same coarse clothes until they fell to pieces from their backs; their food was a little corn with roots and water from the spring-this last was not unfrequently their only drink. Hence, wherever the hermit lived, he always had his cell nigh to some fountain: and that fountain was blessed by his prayers, and doubly blessed by his use. He not unfrequently, too, knelt or stood knee-deep in the cold stream whilst he recited the entire psalter, for this was a favourite mode of penance with our Irish saints. Then his secret was found out: men came to see his grotto, his little church, and the holy spring which gave him half his nourishment. And so it came to be regarded, what in very truth it was, a holy well; and when the saint had gone to his reward, the devotion of his disciples brought them year after year to the same holy spot to perform their devotions, especially on the feast-day of the patron, and to secure themselves the strong protection of his prayers.

Sometimes, too, it would happen that in their journey through the country the missionary saints, like Bridget, Patrick, and Columbkille, tired and foot-sore, sat down, like our Savionr at the well of Samaria, to refresh themselves at some way-side fountain: and they blessed the grateful stream, and that was a fruitful and abiding blessing long remembered by the people, who, of course, came from all the country round to drink of its waters, and carry home the saving stream. Thus it came to pass that we have not only at the old churches, but also by the way-side, in almost every parish in Ireland, some Toberpatrick, or Bride's-well, or Columbkille's-well; so that the blessings of God's saints has remained upon thousands of the wells of holy Ireland.

There are persons who deem any reverence paid to these holy wells to be superstitious; they sneer at the simple faithful who perform their devotions at the holy spring, and in their own great knowledge and superior Christianity pity their ignorance and folly. If these people are Protestants we cannot argue with them now; those who will not reverence the cross of Christ, cannot be expected to venerate holy wells. They are, at least, very inconsistent; for the men who themselves venerate the statues, the monuments, and other memorials of their statesmen, warriors, and poets, cannot blame us if we should pay, at least, an equal reverence to the memorials of the saints of God, to anything blessed by their prayers and hallowed by their daily use.

With Catholics, however, who talk in this fashion, as they sometimes do, we have less patience: we must take the liberty of telling them that the due veneration of these holy wells is not superstition; that prayers to the saints, in any spot hallowed by their abode, their miracles, or their labours, is all the more likely to be efficacious; and that the Church has no sympathy with the hollow smile and frozen sneer of their scepticism. They do not understand the things that are of the Spirit of God. If they were alive in the apostolic age they

would, no doubt, sneer at the foolish woman who, in her simple faith, thought she might be cured by touching the hem of our Saviour's garments; and at the still more foolish people who, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, "Brought forth their sick into the streets, laid them on beds and couches, that St. Peter's shadow, at least, might overshadow them, and that they might thus be delivered from their infirmities." Equally foolish and superstitious, no doubt, from the scientific point of view were those who brought to the sick the handkerchiefs and aprons of St. Paul: yet we are told on high authority, that these same handkerchiefs drove away the disease, and the evil spirits, from the bodies of the possessed.

With this doubting faith and false science we have no sympathy. It is the mongrel offspring of ignorance and pride-pride in its own petty wisdom, and ignorance of the wondrous ways of God.

For our own part, we believe in the ancient sanctity of these holy wells; we believe it lingers round them still, that a virtue still abides in the sacred stream, and that the saints who hallowed them of old, by their works and prayers, still look down in benignant mercy on those who worship God, and ask their prayers on the very spot that was so intimately connected with their own earthly pilgrimage. If abuses arise let them be corrected; if they cannot be corrected, and the evil is greater than the good, then let the pilgrimage be stopped. But, meanwhile, call them not superstitious-the men and women of simple faith and loving hearts who still go to the holy places where dwelt the saints of God, to ask their prayers, and call to mind the bright example of their virtues and of their lives. "Are not the rivers of Damascus," said the Syrian leper, "better than all the waters of Israel, that I may wash in them and be clean ?" But they were not, and Naaman could only be cleansed in Jordan's holy stream. Is there any virtue in these holy wells more than any other spring, say the Naamans of our time? Yes, if you go at the word of the prophet, if you go in the spirit of faith, and say your fervent prayers by the sacred stream, and drink of its waters; it may do you quite as much good in this world, and certainly more in the next, than to go to the rivers of Damascus-to Buxton, Harrowgate, or Lisdoonvarna.

