ence to a heavenly warning, carried to the site of the present church. The story goes on to say, that this shepherd, who had been for many years a cripple, was immediately healed, and that other miraculous grazie having been received by persons who came to visit the picture, alms were soon collected for the purpose of building a church. The same story is told by an Augustinian, writing the history of Leghorn in the year 1647; and he expressly tells us that he copied it from an ancient мs. which he had read in the archives of the sanctuary. It is repeated again, thirteen years later, by Father Moraschi, one of the Gesuati, the first religious order to whose charge the church had been confided; and it is to be found not only in all the later historians of the shrine, but also in the inscriptions and paintings of the church itself. On the other hand, it has been called in question, not merely by the disciples of the modern school of philosophy, but by really devout and religious writers, such as Riccardi, for example. Our space forbids us to enter upon a critical exami nation of its merits; we have felt it our duty to record it, as being the popular tradition, and having done so, we must pass on to what is more certain.

In the archiepiscopal archives of Pisa (for the erection of Leghorn into an episcopal see is quite recent) may still be seen the will of a certain Bonaccorso, a butcher of Leghorn, who died in the year 1347, leaving a legacy to the Church of Santa Maria gratiá plena of Monte Nero; and the will of another inhabitant of the same city, dated the 7th of December 1415, leaves a small piece of land to endow "the Hermitage of Santa Maria delle Grazie of Monte Nero." This is at least sufficient proof of the antiquity of our sanctuary; and it is worth remarking, that the earliest of these documents is only two years later than the first appearance of the picture, as recorded in the story which has been just given. The title “ Hermitage" also, in the second will, is worthy of notice, because it tallies exactly with another portion of the same history, viz. that when this spot was first consecrated, it was tended by a single hermit, who probably was not even a priest, but only a religious solitary, such as may still be seen in many parts of Italy. The devotion, however, to the new sanctuary increased so rapidly (a fact which we should have been led to anticipate from those testamentary dispositions in its favour which we have already noticed), that, by the middle of the next century, it was of sufficient importance to induce the Archbishop to call a number of Gesuati (not Gesuiti, or Jesuits, but au order that had been instituted about a hundred years before by B. Colombino of Siena) to come and take charge of it,

assigning for their maintenance certain woods and vineyards in the neighbourhood which belonged to the see of Pisa. These religious, having accepted the charge, immediately set about to build a larger church, better suited to receive the numerous pilgrims and confraternities who now came to visit it, not only from different cities in Tuscany, and other states of Italy, but even from the more distant parts of Europe. They also built a monastery,-no easy task, since they had first to prepare a level by cutting away the mountain. However, the work was happily accomplished; and from this time the whole character of the hill was changed; other houses began to be built, until it became quite a populous village. In 1668, the order of the Gesuati was suppressed by Pope Clement IX., and two priests from Leghorn were then sent to supply their place at Monte Nero; but the shrine had become far too famous for so small a number of ecclesiastics to suffice for the discharge of all the spiritual duties which belonged to it. In the next year, therefore, the Theatines were invited to take possession of the vacant monastery; an invitation which they did not hesitate to accept, although the funds which had been originally assigned for its support were now appropriated by the government to another purpose. Finally, in 1783, when the Grand Duke Leopold I. suppressed these religious also within his dominions, two secular priests were again appointed, but with the same result; so that, in 1792, the place was consigned to the Vallambrosians, a branch of the Benedictine family, who still retain it.

Amid all these frequent changes of custodi, so to speak, the fame of the sanctuary had always steadily increased. It is recorded that, in 1575, whilst it was in the hands of the Gesuati, some Turkish pirates, who had landed for the express purpose of plundering its wealth, were struck with blindness, so that they lost their way in the woods and were taken prisoners by the unarmed contadini of the neighbourhood. And this miracle having been inquired into and authenticated by the ordinary of the place, a copy of the depositions was presented to the archives of the order. In the autumn of 1684, not many years after the Theatines had taken charge of it, when a most violent pestilence was raging in the city of Leghorn, the people turned for help to this Madre delle Grazie; her picture was brought out to the piazza before the church, and solemn benediction given with it to the whole plain beneath; and immediately, it is said, a fresh breeze sprang up, the clouds dispersed, and all the thick vapours, to whose presence medical men had attributed the prevailing epidemic, were blown away. This public grazia was the immediate

cause of an appeal being made to the Chapter of St. Peter's for the golden crown which they annually awarded to some "Immagine miracolosa," and the petition was soon granted. The special protection of the Madonna was no less remarkable on occasion of another plague, which raged in 1730. It is testified, not only by ecclesiastical writers who were living at the time and eye-witnesses of what they wrote, but also by formal acts signed by the civil magistracy of the town, that not a single person fell a victim to the disease on or after the 21st of February, on which day the picture was brought out in the sanctuary, and benediction given with it to the suffering plague-stricken people. Lastly, for want of space obliges us to omit other facts equally worthy of record, we may mention the earthquake of the 14th of August, 1846, whose violence was such that the bells of some of the churches were set in motion by it, and men and horses tottered in the streets and fell, yet not a single public building suffered any material injury, nor was a single individual either killed or wounded throughout the whole of Leghorn; whilst in all the other towns and villages, from the mouth of the Arno in the north to the mouth of the Cecina in the south, from Pisa to Volterra, houses were thrown down, churches destroyed, men and cattle buried under the ruins, and all the other terrible accidents occurred, which usually accompany this kind of calamity.

