and, turning round his head from a fixed and frightened stare at the window, I caught a surfeit of his poisoned breath. From the compound of soot, sickness, and grease, arose the stronger smell of whiskey, that soon cuabled me to conclude his to be one of those frightful cases of delirium tremens of which I had heard and read.

I managed him as well as I could till all had left the church, and then gave him in charge to the porter, to make out his friends, and have him conveyed home. Little did I imagine the task I was imposing on the unfortunate porter.

I hurried into the parlour, opened the shutter in time to see, by aid of gas-lamp, the watchman clutching my unfortunate acquaintance of the morning fast by the collar. Affrighted by this second attack in the rear, the sweep turned quickly on his assailaint, who lost his balance, and both went rolling down the steps amid mingled cries of Devil, devil!-help, help!-rattle, rattle!"-and hideous howls of " Murdher! murdher! fire fire!" from the terrified servant in the hall. With difficulty I silenced the latter, and sending hin up to assure the alarmed Bishop, &c. that it was only a poor madinan whom I knew, &c. I went out and succeeded in releasing the poor inaniac from the hands of the assembled night watch.

At his earnest entreaty, I roused up the growling porter and admitted him again into the chapel, where he promised to remain quiet until morning.

Wit served Sandy better than eloquence, as, looking up at the window, he asked, in well-feigned alarm, what fire was that?" You can see them at last. I told you, seven devils' are at the window, you stupid hog!" Sandy rau to the side door near the lodge, opened it, and leaving it ajar, ran back, crying, "The lodge-chimney is on fire, make haste."

The professional call caught the sweep. He jumped up, ran to the door, and Sandy coolly pushed him out into the yard, locked the door, turned into his lodge, which he also locked, leaving the outwitted sweep to seek shelter where he pleased.

Many and unavailing were the efforts made by the sweep to clamber the chiselled wall of the church, to effect an entrance by the window. Many and equally unavailing were the petitious whispered through the key-hole of the lodge. Sandy sat by the fire, blowing the coals under his kettle, for his usual drink before bed.

Having taken this, with a polite bow towards his ejected tenant, he, like many an Irish landlord, bestowed no further thoughts on the lone one's tortures, but deliberately covered himself up in his comfortable bed.

What remorse could never affect unceasing noise produced— namely, utter inability to sleep. Thumping, whining, praying, cursing assailed his stunned cars, cover them as he would, until at length vexation suggested a wicked expedient. As the poor almost exhausted sweep sat down on the door-step still thumping back at the unyielding door, Sandy arose and stole to the fireplace, where he had left the kettle, and proceeded, chuckling, to pour the hot water beneath the

enemy.

With a terrific howl the sweep jumped up, and with his hands grasping his wet clothes, rushed through the yardthe gate-and for a time disappeared. Sandy wishing him a hearty good night, turned, as he thought, to his quiet rest. Our house, where the Bishop also lived, stood near the church. All were in bed, after a day of labour, when a loud and continuous ringing of the melancholy night-bell banished every idea of slumber from each pillow. Being on the night calls," I arose, and dressing as quickly as possible, proceeded down stairs, heard the servant unfastening the door. Who is there?" was asked, as soon as the chain permitted a part only of the door to open. Ring, ring, went the bellhurry, hurry-open, open. "Who are you? What do you want?" demanded the Irish servant.

"The devil, the devil. I want the Bishop!" answered the howling voice.

"The Lord be betune us and harm," cried the affrighted servant, running back into the hall.

Ere more than an hour had elapsed, the watchman observ

loudly at the door of the miserable Sandy, crying that he feared the church was on fire! Jumping up with no great blessing, on what he called my idiotey," for letting in one he now thoroughly believed to be the Devil sure enough," he hastened with the watchman to open the church door, when, lo! they beheld the sweep dressed in a surplice and stole, standing with outstretched arms in the pulpit, denouncing the thunders of Heaven against them as demons for daring "to pollute the House of God." And well enough they could see him, for every gas-pipe in the church was blazing away at full cock. Sandy had forgotten in his anxiety to turn the main-cock, and a few ambers in the vestry had helped the maniac to light the gas.

Despite all resistance the sweep was dragged down unvested, and taken howling to the watchhouse. All the gates were locked, and Sandy, too cross for sleep, sat by the fire till morning.

Would I could stop here, this tale of the poor sweep, alas! the next evening witnessed his unhappy death.

