coolness about French officiality which gives flavour and raciness to the narrative of its discomfiture. Discomfiture at last came. M. le Maire had been ordered by M. le Préfet to shut up the grotto, and he, poor man, had sought to sail between two winds and to pacify the people as well as keep his place by complying, under the pretext that the water might have valuable medicinal properties and belonged to the town. Bernadette had been taken into custody, and an attempt had even been made to convey her to the living tomb of a house of aliénés,-when the tide of devotion and the popular movement produced by the numberless miracles of the grotto reached the foot of the throne of Napoleon III. A laconic telegram to M. le Préfet settled the whole business. There was a little delay to save appearances, but the order for the seclusion of the grotto was revoked by the authority that issued it, and the patience of the people and the prudent abstention of the Clergy fully rewarded by the tardy though complete concurrence of the secular Government with the measures taken by the Church to honour the new sanctuary, which had drawn round itself a bulwark of popular belief and enthusiasm which no Government could afford to despise or to thwart. The conversion of the officials at the word of the Emperor was quite dramatic. It reminds one of the nursery tale, in which the water begins to quench the fire, and the fire to burn the stick, and the stick to belabour the pig. M. le Préfet and M. le Commissaire de Police, and M. le Maire, all appear inspired with a sudden access of devotion, which communicates itself to even so high a personage as M. le Ministre himself. It is true that, after a time, M. le Préfet and M. le Commissaire find the neighbourhood of Lourdes rather uncomfortable, and they are removed to exercise their piety in other spheres of labour. M. le Préfet, as it chanced, had to go to the department in which Sallette is situated! However, what is certain is, that the new Sanctuary exists and flourishes, and that the evidence concerning it has been made far more complete and indisputable than it might otherwise have been by the opposition which greeted its appearance.

VOL. XI.

I I

The Dialogues of Lydney.

No. 1.-A COUNCIL ON THE COUNCIL.-PART I.

CHAPTER I.—THE KINGSHILLS OF LYDNEY.

THE brightest parts of the whole year to me are generally the vacation weeks, which I mostly spend at Lydney Lodge with my old friend Kingshill and his wife. It is a rare change for a hardworking lawyer, who has to live for the greater part of the year in the precincts of Lincoln's Inn, and to pass from his chambers to the Courts and from the Courts to his chambers, to breathe the fresh soft air of Lydney, with just a spice of the salt-water in it— enough, if the theory of my friend's not very scientific gardener be true, to turn the hydrangeas blue-and to roam over open downs and through groves of oak and chesnut with the good master of the lodge. It is a rare change, too, for the mind, which has had to feed itself upon the anxious struggles of clients, the hard rules and exacting precision of the law, or, on the other hand, on the thoughtless and frivolous talk of the club or society, to find itself once more in contact with a man of careful culture, who has had time to read on upon his favourite subjects during many years of mature life, and who has thought and noted almost as much as he has read. I find body and mind always the better for that six weeks at Lydney-which often grows into the whole of my vacation months and I may say that I find my soul better also, partly because it repairs its strength with the returning vigour of health, and is not uninfluenced by intercourse with persons so full of unaffected charity as my two hosts, partly because of other advantages within its reach at Lydney, of which I need not now speak more particularly. As I am going to jot down some notes of sayings and doings at Lydney, I must give by way of preface the shortest possible account of the place and its inhabitants.

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I must begin with the latter. Kingshill is, as I have said, one of my oldest friends. Our friendship dates from my first fortnight when he took compassion upon the loneliness of a poor fellow just launched on the rough vigorous life of a great public school, initiated me into the games and fashions of the place, made me after a few days come and "mess" with him and another good-natured lad in the same house with himself, taught me how to stand up at once against bullying, and helped me very materially to establish myself on a comfortable footing with my companions. Kingshill was always popular, and his

friendship supplied me with credentials in our little society. We passed up the school together, almost side by side; we met one another in London during the Christmas holidays, and once or twice interchanged visits in the summer. Then came the time of separation, for we were not bound to the same College or even to the same University; but we corresponded, and kept up our home companionship, and took our degrees much about the same time. By this time our correspondence had become regular, and it related to our most intimate personal thoughts, and our views as to the great questions which at that time were agitating England, especially on matters of religion. Happily, we found ourselves in the same camp, and, as we were both eager and full of hope, our sympathy in the movement which was carrying us on was a fresh bond between us. Then came two events which have combined to make us feel more perfectly brothers than before. The first of these was Kingshill's marriage, just before his ordination as a minister of the Establishment, to a dear cousin of mine, with whom many of my own younger days had been passed, and the second was his conversion to Catholicism, about the time of the Gorham controversy. My own mind had been made up in the same direction, shortly before, and after a few anxious months of prayer and fear, his happiness in his new faith was finally crowned by the submission of his wife. After this, the Kingshills travelled for two or three years, and then came back to settle down at Lydney Lodge, a small house with just a hundred acres of land around it which had been left to my friend by an unmarried uncle. He has somewhat enlarged it, to make room for possible guests, as well as for a large assortment of books which his studious tastes have led him to accumulate, but he has held his hand from buying more land in the neighbourhood, content with the free use and enjoyment of the wide range of downs at the back of the village, and of the well-kept walks and drives of two lordly neighbours, who give him all possible facilities, and who, as they visit their places near Lydney for not more than a month or six weeks in each year, derive from them, in reality, much less advantage than he does. He has made walks and planted shrubberies here and there through the fields immediately round his house, and in this way has made himself the master of some very lovely views over folds of wood which lie below his own grounds, through which the little river which receives the contributions of the hills behind him makes its way to the sea, at the distance of some seven or eight miles. The house itself lies lower than these walks, and has nothing to look out upon but its own quiet and well-kept gardens.

