She bends over and sees this wreck upon the water; she cannot understand; how is it, then? She is afraid; she seeks in the sky with amaze this breeze which has dared to displease her, what shall she do? The fountain seems full of anger; so clear but a moment ago, it is black now; it has waves, it is a turbulent sea; the poor rose is all scattered on the waves; its hundred leaves wetted and tossed by the deep water, wrecked, whirled from side to side by a thousand wavelets the breeze stirred up. Is it a fleet foundering we behold? "Madam," said the duenna, with her dark face gloomy, to the pensive, bewildered child, "on the earth everything belongs to princes save the wind."

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

"HAIL! Lady Mary," said Gabriel,

(Sing all the world, and all the world) "God sends me now good news to tell." "And what is the news, O Gabriel?"

Lady Mary, God gives you grace;

(Sing all the world, and all the world) "For a child you shall bear within a space,

And look on God to His very face."

"Nay, Gabriel, how may this thing be,"

(Sing all the world, and all the world)

"Since there's never a man that knoweth me? see."

Said Gabriel," Sooth and you shall see.

The Lady Mary she bowed her head,

(Sing all the world, and all the world)

Nor ever an answer more she said,

Till all things were accomplishèd.

For the Lady Mary she bare her Son:

(Sing all the world, and all the world) When the days' full course at last was run, God's Self was born for her Little One.

Then the Lady Mary she wept and spake,

(Sing all the world, and all the world)

"I have borne my Child for the world's sake, And the cruel world His life will take."

But the Lady Mary she laughed and said,
(Sing all the world, and all the world)
My Child shall rise again from the dead,
Lord of all by His great Godhead."

Now, Lady Mary, we pray you say

(Sing all the world, and all the world)

Some gracious thing to your Son that day,

When we poor creatures pass away.

Yea, Lady Mary, Mother of God,

Save us from sin's rod!

Lady Mary, Mother of Grace,

Bend on us your sweet face!

O Lady Mary, bring us at length

By strength of Jesus to Jesus' strength!

Amen.

SELWYN IMAGE.

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE.

'N the two volumes which he has lately published, Mr. Symonds brings his History of the Renaissance in Italy to an interesting, but a profoundly sad conclusion. He entitles these volumes The Catholic Reaction, and the argument by which he justifies his title is, that the stern and rigid dogmatism which was imposed on Italy by the Spaniards, destroyed the political and intellectual life of the country. A civil and ecclesiastical despotism was set up and, in consequence of its repressive action, Italy was ruined. The evidences of its ruin, in the sphere of art, are a painting tasteless, sickly and without life; and an artificial, diffuse, and florid literature. Science was stifled; and Architecture, the most faithful record of a nation's spirit, became wholly corrupted.

Mr. Symonds' facts are undeniable: from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, Italian thought was fettered; as far as the mental and political life of Europe is concerned, Italy was non-existent. The reason which Mr. Symonds assigns for this decadence is the true one: an ecclesiastical despotism destroyed the freedom, and therefore the creative genius, of Italy. But when Mr. Symonds entitles this despotism The Catholic Reaction he is, perhaps, though verbally right, yet in reality a little superficial.

Those who have studied Medieval history carefully, and who, at the same time, have an intimate knowledge of Catholicism as it exists to-day, will appreciate the difference between the Latin Christianity

of the Mediæval ages, and the Romanised, clerical, and evernarrowing Catholicism of the post-Tridentine centuries. This difference is enormous. Compared to the narrowness of the Church after the Reformation, the Medieval Church must be considered broad and tolerant. The spirit of the Church in any given period may, perhaps, be most accurately tested by the aims, the discipline, and the tone of the Religious Orders, which in that period were favoured or founded; because the Religious Orders, naturally, reproduced the spirit which was dominant at the time of their foundation, or at the time of their greatest vigour. As evidence of this we may point to three Orders, which arose at long intervals, with widely different aims, and which, in the periods of their vigour, characteristically represent the most active Christianity of their time. These Orders.

are the Benedictine, the Franciscan, and the Jesuit. The difference between the last of these Orders and either of the previous ones expresses, very fairly, the difference between the Medieval Latin Church, and the Roman Church after the Council of Trent.

It is neither fanciful nor arbitrary to designate the Medieval Church as Latin, and the post-Tridentine Church as Roman. We may call the Medieval Church Latin, not only because Latin was its common tongue, for it was the common tongue of all civilized life; but because the great Latin tradition, the theory of the Empire of Cæsar, was the basis on which both the Nations and the Churches of Medieval Europe were built up and organized. As long as the Medieval polity was sound and healthy, Rome meant not only the supremacy of Peter, but the sway of Cæsar also. And this was true, in theory, long after the Sovereign Pontiffs had encroached on the Imperial rights. In other words, Rome was not merely the embodiment of ecclesiastical unity, it meant, too, the continuity of secular