Catholic Faith on account of the very many excellent works of Christian piety which he published."

Just as it is very deplorable for a printer to have even a merely mechanical part in the production of an evil and ignoble book, so it would be well for printers and publishers to purify their intention and rejoice when the course of business gives them a share in the propagation of holy books, such as the hundreds of thousands of copies of the revised and improved editions which Mr. Henry Gill issued of Catholic prayer books, new and old-old like Catholic Piety, The Garden of the Soul, The Key of Heaven, The Path to Paradise; new, like The Treasure of the Sanctuary, The Shrine of the Sacred Heart, The Little Treasury of Leaflets, etc. These books have a part in the holiest hours of millions of holy and simple souls.

In this context one is reminded of Messrs. Gill's edition of the Roman Breviary, printed from a special fount of new type on the finest Indian paper procurable. The little pocket edition of the Hora Diurna, so very small and so very legible, has already won for itself a wide popularity.

Among the sacred publications of the Firm may be mentioned the Sermons of Dr. David Moriarty, the eloquent Bishop of Kerry, and of Father Joseph Farrell, the still more eloquent Curate of Monasterevan, whose Lectures of a Certain Professor was perhaps the finest piece of pure literature ever sent forth from the O'Connell Street press. Very much more useful, however, for young priests than the most eloquent book of sermons is Valuy's Directorium Sacerdotale. This "Guide for Priests was brought out in English with immense care by Father William Eyre, S.J., who almost doubled the book with additional matter of a very original kind, though with characteristic modesty he completely suppressed his name. He was well acquainted with the usages of good society, and there are few priests who could not find useful hints on this subject and on graver subjects in this book. We have sometimes thought that if we were entrusted with a sum of money to distribute copies of one single book among young ecclesiastics, our choice would fall on this "Guide for Priests," less for the sake of Father Valuy's share of it than Father Eyre's.

Geoffrey Austin, the first of the brilliant series of novels that have made Canon Sheehan famous, not only in the Englishspeaking communities on both sides of the Atlantic, but also

by means of translations in Germany, France, and other countries, was published by M. H. Gill & Son and has run through four editions. The same imprint is upon the writings of men so utterly different as Thomas Caulfield Irwin and William John Fitzpatrick. Other very notable items in Messrs. Gill's catalogue are Dr. P. W. Joyce's Names of Irish Places, Mrs. Sarah Atkinson's Essays on Irish Subjects and her Life of Mary Aikenhead, and local and diocesan histories like Archdeacon Fahy's Kilmacduagh and Archdeacon White's History of Clare.

M. H. Gill & Son were among the first to take advantage of the enthusiasm awakened of late years for the cultivation of the Irish language. Long before, they had published Canon Ulick Bourke's College Irish Grammar which dates back to that good priest's student days at Maynooth, half way through the last century. They were the first publishers also of Father Eugene O'Growney's epoch-making Lessons in Irish. Much of Dr. Douglas Hyde's splendid Irish work, and also Father Dinneen's, has come from this Dublin firm whose golden jubilee we are commemorating a little behind time. Floreat in aevum !

A RAINBOW AT VICTORIA FALLS*

A CHILD, I chased the rainbow once, and wept
Because I could not reach its glorious ray.
In life's decline, I stood amid the spray
Where all Zambesi down its gorges leapt ;
And as into the cloud I careless stept,

The rainbow forward moving came my way.
With round completed on the grass it lay,
And o'er my feet the rosy radiance crept.

So do we chase our fancies, and despair

At length of joys that made our youth so sweet:
Till, some day, God's ideal, now unsought,
Bodies itself in some diviner air,

And, filling with its radiance all our thought,
Completes its circle at our very feet.

F. C. KOLBE.

• Dr. Kolbe calls it in a private note "one of the most beautiful Nature-happenings that have ever come to me."

TEMPERANCE HYMN

GOD, Who dwellest in the light,
God of peace, and God of might,
Look upon Thy children now,

Hear our prayer, and take our vow!