Dismissed the next morning, on payment of a small fine, he was seized by some companions of his night's confinement, and hurried along to the giu-shop to pay his "footing." Amused by what they called his vagaries, they forced him to drink through a whole day of debauch. Escaping from them in the dark of the evening, when the factories were disgorging the confined wickedness of the city, he was quickly surrounded by crowds of mischief-loving imps. They danced and screeched round him, whilst his heart and head must have been in flames.

Breaking through them at last, he rushed howling through the streets with a host at his heels till he reached the quay; not secing, or mayhap, alas, not caring whither he was going, he madly plunged into the deep and rapid stream.

Lights, boats, and all efforts from the "Humane Society's House," were alike vain: the body of the miserable man was only found in the morning, and the verdict of " Temporary Insanity," without any reference to the wretched whiskey that caused it, put a stop to all further inquiry into the history of this ill-fated being with an immortal soul.

Would that this sąd story, which is only one of the many cases I have since witnessed, could dash the intoxicating cup from the lip of the incipient drunkard amid our brave soldiers in the Crimea, as well as those exposed to its fatal temptations at home.

AGE OF A TREE. A yew-tree, at Peronne, Picardy, which flourished in the year 634, was in existence in 1790; 1156 years, during which it is known to have existed.

DELICATE ATTENTIONS.-In the tenth century, to eat off the same plate, and to drink out of the same cup, was considered a mark of gallantry, and the best possible understanding between a lady and gentleman.

POPULAR READINGS IN SCIENCE.

PHYSIOLOGY NO. IV. THE BLOOD.

On the blood depends the health, strength, and growth of the animal body, and the active performance of all its functions. Hence, when it is poor in quality, either through disease or inferior diet, the various parts of the body deprived of proper nutriment become weakened; and if by any means, accidental or otherwise, the flow of blood to any particular part of the body, as the arm, is stopped, it ceases to grow, shrinks almost to nothing; while an increased flow, produced by continued exercise, produces a corresponding increase in its size and strength, as in the arm of a blacksmith. And we also know that blood may be taken from the body till all consciousness and power of motion are lost; and if in this state similar blood to that which the animal has lost be injected slowly into the veins, life, with all its functions, may be re-established. By this means (transfusion of blood, as it is called) many lives have been saved.

The blood consists of two distinct parts: red particles, called globules (though improperly so, for they are never globular), and a colourless fluid, which is termed liquor sanguinis, or liquor of the blood. The globules vary in size,in man and the mammalia, in general, from 1-2000th to 1-4000th of an inch. But they are always of the same size and form in the same species. It was from the size of the globules an eminent physiologist decided that the marks of blood on a knife found in the possession of a prisoner, convicted at Carlisle assizes, were from the blood of a human body, and not from a cone. The number of these blood discs varies in different species of animals, and also in different states of the same animal. Where there is much activity and energy they are most numerous, as in men of active habits, giving to them the florid appearance which distinguishes them from the paleness of those of feebler powers. The average proportion in man is 127 to 1,000 parts of blood. In disease they sometimes sink as low as 27 to 1,000. When too abundant, the blood-vessels are liable to burst: bleeding decreases, while iron, given as a medicine, increases the number.

Physiologists now consider that the use of these blood globules is to convey oxygen from the lungs to the various parts of the body. The red fluid they contain (for there is no doubt of their being cells) holds in solution a quantity of iron. This iron, receiving oxygen from the lungs, becomes a peroxide, and carried forward by the circulating blood, parts with part of its oxygen to unite with carbon, liberated by the decay of the animal tissues, &c. forming carbonic acid, which then unites with the oxide of iron, forming carbonate of the oxide of iron. Returned in this state to the lungs, the carbonie acid is separated and breathed out, while the iron reunites with a fresh portion of oxygen. For every action of the muscles there must thus be a supply of oxygen; and as this activity increases, so must the supply of oxygen, and necessarily the flow of blood to the part, and hence we account for that. increase of nutriment, and consequent increase of size and strength to the arm in the case just mentioned. We may, however, here remark that to strengthen any particular part of the body, the exercise must be gradually proportioned to the strength, otherwise inflammation and disease of the part will arise.

The liquor sanguinis is composed of the crassamentum, or clot, and the serum, a transparent yellowish liquid. These two parts separate immediately the blood is withdrawn from the body, forming the coagulation or clotting of the blood. When the clot is examined with a microscope, it is found composed of a network of fibres, with the red particles we have described held within the meshes. The clotting, however, belongs exclusively to the fibrin, for in some diseases, when the blood clots, these red particles sink to the bottom, and they may also be withdrawn by filtration from the blood

of the frog, where they are very large, without destroying the tendency of the blood to clot. It is from this fibrin that the animal tissues are formed. The remaining part of the liquor sanguinis, that is, the serum, consists of albumen and fatty matter, and certain saline bodies. In a former article we observed that all the food digested is first changed into albumen; fibrin, the next change, is intermediate between this albumen and organized tissue; and hence it has, not inaptly, been termed liquid flesh. WM. McC.

