faith, the clergy of the Church determined on removing her sacred relics to places more secure from their attacks. Hence in 845 they were carried to Atis,-thence to Drawel,-and in 850 to Marissy. In all these places, as well as those wherein they rested during the journey, they brought a blessing of divine power, and many were the miracles recorded as having been then wrought at her shrine. At length, the fear of the Norman having ceased, in 856 they were finally restored to Paris, where the church which had been burnt by the Normans being rebuilt, the prince of the apostles and the blessed doctor of the Gentiles in a manner conceded to the shepherdess of Nanterre the honour of giving the name to that holy edifice which contained her relics, and was rendered so celebrated by so many miracles wrought at the invocation of that name.

Paris had already in a measure placed itself under the patronage of Geneviève, having found, in the efficacy of her intercession, a sure protection in many a season of trial and distress. But it was in the year 1129 that the divine favour in an especial manner extended its mercy towards the inhabitants of that city, when invoked in faith through the intercession of this saint. A burning fever, accompanied with racking pains of the bowels, had carried to the grave fourteen thousand of the inhabitants. In vain had they recourse to the physician; the powers of art were exhausted, and no relief was obtained. In vain did Stephen, bishop of Paris, with his clergy and people, seek in prayer and fasting from the mercy of Heaven a deliverance from so terrible a calamity. GOD, willing to do honour to His handmaid, reserved to her the glory of procuring for the afflicted inhabitants the cure of this pestilence. Remembering the many miracles her relics had so often wrought, the shrine of St. Geneviève was carried from her own church in solemn procession to the cathedral of Notre Dame. Many of the sick were cured by touching it as it passed along; all of those then ill, with the exception of three, recovered;-the plague was stayed,-nor did a single Parisian after this take ill. Reposing thus as it were in the bosom of our Lady of Mercy, the relics of the virgin saint from that sanctuary of grace shed around a healing power, that chased away the malignant vapours whose pestilential breath had tainted the air of Paris. This miracle, called des Ardens, from the nature and character of the pestilence, has received the attestation of the supreme pontiff Innocent II, after a strict examination directed by him the following year, on visiting Paris; and in commemoration of the same, he appointed a solemn festival to be kept every year on the 26th of November, at Paris.

In the year 1242, the relics of St. Geneviève were removed to a rich shrine which was made for them by the abbot; kings and queens have felt themselves honoured in contributing to its ornament by magnificent presents of precious stones. Amongst others, the sparkling crown of diamonds on its top was the gift of queen Mary de Medici. Thus hath GOD, in this blessed saint, given attestation to the truth of his promises made for the consolation and encouragement of the humble. The shepherdess of Nanterre is exalted in her life-time to be the friend and counsellor of kings; and after her decease, to be the patroness and protector of Paris. O blessed humility, possessing in thyself an unspeakable sweetness, a consoling power, when, delivered from the agitating thoughts of a vain ambition and worldly-minded solicitude, the heart, imperturbable in the sense of its own nothingness, prostrates itself in deep self-abasement before the throne of GOD, and thence draws in those refreshing streams of heavenly love which invigorate it for the conflict wherein it is engaged. Paris, amidst all her pride,amidst the thousand distractions of fleeting vanities, still remembers St. Geneviève; and the name of the saint is closely intertwined in the proud wreathe which decorates the glory of the capital. The fane of St. Geneviève rears its majestic dome high above the surrounding buildings; and in the beauty of its architecture demands a place among those splendid monuments which have done honour to that sublime art which, in its highest efforts, is the perfection of science, taste, and mechanical skill combined.

I have stood beneath that dome,-I have heard the echoes reverberate, like the distant thunder, through the hollow vaults below, and my saddened memory is even now pained in recollecting that those vaults contain the memorials of a Rousseau and a Voltaire,-thus insulting, as it were, the virginal purity of the saint, by selecting the hallowed precincts of her temple to do honour to lips which breathed not the fragrance of her purity, but which in the sarcasm of their impiety diffused the poison of their infidelity.

Strange that monuments should have thus been raised to celebrate the twin false apostles of infidelity and impurity, within the venerated enclosure of walls that were dedicated to innocence and purity, in the name of St. Geneviève, the virgin patroness of Paris. Sad, indeed, has been the heavy chastisement that, in just retribution, has fallen upon thee, Paris, for leaving the protection of the saint, to enrol thyself beneath the standard of the scoffer and the sceptic.