I shall only add two words more as to the delights of Lydney Lodge. It is not generally a happiness in wedded life that it should be childless; and I know no gentler or more thoroughly loving a soul than the mistress of the house of which I have been speaking. She is one of those tender-natured women who can be

unkind to no one, and who give you the feeling by their quiet genial manner that there is within them an almost fathomless depth of loving kindness, enough to supply the wants of half a world. But the source of motherly love, the tenderest and most beautiful of the affections, has remained a sealed fountain in the heart of Gertrude Kingshill. Lydney Lodge has never rung with the merry chirp and prattle of children; as if this one human joy was to be denied to two persons who certainly seem in every other respect to have the happiest of lots. One result, perhaps, has been that Mrs. Kingshill has become the mother and visible Providence, as it were, of the poor all around, to an extent which would hardly have been possible to her if she had had a family of her own to attend to; another is that she and her husband have lived in the most unbroken companionship, and she has become the partner of his thoughts, his studies, and his intellectual pursuits. There is a singular tenderness and grace about the pair in their relation to one another, as if each had to supply to the other the whole circle of home affections, which has reminded me often of the words of Elcana to Anna-"Am I not more to thee than ten children?" I have never heard a murmur on the subject from either; but I have never seen, even in the midst of the most flourishing families, married happiness like theirs.

The other word that I must say by way of preface relates to one who is not quite a member of the household at Lydney Lodge, but with whom, if I succeed in interesting my readers in what has from time to time passed there, they will soon be well acquainted. This is the good chaplain, Don Venanzio. Don Venanzio is, as his name implies, an Italian, from a little town in the March of Ancona. He was educated at Rome, and after a long course of studies returned to his native province a beneficiato in some collegiate or cathedral church-whether at Loreto or Recanati I have forgotten-where his zeal, activity, and personal holiness made him for many years an object of hatred to the emissaries of the secret societies, whose great aim is the corruption of youth. He had to fly the country to save his life at the time of the short-lived Roman republic, when the Pope was at Gaeta, and after remaining for some time in Paris, fell in with the Kingshills as they were returning from their travels after their conversion. They were looking out for a chaplain, having already determined to settle at Lydney and open a small mission, and as Don Venanzio had picked up a little English and was willing to fall in with their plans, they brought him over with them and settled him in a pretty little presbytery looking out into their own garden. Don Venanzio is one of the Italian exiles who have taken root in England. He has thoroughly mastered our language, and has even made himself acquainted with our literature, and with the questions of the day among us. I must say that I have very seldom found foreigners who have been able to comprehend the religious state of England. Too many of

them seem to start with false notions as to facts, notions quite in harmony with their experience in their own country, where everyone who is not a Catholic is, we may almost say, an infidel, and to make no allowances for the immense mass of hindrances which prevent many ordinarily well-informed persons among our Protestant neighbours from recognising the claims of Catholicity, even to examination. Thus they are sometimes too ready to see evidences of bad faith in words and actions which are simply the result of educational prejudices of which Protestants are unconscious. The Italian theology, in particular, is very wide as to the distribution of grace, but it seems to me that even Italians sometimes fail to apply it practically. It is a part of the same thing that they should be unable to take in without greater and more patient study than most men are capable of, the intellectual and controversial position of the various religious parties which divide the Establishment. Whether it be that Don Venanzio has been unusually patient, or that he has an uncommon gift of discernment and of moderation in judgment, I do not know; but he certainly is remarkable for his tolerant and intelligent charity. Perhaps his perpetual intercourse with Mr. and Mrs. Kingshill may have had something to do with it. For the rest, I shall leave his character to unfold itself as best it may to such readers as care to study it.

CHAPTER II.-MR. LLOYD AND HIS DIFFICULTIES.

On the occasion of the visit to Lydney Lodge of which I am now about to speak I was not unaccompanied in my journey. Kingshill is always glad to receive congenial guests, and I had enlisted as my companion a brother lawyer already known to my friend, who was on his way to a further county, and might spare us a few days before he proceeded to his shooting at Marlock. My friend Lloyd comes of an old Catholic family on what was formerly the "Welsh March," in which some of the traditions of Charles Butler's time have been preserved long after they have vanished from the great mass of Catholic society. I say some traditions, not all, for my friend is far from being a perfect representation of the old "Cisalpine" spirit. But he amuses me greatly by his timidity in matters of religious development, as well as by certain opinions of which we shall hear more presently. He says his Rosary every day, and has an old-fashioned way of fasting strictly on the eves of the Feasts of our Blessed Lady, but he can hardly make up his mind to the statues of the Madonna which are now happily so common in our churches. Nothing would induce him to miss one of the great "Indulgences," but he thinks that converts go to Communion too frequently. I know him to be extremely charitable, and to be well acquainted with the use of certain instruments of personal penance. I have seldom met a

man who seemed to me to keep a greater guard over his tongue in speaking of other people. He rejoices in the long prayers and