a tilt against poor St. Francis and wounded him in the side. Ashamed afterwards of the quarrel and its cause, they agreed to hush up the affair, St. Dominic consenting to bear testimony that God, as a peculiar favour, had miraculously produced in the side of St. Francis, the same mark which his own son had borne. Upon the simularity of St. Francis to Christ, we have the following lines of Turcelin.

Exue Franciscum tunicâ laceroque cucullo, Qui Franciscus erat, jam tibi Christus erit: Francisci exuviis, si qua licet, indue Christum, Jam Franciscus erit, qui modo Christus erat. Thus translated by one White a presbyterian.

Strip Francis from his coate and cowle, all naked and you shall see,

He that ev'n now St. Francis was, to Christ shall turned be:

Again put Francis coate and cowle on Christ, (now mark the liar,)

He that ev'n now was Jesus Christ, will Francis be the fryer.

BOSSUET.

When Bossuet was a very young preacher, Louis XIV. was so delighed with him, that he wrote in his own name to his father, the Intend

ant of Soissons, to congratulate him on having a son that would immortalize himself. An unbeliever going to hear Bossuet preach, said, on entering the Church" this is the preacher for me, "for it is by him alone I know that I shall be converted, if I ever be so." Bossuet pronounced the funeral oration on the Duchess of Orleans, who died so suddenly in the midst of a brilliant glory and delight.

court, of which she was the No person better possessed the talent of infusing into the soul of his auditors, the profound sentiments with which he himself was penetrated. When he pronounced these words: "O nuit "desastreuse, nuit effroyable, ou retentit tout-a.

coup, comme un eclat de tonnere, cette nou"velle: madame se meurt, madame est morte !', All the court were in tears. The pathetic and the sublime shone equally in this discourse. A sensibility more sweet, but less sublime, is displayed in the last words of his funeral oration on the great Condè. It was with this fine discourse that Bossuet terminated his career of eloquence, He concludes by thus apostrophising the Hero that France mourned: "Prince vous mettrez "fin à tous ces discours! Au lieu de deplorer la "mort desautres, je veux dé'sormais apprendre "de vous à rendre la mienne sainte; heureux si "averti par ces cheveux blancs, du compte que

je dois rendre de mon administration, je réserve “au tropeau que je dois nourir de la parole de “vie le reste d'une voix qui tombe, et d'une ardeur qui s'eteint."

THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.

Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, we may be tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the SEVEN SLEEPERS, whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble · youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern, in the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of huge stones, They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time, the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones, to supply materials for some rustic edifice: the light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the seven sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber, as they thought, of a