We Thy faithful soldiers are,

Unto death we mean to war

'Gainst the fiend that is Thy foe,

Drink, the lord of sin and woe!

Draught more dire than flame or sword!
Be the poison all out-poured!

Flood the rivers, drench the sod!
Drown the demon, Drink, O God!

THE NATIONAL PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES

THE

LATEST OR LAST?

HE Infidels, Freemasons, Freethinkers, Knownothings, Communists, Jews,, Huguenots, anarchists, cowards, dupes, and simpletons, who have combined to bring into its actual state of confusion and peril, that country of splendid gifts and sacred memories which used to glory in her title of Catholic France and Eldest Daughter of the Church, which is still the upholder of the Christian faith in many regions of the earth, and which possesses still at home, please God, inexhaustible stores of piety and zeal and patience and courage to bear her safe through the present sorrowful crisis-the French Government which is the tool of this sinister combination has, from various motives which are not supposed to be of the purest, spared so far, in its campaign of oppression and devastation, the Shrine of Our Lady at Lourdes.

An Irish lady, who bears by long inheritance an historic name, has described in a letter to her sister what she saw there in the "munificent August" of this summer. of this summer. This letter has been placed at our disposal, all except the first page or two, which began no doubt with a date which would have enabled us to determine whether the Friday that we start from was August 17th or August 24th-probably the former.

On Friday we went to the railway station to see the arrival of the train blanc in which there were 200 pilgrims from Paris. About twenty gentlemen who had arrived earlier met the train with bath-chairs, and several other gentlemen who had been in the train joined in helping to lift out the sick and carry the worst cases on stretchers, and the others on bath-chairs, first to the Grotto, then to the hospital or hotel prepared for them.

The most striking feature of the whole thing was the cheerful expression of everyone. There were a great many nuns and ladies in the train who had been taking care of the sick, and at the end of such a long journey must have been tired; but they all looked as fresh and clear and cheerful as if they had

come on a picnic from the next station. There were a few young girls, but the women were mostly middle-aged. Among the men there was a greater variety of age: they seemed to range from sixteen years to ninety; but all worked with the same steady gentleness and cheerfulness, and (most astonishing of all) no shouting or gesticulating. One old gentleman gave the orders, the others obeyed. All worked with the regularity of soldiers and the eagerness of school-boys, but absolutely no hurry or flurry-always time to make a pleasant remark or jest with each other or with the sick, who were nearly all equally cheerful. Remember, these branchardiers are all gentlemen and unaccustomed to labour. Most of them are fine, healthylooking men; but some, and not the least energetic, look nearly as delicate as the invalid they are drawing in the chair.

Having emptied the train of its human freight, the nuns and some ladies collect the cushions, mattresses, and other articles used on the journey; and only then the regular railway porters begin their work. All this time more than a hundred idle spectators, like ourselves, have been walking about and getting more or less in the way. An ordinary train from Pierfitte came in, unloaded, and went out. The two hundred travellers from Paris had all left the station in about half an hour, and ten minutes later another trainload came in and displayed the same cheerful resignation on the part of the sufferers, and the same willing gentleness and strength on the part of the helpers. It was most striking to see gentlemen, dressed as smartly as for a race-meeting or Horse Show Week in Dublin, and mostly in very much the same style, lifting big women from the train and placing them gently and quietly in a chair, or six together carrying a stretcher to the ambulance carriage outside the station, looking all the time as if it were a usual recreation.

From the station the pilgrims went or were taken to the Grotto and the Piscine, to pray, drink the water, and be bathed. During the National Pilgrimage the Lourdes Hospitaliers leave the place entirely to the strangers in charge of the pilgrims. About half past four o'clock there was a procession from the Grotto to the Rosary Church. The Blessed Sacrament was carried round, passing near the sick who were placed in

* A military term, "Litter-bearers," "bearers of the sick.”