Poetry.

TOMBSTONES.

A MEDITATION.

How sad to read those records of our race,
To see how time these monuments deface;
To moralize on life and on its end;

To think how many here have laid their friend;
To see the parent fondly kneel beside
The grave, while tears flow in a gushing tide,
For some dear child whom death has called away,
To mix its ashes with its parent clay,

Praying to God that He his child would crown
With bliss; that when life's setting sun is down,
He might Him join in Heaven's pure realms above,
Singing their Maker's and their Saviour's love.
But, oh! to think yourself at last must come,
To the cold, dreary, and the dismal tomb,
That this but leads to heavenly realms above,
Realms of endless joy, of endless love:
If this will not console the Christian, what
Can reconcile him to his painful lot ?

P. CASTLES.

SONG OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT.
DEAR land of my birth, from your shores I must fly,
And your bright sunny valleys must fade from my eye,
For the playmates of youth and the friends I love best,
Have left you and sought in the land of "far West "—
That shelter so basely denied them at home,
Which drives them across the Atlantic to roam,
To seek in Columbia (true liberty's fane)
Repose for the hours of life that remain.

But though from you I part, though strange faces I sce,
And, though friends I love dearly are gathered round me,
Still will memory rise, and still vividly paint
The loved haunts of my youth in the "Island of Saints."
On the banks of thy streams I'll in memory stand,
Where I've sung the "old songs of my dear father-land,”
Or wander at eve down the moss-covered vale,
While the notes of sweet Philomel swell on the gale.
Still the wish of my heart shall be ever the same,
To revisit thy shores, dear to freedom and fame;
Till thy dear verdant hills shall again be in view,
Laud of my soul, I must bid you adien. P. CASTLES.

ONE little "Garden patch" of ours has been very profitaable, very this season. The bugs ate up the encumbers, the chickens ate up the bugs, the neighbours' cats ate the chickens, and we are now in search of something that will eat the cats. Can any of our agricultural friends aid us? LORD NELSON, when a boy, being on a visit at his aunt's, went hunting one day, and did not return till after dark. The good lady, much alarmed, scolded him severely, and said, "I wonder fear did not drive you home." "Tear," replied the boy, "I don't know him."

CALENDAR OF FEASTS AND DIRECTORY.

FEBRUARY.

3. SUNDAY. Quinquagesima Sunday. sd. purple. First Vespers of the fol. com. of Sunday. white. 4. Mon. St. Andrew Corsini, bp. c. d. white. 5. Tues. St. Agatha, v. m. red.

6. Wed. Ash Wednesday, purple. Fast.

N. B.-The Fast of Lent to be continued till Easter, on all days except Sundays. And on Sundays Abstinence, unless leave be granted by the Bishop to the contrary, which is usually done.

7. Thurs. St. Romuald, c. d. white. (On all Feasts during Lent a commemoration is made of the Feria.)

8. Frid. The Crown of Thorns of our Lord Jesus Christ, gr. d. red.

9. Sat. SS. Fabian and Sebastian, mm. (Jan. 20) d. red.

To our Correspondents.

THE Cathedral of Gloucester was commenced in the year 1088, but was not completed till the close of the fifteenth century, and it therefore exhibits various gradations of style. The crypt (which our illustration to-day represents) is in the Anglo-Norman style. The cathedral is considered by architects to possess extraordinary beauty. The large window has 2,800 square feet of glass. The ornaments of the great altar were destroyed by the Reformers," and by Cromwell, who stabled his horses in the church. We defer a more lengthened account till we come to Gloucester in our articles on The Cathedrals of England."

It is with the deepest regret that we have to record the sudden death of the Very Rev. Canon Thomas Bowman (of the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Dock-head, Bermondsey), who departed this life on the morning of the 23rd January.

T. W. H.-The reason why the tale was not continued in Vol. IV. is that the author left the country, and was unable to finish it before leaving.

We will in our next number commence the publication of a translation (specially made for the Lamp) of some of the most important parts of the letters of M. Gondon, editor of L'Univers, to George Bowyer, Esq. M.P. on the state of affairs in Italy.

OUR Crimean correspondent writes to say that the chaplains continue quite well, and that he has prepared the

Catholic statistics of the Crimean Army, and was about to forward the same to us without delay.

