proached them with having harbored and shielded a criminal, with seeking to save from just punishment the murderer of the royal herald. Almost despairing of saving his nephew, Ruadhan retired. with his monks to the quarters assigned them, and during the night their chanting sounded so loudly that it awakened the monarch from his slumbers. Next morning the two abbots repeated their petition, but the king was firm and even contemptuous in refusing it. "It was not bad enough for you to dishonor your sacred cloth by shielding a red-handed murderer," he said, "but you must come here to keep the whole court awake most of the night with your loud praying and singing." "Did our chanting disturb thee, O Dermod?" asked Ruadhan in surprise. "Yes, your noise awoke me, but I cannot say I was sorry, O Ruadhan, for it was from a strange and ugly dream." "Strange and ugly, O king? Pray what was its nature?" "I dreamt that I saw a great tree so tall that it reached the clouds of heaven, and I saw one hundred and fifty men, each with a broad-mouthed sharp ax, cutting it down. By and by it was cut, and it fell as with a great noise that awoke me; but it was the singing of your psalms I heard." "Wouldst thou know the meaning of that dream?" the ax of the headsman. My herald's blood cries for vengeance even from the hearthstone of Aedh Guaire." "Then both thou and Tara shall receive the curse of the Church." "By which I suppose you mean the curses of yourself and your companions," nonchalantly remarked Dermod. "Neither one nor both you make the Church." The abbots withdrew, and soon afterwards a strange spectacle was presented in royal Tara. For over two thousand years the place, amid the green fields of Meath, had been the great citadel and residence of Irish royalty and the central seat of government. There lay the vast circular earthen forts, each filled with houses of wood or wickerwork. There arose the great rectangular building wherein, every three years, v as held the national parliament of Ireland. There were the palaces occupied during the sessions of the Feis by the kings of the four provinces. Through the historic fort had passed a long succession of overkings, many of them distinguished as scholars, legislators or warriors, men such as the learned Oilioll and Cormac, and the conquering Niall of the Nine Hostages, and the warlike Dathi, who carried the valor of Irish arms even to the passes of the Alps. Here Moran the Just had adjudicated, and Fithil the Wise had "Why, O Ruadhan, canst thou, then, lectured, and Patrick had preached and interpret it?" "The great tree thou didst see is thyself, O Dermod, whose power is over all Erin, and the hundred and fifty men, with sharp axes, cutting it, represent ourselves, chanting the hundred and fifty psalms of David, that will cut thee. from thy very roots to thy destruction unless you grant our petition and release unto us Aedh Guaire." "An interpretation to suit thy cause! Not unto you, O abbot of Lorha will I release thy murderous nephew, but rather unto the gad of the hangman or baptised. And now royal and historic Tara was to be cursed out of existence! Awed spectators gathered in crowds and watched the passage of the procession of monks with staves and girdles, young and old men, obedient, disciplined, grave, determined, repeating not prayers but the awful maledictions pronounced by their superiors. The Abbots Ruadhan and Brendan walked at the head of the procession, and as they went they rang their bells and invoked anathemas. At sight of this dismal and appalling parade King Dermod interestedly approached, whereupon the abbots "cursed himself and his posterity, his city and hill of Tara, and prayed God that no king or queen ever again would or could dwell there, and that it should be waste forever, without court or palace." The king prayed God to forgive them for their act, and words of mutual angry retort and recrimination followed. At length said Dermod: "Ye defend iniquity, and I virtue, ye disturb my kingdom; however, God favors ye more than He does me. Go, therefore, take away your man and pay a ransom for him." And he released unto them Aedh Guaire, for whom Abbot Ruadhan paid a ransom of thirty horses. The people implored the abbots to revoke the malediction, pleading that ancient Tara, the grand old heritage of the nation, the common property of the people at large and the chief seat and citadel of national power and government, should not be made responsible for any offences on the part of one who was but a transient occupant. But the appalled and indignant people pleaded in vain; the two abbots entered their chariot, which was in waiting, and drove away, leaving Tara and Ireland under a cloud which never afterwards cleared away. Soon, under the menacing terrors of the anathema, the more timid began to gather up their belongings and depart; by and by others followed them; day by day saw the mournful process of evacuation, as forth in various directions trickled the despondent groups-high lords and ladies in rattling chariots, surrounded by their escort glittering in mail; white-coiffed matrons of the court and snooded maidens of gentle blood; chieftains with torques or twisted circlets of gold round their necks and bards in their many hued garments; artisans, soldiers, slaves-by degrees all moved away into the surrounding country, leaving the great round raths, with their many habitations, deserted and lonely under the sky, leaving the wolf and fox full liberty to prowl the forsaken