Credo! Sweet word of faith, hope, love

The golden three in one

Come from the Father's hand above,
And make my heart thy throne.
For though belief is Genius' crown,
And learning's soul-like part,
Though mind and intellect bow down,
Faith triumphs in the heart!

Credo in thee, my Mother-Queen,
The deathless Church of Rome,
Whose royal arms have ever been
My heritage and home!

Whose winning beauty calmed my fears,
Whose strength upheld and blessed,
And soothed to peace the anguished years
That wept upon thy breast.

Credo in dogma, law, and rite,
In word and saving sign,
That flashes forth in living light
From ev'ry touch of thine;
In every potent blessing breathed,
In gift, and grace, and vow,
In crown of saintly flowers wreathed
Round thine immortal brow.

Credo in thy great Sacrifice,
Where, faithful to his word,
Descends to earth in lowly guise
Emmanuel, the Lord

That pleads again, the blood once bright

On Calvary's red sod,

As fragile things of touch and sight

Die-in the living God!

Credo in that sweet time of grace,
Before the morning shrine,
When at the altar's trysting-place
The human meets divine!
When like the Magdalene of old,
I claim the "better part,"
And wond'ring mind and soul enfold
The God-Guest in my heart!

Credo! when in the chancel dim
I kneel alone to pray,

My hot tears falling close to Him
Who watches there alway.
There every hidden sigh is heard,
And secret sorrow known—

No sob my breaking heart hath stirred
But echoed in his own.

Credo! a thousand times and more

In her our Lily-one,

Whose sinless bosom couched of yore
God's own begotten Son;

In her unspotted life and birth,

In mind and heart more free
From tainting touch of time and earth
Than moon-illumined sea!

Credo till troublous life be past,
The parting moment come,
Till (heaven grant) I reach at last
My Father's happy home.
Credo! until the darkness flies
From morning light and bliss,
Until my life-long CREDO dies

Before Him, as He is!

NEW BOOKS.

In our January Number we took blame to ourselves for not having secured a prominent place among the Christmas presents of our younger readers for the ample and exquisite anthology which is by far the most attractive and valuable of the Christmas books published in Ireland this season- "Gems for the Young, from Favourite Poets. Edited by Rosa Mulholland" (M. H. Gill & Son). This gay-looking tome has the further recommendation for Christmas and New Year purposes that, besides being interspersed with pictures, it is, as some comic character says somewhere, "very fillin' at the price." The price seems too small for so large a book, and it would certainly be five shillings instead of three if the book were published in London. But though Christmas '83 is as irrevocably past as the Christmas that was brightened by the first appearance of Dicken's Christmas Carol-first and best of all the Christmas books, and that was forty years ago, epoch as remote in the imagination of some of our readers as Emancipation for others of us-though Christmas is over and the New Year is a month old, such books as Miss Mulholland's Gems for the Young, which young folk ought to learn off by heart from cover to cover, are in season all the year round.

This last observation applies also to another book which we ought to have brought under the notice of our readers, though (as is too usual) its appearance was just a little late. We have no notion of praising a story or any other book simply because it is written by a Catholic and for a good moral purpose. On the contrary, we consider a good many so-called Catholic tales very silly and commonplace, and often in very bad taste. We hope "Uriel; or, the Chapel of the Holy Angels" (London: Burns & Oates) will be duly recognised as a notable addition to our stores of pure entertaining literature. It is of much higher aim and character than the author's earlier work of the same kind—“Lady Glastonbury's Boudoir "-which excellent novel deserved warmer praise than The Weekly Register bestowed upon it in calling it "a spirited story," or The Academy in describing it as "a readable novelette, well put together and effectively told." The present story is all this and a great deal more. The plot is extremely interesting, and is worked out very skilfully. Several of the actors in the drama are delightful studies, and the conversations are most natural and lively, full of point and dramatic variety. The writer of a careful and appreciative review in The Tablet is right in attributing to the author of "Uriel" descriptive powers of a high order. Libraries that are on the look-out for “harmless novels" may safely order this hand