A love of solitude began to grow on him, for he was preparing himself to be alone with God. When begged to try a new treatment, he consented, saying, "I ask myself, as I often do, what would Père Lacordaire have done in my place? It seems to me he would have thought it an indication =of Providence." He returned to Paris; and every effort of medical science was made to arrest the malady, but all in vain. -An alarming fainting fit on the 14th of June made his friends fear death was nearer to him than they had imagined, and the Abbé Bernard thought it right to warn him. "You surprise me," he said quietly. "I thought myself very ill, but not so near death; but it is so much the better; you must give me the holy viaticum and extreme unction." The abbé went to fetch the blessed sacrament and holy oils from St. Sulpice, the parish church of their childhood, of their first communion, where they had prayed and wept to gether, where they had asked many things from God, where they had together been consecrated priests. There their whole Christian life had run by; and now one had come to fetch for the other divine succor for his last hours. The invalid insisted on rising, and was dressed in his cassock to receive the holy sacraments. Père Gratry and other friends were present. "I can see him now," says the former, "as full of grace and energy as ever, smiling as usual, and saying, 'I am in perfect peace, dear father-in perfect peace.' I shall remember that sight all my life, thank God; that noble bearing, that face pale as marble, those large speaking eyes, his tender glance, and his last words, in perfect peace."" He made his profession of faith, begged pardon of all whom he had offended or scandalized, thanked all for the kindness they had shown him; and implored them "not to say, as was too often done, he is in heaven;' but to pray much for him VOL. III. 54 after his death." Then he said the "Te Deum" in thanksgiving for all the mercies of his life; and at last he said to his friend, "You cannot think what interior joy I feel since you told me I was going to die." The next day the Archbishop of Paris came to see him. He would be dressed in his cassock to receive the visit, and would kneel for the bishop's blessing. He then had a long private conversation with him. 66 To this dying chamber came some of the most celebrated names in Paris : Père Pététot, the Count de Montalembert, the Prince de Broglie, Augustin Cochin, Mgr. Buguet, the Vicar-general, the curé of St. Sulpice, General Zamoïski, and a hundred others. One of them said, "We are a long way off from knowing now what he is. We shall know it one day." "Dear friend," said he to Father Adolphe Perreud of the Oratory, we shall not cease to work together for the cause of God and his church. Before you leave me, give me your blessing." "On condition you give me yours," said the Oratorian; and blessing each other, the friends parted for ever on earth. His bodily sufferings were severe. His bones were nearly through his skin, and his cough shook him to pieces. He grew weaker and weaker, and at last the end came. "Give me the crucifix, sister," said he to the nursing sister who attended on him; "not mine, but yours, that has so often rested on dying lips. If I die to-morrow, mother, it will be my first communion anniversary." "Dear child," she answered, weeping, both happy that day." “Well,” he answered, "we must be still happier to-morrow." 66 we were The agony came on; he kissed the crucifix again and again, murmuring, "Lord, have pity on me; Jesus, take me soon; Jesus, soon." Suddenly a great terror seized him; his eyes were dilated with fear, gazing at something invisible to all around; and he cried out, "I am afraid, I am afraid." The Abbé Bernard said, "You must not fear God; abandon yourself to his mercy, and say, In thee, Lord, have I hoped; let me not be confounded for ever." He looked at him and said, "It is not God whom I fear; oh! no. I fear that they will prevent my dying." Then he grew calm. The abbé brought him the cross of Père Lacordaire, and said, "My God, I love thee with all my heart in time and in eternity." "Oh! yes, with all my heart," he said, kissing the image of his Lord. It was his last act and his last words. "Depart, O Christian soul!" prayed his friends Charles and Adolphe Perreud. "I absolve thee from all thy sins," said the Abbé Bernard; and in a few minutes the last struggle was over, and his soul was set free. Among his papers was found the following: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I die in the faith of the Catholic Church, to whose service since I was twelve years old I have had the happiness of consecrating my life. "I tenderly bless my relations and friends; I implore all those who remember me to pray for a long time for my soul, that God, turning away from the sight of my sins, may deign to receive me into the place of eternal rest and happiness. I bless once again all those who are dear to me-my relations, my benefactors, my masters, my fathers and brothers in the priest hood, my spiritual sons, the number of dear young people who have loved me. all the souls to whom I have been united on earth by the tie of the same faith and the same love in Jesus Christ." The inscription on his tomb was chosen by himself: "Lord, when I have seen thy glory, I shall be satisfied with it." These words were as a key to his life. An insatiable, ardent desire for God had possessed him, animated his actions; and at last the very ardor of his longings wore out the feeble body that enclosed so grand and beautiful a soul. From The