streets, and the wild birds to fly free through the great hall of the Miodhcuarta. Gone was the glory of Tara. Never more would the harp and song of minstrel be heard within its halls. Never more would the estates of the kingdom come from the four quarters to there knit and cement the interests of the nation by the holding of solemn national council. In future each overking of Ireland would convene parliament in the chief mansion seat of his own province, but the assembly would be but as a shadow of what was wont to be when arrayed beneath its shields, at sound of the herald's trumpet, around the great hall of Tara. The actors in the peculiar drama that led to the fall, after twenty centuries, of the celebrated citadel of government in ancient Erin, passed in various ways off the stage. The overking Dermod was assassinated in Ulster by a turbulent chieftain in A. D. 565. His body was laid in the churchyard of Connor; his head was carried for interment in the church he had helped his friend St. Kieran to found at Clonmacnoise. The Abbot Ruadhan of Lorha passed away in the midst of his brotherhood in 584. He is said to have been of noble extraction, and he was revered as a saint, his festival being the fifteenth of April. A leading Munster chieftain named his son in St. Ruadhan's honor MaolRuadhain, or Mulryan, meaning tonsured or dedicated to St. Ruadhan, from which son is descended the clan of O'Mulryan, now generally shortened to Ryan. So the name of the stern abbot of Lorha is now commemorated in one of the most numerous of Irish surnames. Brendan of Birr, also revered as a saint, died November 29, 571, some accounts say at the extraordinary age of nine score, and was buried in the "Teampuil na Creathuir Aluin," or Church of the Four Beautiful Saints, in the holy isle of Arran, in the same tomb, says tradition, with Saints Fursey, Conall and Berchan. Either after him or his neighbor and namesake, St. Brendan of Clonfert, the Celtic discoverer of America (probably the latter), is named the numerous and ubiquitous tribe of O'Brennan or Brennan, originally O'Maol-Brenainn, meaning dedicated to St. Brendan. Thus, after its occupancy for about two thousand years by the reigning monarchs of Ireland, passed away the glory of Tara as the result of a transient difference between leading Irishmen, hasty and hot-blooded, inconsiderate on both sides. It was a heavy blow to the national interests; from, the abandonment of her great central place of government and the practical discontinuance of her parliament Ireland became as a nation disintegrated and weak, the prey, in later years, of the plundering Norsemen and after them of the rapacious Anglo-Normans. And for over thirteen centuries the green grass has been growing on the lonely mounds that mark the site of the parliament hall, the royal rath and the palaces of the kings. By Rev. T. L. Crowley, O. P. Proud Rome bent captive to the chiseled form. Her cult was but a shameless revelry Man's latent, seething passions to transform. To celebrate her grace with pageantry While happy soul and pulsing heart grew warm. My heart and mind a nobler idol hold Than goddess from the Greek or Roman shore. Her mantling cheek and features I adore, And call her by the sweetest name of-Mother. A By G. C. N effectual test of the progress of the Catholic Church is to know the number and the proficiency of schools and colleges she has established in any province, state or nation. Twenty-six years ago the zealous sons of St. Ignatius founded in the city of Mangalore (India) the Catholic College of St. Aloysius. Shortly thereafter the mission was entrusted to the Society of Jesus. One of the chief arguments urged by the faithful of Mangalore, when petitioning the Holy See to transfer the mission to the Jesuit Fathers, was the need of a' Catholic college for the education of the youth of the district. Work was begun. early in 1882 on the foundations of a two-storied building, five hundred feet. in length, designed somewhat after the model of the Oratory of St. Philip in Rome. On the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, June 29, corner stones of the chapel and the college were solemnly laid by the late Mgr. Pagani, the then Pro-Vicar Apostolic. The success of the enterprise was due to the way in which Father Mutti, S. J., labored for it both here and in Europe. Among European founders of this noble institution may be mentioned the late Highness Mary Beatrice of Bourbon, Madame Destibeaux, the Count of Chambord, Mary Anne, Empress of Austria, the Marchioness of Champagné, the late Count de Nedouchel, the Marquis of Bute, the Marquis of Ripon, the Abbe Charmacé. This graceful structure is picturesquely situated on an eminence overlooking Mangalore. Upstairs are the rooms of the Fathers and downstairs the class rooms, the offices, reading room, library, parlor, etc. Passing under within the handsome portico the visitor finds himself in a spacious hall, the walls of which are wrought of marble slabs commemorative of the founders and benefactors of the college. To the north stands a detached new building for the accommodation of the F. A. and B. A. classes. A gymnasium has been erected and all the appurtenances thereto have been provided. Near-by stands the college Aula Maxima, a magnificent apartment, the equal of which few even of the richest colleges in India can boast. The stage is especially noteworthy. The hall is almost constantly in use for such occasions as the annual prize-day, sodality perform |