This singular protection vouchsafed to the city of Leghorn above all its neighbourhood on either side was too striking a fact not to call for some special acknowledgment; and the Catholic instinct of the people immediately turned their eyes to the Sanctuary of the Madonna at Monte Nero, whither the whole population might soon be seen hurrying forth to pay their vows of thanksgiving: the poor carrying an offering of a few candles, a little oil, or a handful of flowers; whilst the richer citizens and the various religious confraternities made the more costly gifts of silver lamps, and other vessels for the service of the altar. Nor did they suffer these liberal offerings (which many, Judas-like, may be disposed to condemn with indignation as a needless waste) to interfere with the exercise of Christian charity towards their suffering neighbours. Having first paid their debt of gratitude immediately to God and to our Blessed Lady, they returned to make a fresh acknowledgment of it by relieving the distress of their brethren.

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Reviews.

POPULAR SERVICES.

The Spirit and Genius of St. Philip Neri, Founder of the Oratory. Lectures delivered in the Oratory, King William Street, Strand. By F. W. Faber, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Burns and Lambert.

PIOUS Protestant England entertains a devout horror of Jews. She prides herself upon regarding them all as the Pariahs of the human race, at the best to be endured and made equal to herself in secular things, in order to bring out by contrast her own immeasurable superiority in spiritual things. Nevertheless, in many things she is not a little like the Jews of old, and like them in their worst features. Her reception of the congregation of a great Saint, whose children have lately come amongst us, recalls one especial instance of Jewish perverseness. When the Baptist appeared, clad in sackcloth and preaching repentance, the Jews exclaimed that he had a devil. When our Blessed Lord came and dwelt in cities, and visited men in their homes, and partook of their feasts, they cried, "Behold a glutton and a wine-drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners.' Yet wisdom was then justified by her children; and she is thus justified still.

Present herself, in truth, as she may to the carping Protestant, he is never satisfied with the Catholic Church. Today he attacks her for tyranny, to-morrow for giving too much license. Now he imputes to her a tendency to degrade the intellects of all men to the level of a besotted superstition; now he warns his friends against her as the most accomplished and crafty of intellectual foes. If she fasts, he calls her mad; if she eats, he thinks her sensual; if she prays, he says she neglects the duties of this life; if she works, he esteems her unspiritual; if she celebrates superb functions, he talks of her formalism; if she encourages inward meditation, he classes her with the Methodists.

And now at length the modern "Apostle of Rome" has come in for his share of his Divine Master's reproach. The Protestant world is aghast at the aspect which Catholicism presents in the humble oratories of London and Birmingham. Having spent three hundred years in attacking a certain imaginary Catholicism, its indignation is doubly hot at discovering that Catholicism is utterly unlike what it has for three cen

turies been imagining it to be. The popular Protestant idea of Catholics and their religious acts has been one compounded of magnificence, sternness, and cunning. Every Catholic service they have supposed to be conducted on a scale of great splen dour; the music irreproachable, the priests gloomily imposing, the congregation awe-struck, and the language Latin. It is difficult to meet with a Protestant book in which Catholics are spoken of, without perceiving that the author supposes that we say, or sing, High Mass at all hours of the day and night; that people always pay the priests for giving them absolution; and that, in general, the one great object of the priestly life is to keep the laity in a state of spiritual and intellectual slavery. Catholicism, it is thought, reduces all its followers to one level, it moulds all characters according to one type, it tolerates differences in nothing; and as for supposing that it encourages differences of worship in different circumstances, the majority of Protestants have never conceived of the possibility of such a thing. If you tell them that communion is administered in both kinds in certain churches in different countries; that in the Greek Catholic Church married men are made priests; that there are millions of Catholics who never were present at a High Mass in their life; and that public prayers in the vernacular language of each country are in use throughout all Christendom, they are disposed to think you are playing upon their credulity, and inventing stories to deceive them. Their one idea of Catholics is, that they are all precisely alike, differing only in this particular, that the priests are crafty and the laity ignorant; and that the policy of the priests is to keep the laity at a distance, and to restrain them from all participation in public religious services, lest they should think fit to have opinions of their own, and, as a necessary consequence, should become Protestants.

Until recently the better-disposed class of Protestants would never enter a Catholic church or chapel, so as to have an opportunity of correcting these impressions. Even those who, either in the spirit of sight-seeing or of Romanising Puseyism, visited Catholic churches abroad, have hitherto made it a point of conscience never to set their foot within a "Romish place of worship" on this side the British Channel. The last year, however, has seen a wonderful change. Mr. Gorham and the Bishop of Exeter have combined with certain converts of the last five years to tempt the reluctant foot within the forbidden threshold, and the white neckcloth of the Anglican clergyman has become a no longer unseen phenomenon in a Catholic congregation, Curiosity to see what exProtestant clergymen look like, and what they say, and what