Dublin University Magazine. SONNET. UPON a rose-tree bending o'er a river Its beating heart with happy music rang, Until the last had dropped into the stream, Awhile the poor bird clung, and soon was seen no more. From Once a Week. CARDINAL TOSTI. BY BESSIE RAYNOR PARKES. Ir was in the afternoon of Friday, the 23d of March, that Rome heard of the death of the "learned and venerable Tosti." This aged cardinal, long the director of the great establishment of San Michele, (which is a hospital and school combined,) had attained to nearly ninety years. Now he was dead, and laid out in state in his own room at San Michele, whither we went about five o'clock, and, threading the vast corridors, which run round a court blossoming with oranges and lemons, ascending a long flight of stone stairs, got into upper regions filled with a perceptible hum, soldier sentinels stationed by the opened doors, who motioned us on from room to room till we came to the last of all. These rooms were perfectly empty of all furniture, save a few book-cases under glass; but the yellow satin walls of one, and the delicately-tinted panels of another, showed that they had but lately formed the private apartments of him who was gone. Three or four temporary altars were erected in the empty space, adorned by tall unlighted candles. A thrill crept over us as we neared that last open door, a silent sentinel at either side; as we crossed the antechamber, and came in a direct line with the aperture, we saw a figure, splendidly attired, reposing on a great sloping couch of cloth of gold. The face of this figure indicated extreme age; the brow was surmounted by the bright scarlet berretta, which caught the light from the setting sun. The shrunken frame was clothed in the soft purple of its ecclesiastical rank. The hands were crossed and held a crucifix; the feet were turned up in new and pointed shoes. There he lay, Cardinal Tosti, who for five-and-twenty years was the handsomest of all the Sacred Conclave, and towered above his brethren when they walked in procession, drawing the admiration of beholders. There was no sound, as we knelt by the dead man's couch; through the window could be seen the swift Tiber, swollen by the recent rains, and on the other side of the river rose the green slopes of the half-deserted Aventine, with its few solitary churches, Santa Sabina, Santa Alessio, and its gracious crown of trees. Here had Tosti dwelt for many a year, in rooms which looked to the golden west. Here he occupied himself with his books, and with the school for industrial and artistic pursuits which was due to his efforts at San Michele. I have never seen anything so marvellously picturesque and impressive as that dead man, lying on his couch of cloth of gold, the closing scene of a long life, which stretched back far beyond the wars of the first Napoleon, even to the period when Papal Rome received the royal refugees of the French Revolution. Presently, a group of white-robed priests entered, and began reciting the office for the dead. This was the signal for the gathering of a little crowd of Romans. Brown-cowled monks, peasant women with their children in arms, boys and girls with large wondering dark eyes. Together they crowded to the door of the dead man's chamber, and knelt upon the floor, so that above and be yond their bowed heads could be seen that pale splendor upon its shining couch. We left with reluctant footsteps, feeling a fascination in the picture which it is hard to describe. morrow; and by chance we had gained admission at this purely private hour. The body was taken on the little bier into the sacristy, and there we supposed that some change was made in the raiment; when it was brought back the hands were gloved, and instead of the scarlet berretta was a plain skull-cap. at plain skull-cap. Then, with difficulty and much consultation, but with perfect reverence of intention, the straight image was lifted on to the great couch; the assistant men being grouped on ladders, and an eager voluble monsig. nore directing the whole. The lad ders, the torch-light, the mechanical difficulty of the operation, again reminded me of one of those great depositions in which the actual scene of the Cross is so vividly brought out by art. At length the dead cardinal lay placidly upon his cloth of gold, and they fetched his ring to put upon his hand, and his white mitre wherewith to clothe his gray hairs. We left them performing the last careful of fices, making the strangest, the most gorgeous torch-light group in the middle of that dark church that poet or artist could conceive. Late in the evening, an hour after the Ave, the corpse was to be conveyed by torch-light to Santa Cecilia, the cardinal's titular church; and at Santa Cecilia we found ourselves in the starry night. The torches were just entering the church as we drove up; and for some minutes the doors were inexorably shut, and we feared we had lost all chance of an entrance. But we were presently admitted, and saw indeed a striking scene! The small church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, famous as being built upon the site of the young martyr's dwelling, was draped in black and gold from ceiling to pavement, and where the altar-piece is generally to be seen was a great flat gold cross on a black ground. The sanctuary was greatly enlarged for the morrow's service, and hung with black; and in the nave, not very far from the great portal, rose a large empty couch, exactly resembling that which we had seen in the cardinal's private chamber. At its foot was a low bier, whereon