RECEIVED.-W. F. J.-J. W. Mulville.-P. C. (Waterford)-J. V. R.-R. J. B.-G. W. C.-J. Murray.-S. W. Dowling. A Word to Young Readers.

AN important letter from the Very Rev. Dr. O'Brien, a letter from our Cork correspondent, a notice of the Bulletin of St. Vincent de Paul, and the interesting proceedings at the reception of three Sisters of Mercy in Belfast, will appear in our next.

The Lamp.

ENGLAND: HER PAST AND HER FUTURE. THERE are some feelings which our Maker has implanted so deeply within our breasts that they forsake us only when we take leave of our manhood, for when we lose them we are men no longer, and the grand distinction between man aud the mere instinctive animal has vanished. Foremost amongst these feelings is the love of our country. It is woven round our hearts like the love of our mother, and is mixed up with the purest, holiest, and best feelings of our nature. Providence may place us in foreigu lands, our lot may be cast amongst those who are strangers to us, and the sweet music of our native tongue may seldom gladden our car; but the cld feeling still remaius, and our minds return with fond regret to our native land. We may visit sunnier skies and walk amid richer flowers than those which deck our own land; but somehow we cannot love them half so well, and the grandest dwelling that we see in foreign elimes possesses not for us half the charms which are wound round the old house at home." If we have never left the land of our birth, how sweet is the thought that we shall rest in the old churchyard which we love so well, where we have so often strayed in childhood, and where we saw them lay the parents of our love. If we are exiles from our home, how intense our desire of returning thither, how enduring the hope, how buoyant the confidence, how fond the love made fouder still by absence! And it, perchance, our hopes are realized, who shall describe the feelings of the exile as his foot once more is on his native soil! In the fulness of his heart he could almost fall down and worship it; with rapture he could kiss the soil which his infant foot first trod, and where he would fain have his ashes rest in peace. Oh! it is a wondrous thing this love of our country, and basc, fallen, and degraded is the mau who possesses it not.

Breathes there the mau, with soul so dead,
Who never to himselt hath said,

This is my own, my native laud!'
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!”

It is with these feelings that the English Catholic has ever looked upon his now deeply-erring, but still decply-loved land. Years of persecution and suffering could not drive them from his heart; nay, they have but increased and made them stronger. He has kissed the hand that struck him, no matter how unjust the blow might be, for the hand that inflicted the punishment was the hand of his country; and although perchance some tears were mingled with that kiss, it was, nevertheless, the kiss of love. Exile could not banish from his heart the image that his love had enshrined there, and in sorrow he prayed that happier days might dawn upon the land he loved so well, and that he might no longer be a

stranger in his father's halls. Because he has loved his country well, he has ever been found foremost in the ranks that have gone forth to fight her battles, and in days when his only privilege was that of loving her, that love never failed. For years she strove to rob him of his dearest rights; but still he loved her. She was his country, and he could not hate her; and now, when he can once more walk with head erect, he loves her with a love the most devoted. With the feeling with which the American loves the broad plaius and the sea,-like rivers of the great republic, with the feeling with which the Italian loves the soft air and the laughing sky of his own sweet land,-with the feeling with which the Irishman loves the "Green Isle" and the land of St. Patrick,-aye, even with that same feeling, the English Catholic loves

"The flag that braved a thousand years,

The battle, and the breeze,"

with that same feeling the English Catholic loves the land of St. George. He does not love her for her faults, much less for her want of faith, or for her bigotry; but he loves her because she is his country. He loves her much with the love of regret for the days gone by: he loves her most of all with the love of desire for the days yet to come. He is often accused of being a traitor; but his love of his country is as much greater than that of his accusers, by how much his motives for loving her are higher and holier than theirs.

