, bent and coughing, in all the weakness and decrepitude of assumed old age, in the hope he might be elected as one likely to be easily led by others, or too infirm to last very long. Had such a ruse been thought of, or attempted, it must have signally failed, for the Cardinal's real character must have been too well known to admit of the possibility of such a deception, and, we may add, of the probability |