now lay the same white image of a man in its purple robes, and a group of attendants crowded reverentially around it, flashing torches in their hands, which formed a centre of light in the dark church, reminding one of the famous Correggio; only, instead of the new-born Babe, the illumination of humanity for all time to come, was the aged dead, no longer capable of communicating the living light of intelligence or of faith, but lying in a pale reflection under the torches, and gathering into itself all the meaning of the whole scene. We perceived that something remarkable was about to take place, and retired discreetly behind a pillar, that our accidental presence might attract no notice. The truth was, that the cardinal was about to be laid out for the great funeral service of the The next morning the Pope and the College of Cardinals came to officiate at the funeral mass. The square court in front of Santa Cecilia was filled with an eager crowd of Romans and Forestieri, with the splendid costumes of the Papal Guard, with pranc ing horses and old-fashoned chariots, gorgeous with gilding and color. They were much such a company of equipages as may be seen in our Kensington Museum, but so fresh and wellappointed in spite of the extreme antiquity of their design, that one felt as if carried back to the days of Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Into Santa Cecilia itself we could not penetrate, by reason of the crowd and the stern vigilance of the soldiers, who, attired in the red-and-yellow costume designed by Michael Angelo, kept a considerable space in the nave empty for the moment when the Pope should walk from the altar to the bier. But through the open door we saw the lights upon the black-draped altar and in front of that gorgeous couch, with its motionless occupant, his white mitre being now the conspicuous point in the picture. And when the Pope left the dim church and came out into the sun shine, the brilliant rays fell upon his venerable white hair and scarlet cap, while the weapons flashed and the crowd shouted, as he ascended his wonderful chariot with the black horses, and drove away. MISCELLANY. Microscopic Plants the Cause of Ague. -Owing to the prevalence of ague in the malarial district of Ohio and Mississippi, Dr. Salisbury undertook a series of experiments in 1862, with a view to determine the microscopic characters of the expectorations of his patients. He commenced his experiments by examining the mucous secretions of those patients who had been most submitted to the malaria, and in these he detected a large amount of low forms of life, such as algæ, fungi, diatomaceæ, and desmidiæ. At first he imagined that the presence of these organisms might be accidental, but repeated experiments convinced him that some of them were invariably associated with ague. The bodies which are constantly present in such cases he describes as being "minute oblong cells, either single or aggregated, consisting of a distinct nucleus, surrounded with a smooth cell-wall, with highly clear, apparently empty space between the outer cell-wall and the nucleus." From these characters Dr. Salisbury concludes that the bodies are not fungi, but belong properly to the algae, in all probability being species of the genus Palmella. Whilst the diatomacea and other organisms were found to be generally present, the bodies just described were not found above the level at which the ague was observed. In order to ascertain exactly their source, he suspended plates of glass over the water in a certain marsh which was regarded as unhealthy. In the water which condensed upon the under surface of these plates, he found numerous palmella-like structures, and on examining the mould of the bog, he found it full of similar organisms. From repeated researches Dr. Salisbury concludes: (1.) Cryptogamic spores are carried aloft above the surface at night, in the damp exhalations which appear after sunset. (2.) These bodies rise from thirty to sixty feet, never above the summit of the damp night-exhalations, and ague is similarly limited. (3.) The day-air of ague districts is free from these bodies. Use of Lime in Extracting Sugar.— Peligot long ago demonstrated that owing to the insoluble nature of the compound formed of lime with sugar, the former substance would be a most valuable agent in the manufacture of the latter. Peligot's suggestion is now being carried out on a large scale in MM. Schrötter and Wellman's sugar-factory at Berlin. The molasses is mixed with the requisite quantity of hydrate of lime and alcohol in a large vat, and intimately stirred for more than half an hour. The lime compound of sugar which separates is then strained off, pressed, and washed with spirit. All the alcohol used in the process is afterward recovered by distillation. The mud-like precipitate thus produced is mixed with water and decomposed with a current of carbonic acid, which is effected in somewhat less than half an hour. The carbonate of lime is removed by filtration, and the clear liquid, containing the sugar, evaporated, decolorized with animal charcoal, and crystallized in the usual manner. The sugar furnished by this method has a very clear appearance, and is perfectly crystalline. It contains, according to polarization analysis, sixty-six per cent of sugar, twelve per cent of water, the remainder being uncrystallizable organic matter and salts. The yield, of course, varies with the richness and degree of concentration of the raw material; on an average, thirty pounds of sugar were obtained from one hundred pounds of molasses. |