When our minds wander back through the long vista of 1,800 years to the days of Peter, and when we place modern events side by side with the foundation of Catholicity, it seems indeed but yesterday, and England, through all her length and breadth, was bright and blazing with the light of the brave old faith. Her cathedrals and her minsters had their altars and the presence of their God; and her rich lands were richer still, and her teeming fields were still more fertile, when the seed that was cast into them had been blessed by the hand of her monks. It seems indeed but yesterday and the abbeys that are now in ruins, or are the habitation of the beasts of the field, were alive with holy men; and as the gentle evening sun would sink to rest, the notes of their vesper hymn would steal along the smiling valley and whisper to the weary husbandman of Heaven and of rest, and that brawny hand was none the less manly because, as those sweet sounds would fall upon his ear, it was raised to sign himself with the sign of faith. In those good old times if old age found the poor man unprovided for, or if poverty surprised him, there were asylums where he might find refuge and rest, and those asylums were not parish workhouses. If sickness had laid him low, he was not thrown upon the tender mercies of a parish doctor; but his languid eye would fall upon the soft and gentle nun flitting round his bed of pain like some sweet spirit from a better land: and if perchance his course was run, he went his way right cheerfully; for in those days there was a heaven for poor Englishmen as well as for rich ones, and they did not throw him into the grave like some dead dog, but the grand old cross went on before, and the vested priest followed on behind, and the dirge was sung, and the mass was said, and they laid him in the ground with a careful and a reverent hand, and they planted the cross above the place of his rest; and though he was but a poor man, they remembered his soul for many a day as that of a brother who had but gone before them. Oh, it seems, indeed, but yesterday, and England had saints for her kings, saints for her bishops, and saints in every grade of her society; and the heart of the English Catholic warms within him as he thinks of the days gone by, -as he remembers the glories of St. Edward the Confessor and St. Edmund the Martyr, as he murmurs the names of St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Wilfrid of York, and St. John of Beverley, -as he thinks with pride of St. Anselm, St. Dunstan, St. Edmund Rich, the venerable Bede, and the host of saints whom

66

England has given to heaven. He thinks of the good old times when England was in truth "merrie Eugland," and he weeps for the days when she could support her poor without consigning them to workhouses, without tearing in twain those whom God has made one. He weeps for the days when Westminster Abbey would fill without a coronation; for the days when countless thousands knelt to worship Go in York Minster; for the days when every village had its church, every church its altar, and every altar was blessed by the presence of its God. He thinks of these things, and he cannot but weep that they should have passed away, for, alas! pass away they did. Tyranny and lust were scated on the throne of St. Edward the Confessor; and because their vices and Catholicity could not be reconciled, they strove their best to smother the faith of ages. They scattered the relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury to the winds of heaven, and placed apostates and renegades in his archicpiscopal chair. They did then what they would do now, if they dared; they drove the monk from his monastery, and sent the pure and consecrated virgin of Christ forth into a world that she had solemnly foresworn. They threw down the altar, and put out the lamp of the sanctuary. They desecrated the temples that had been built for the worship of the one true God, and the mighty piles which had so often echoed the hymn of praise were left inere material fabrics-bodies without a soul. The grand old temples of our fathers were left with nothing of a church about them but the name; and now-a-days, as the gaping sightseer wanders into them, he inquires in astonishment for what end they were built. He sees not what their use can be. He sees St. Wilfrid of York and St. John of Beverley looking down upon him from the grand old stained-glass windows of York Minster; and he knows very well that they were not of his "persuasion," and that either he or they are intruders. He cannot conceal from himself the fact, that they were looking down from the very same spot hundreds of years before his religion was invented, and that, therefore, the presumption of right is in their favour, to say nothing of possession. For many a year the rack, the knife, and the gibbet, were the lot of those who clung to the faith of their fathers in England. There were times when the very existence of Catholicity in England appeared to depend upon some one individual, some sainted bishop, or some hunted persecuted priest, and then all the efforts of her enemies would be concentrated upon his capture. With fiendish gibes and hardened hearts they would lead him to the scaffold, thinking to quench in his blood thei last spark of the faith, but forgetting, in the blindness of their hearts, that the blood of the martyrs has ever been the fruitful seed of the Church; and as they spilt his blood, it fell indeed upon the feeble flickering flame of the faith, but it fell not to extinguish it. No: as the martyr's blood trickled drop by drop from the executioner's knife, it fed with its heaven-born fuel that flickering flame, and again it blazed forth; again, phoenix-like, it sprang into a new existence from its own ashes, and the faith of Peter and of Rome laughed its enemies to scorn.

The

For 300 long, long years, to be an English Catholic, was to be the but of malice. Sufferings, penal laws, disabilities, and every persecution that heresy and religious rancour could devise, were heaped upon the Catholics of England; but these things have now begun to pass away too. cloud that has so long enveloped the mountain's top, is breaking. Every opposition to the Faith has its day, and it would appear as if Protestantism has had its. It is in the very nature of unbelief, that it should be transient, and but temporary. As the religion of Christ is essentially truth, so is hostility to it essentially crror; and as truth alone is stable and permanent, so error must necessarily pass away after it has had its day, and the wise ends for which the Almightly permitted it, are accomplished. The Iconoclastic heresy, so much resembling in some of its features scenęs which we ourselves have witnessed, had its day, and it