But the day seems fast approaching when the cloud of intercession which rises as incense from the venerable pile of Notre Dame, extend

ing itself over the whole of Paris, shall descend in blessed dews upon the sacred temple of St. Geneviève. Already has it been restored to her name, which the fanaticism of an infidel philosophy had exchanged, in the intoxication of the Revolution, for that of Pantheon. Soon then may the citizens of Paris, grateful for that patronage under which their capital has risen to its present power and greatness, and awaking from the dreams of a false glory, arise, and expel the memorials which desecrate the fane, and restore the magnificent structure of their admiration to its true honour, as a basilica of GOD for offering up the sacred rites of His worship, under the invocation of ST. GENEVIÈVE.

W. S. S.

THE CATHOLIC RELIGION IN FRANCE.

IN tracing the history of the various Churches of Christendom through the long lapse of eighteen centuries, it would not be difficult to show that the most seemingly untoward calamities and awful judgments of GOD have always fallen upon them at times when, elated with temporal prosperity, and overcharged with worldly wealth, the clergy had ceased to make head against abuses, and to present in their own lives examples of holy poverty and evangelical edification. So long as the primitive Christians, unprotected-nay, persecuted-by state enactments, prosecuted the rites of their new religion in humble obscurity, the pure light of divine truth shone with an unclouded radiance. When the principalities of the world at length gave in their adhesion to the faith of Christ, and that in process of time the mammon of earthly lucre defiled the purity of the apostolical ministry, then it was that heresies crept into the virgin Church, abuses invaded her even orthodox ranks, and Heaven's judgments were sent to chasten or exterminate.

To what other cause but the operation of such mysteriously retributive justice, are we to ascribe the long and dreary relapse into heathenism of the ancient Christian communities of Asia and Africa, once such flourishing portions of the Lord's vineyard, watered by the blood of so many martyrs, and fertilized by the ministrations of such illustrious saints? Is it to be supposed that sees once filled by a Polycarp, a Cyril, or an Augustine, could ever have become overspread with the utter darkness of infidelity, had successive prelates acted up to the great examples of their predecessors? Would Providence have permitted the desecration of the church in which St. John Chrysostom had poured

forth torrents of inspired eloquence, if the general degeneracy of both clergy and laity had not accelerated the destruction of the effete Byzantine empire? In the later times of the miscalled Reformation, who shall say that the Catholic clergy of England were fitting shepherds of Christ's flock, when we find, to their everlasting disgrace, that, with the one glorious exception of Fisher, the martyred bishop of Rochester, the whole British hierarchy basely truckled to the will of the temporal sovereign, renounced their allegiance to St. Peter's chair, and, with a degree of servile unanimity quite incomprehensible, gulped down the monstrous nostrum of Henry the Eighth's infallibility! What lukewarm believers in the truth and unity of the Catholic religion such pliant apostates must have been! And how can we feel surprised at the great mass of England's population throwing their ancient religion aside, to gratify a tyrant's whim, or evade his vengeance, when their spiritual guides had so basely deserted the sacred cause of GOD, and exhibited in their own conduct examples of such flagrant recreancy ? What feeble links in the chain of apostolical succession were these enervated representatives of the Anselms, and Cuthberts, and Dunstans, and Becketts, who in former and more religious times had maintained inviolate the integrity and independence of the only Church! Who can wonder that they snapped asunder in the day of trial?—and that, through the criminal weakness of her religious pastors, the "Isle of Saints" become a stronghold of error? Signal as must in one sense be considered the calamity which thus severed from the communion of the faithful so large and fair a proportion of Christendom, in the more enlarged one of religion's eternal interests it may be regarded in the light of a frightful storm, which, creating ruin and desolation in its progress, clears the noxious and overheated atmosphere, enabling the survivors of its ravages to resume with fresh vigour and lightened spirit the work of reparation. Such reflections lead naturally enough to the subject which gives a title to this article; for within the memories of our own times, no country has exhibited such convulsionary changes in the matter of religion as France, and nowhere have the judgments of GOD been more signally displayed in the apparent destruction of His Church, for the purpose of its subsequent restoration to a state of greater purity and efficiency.

Time was when the very name of "the most Christian king," accorded by the see of Rome to the monarchs of France, seemed to mark that great country as a region of peculiar orthodoxy and religion. From the fiery ordeal of the great Lutheran apostacy, she came forth in faith unscathed, in zeal unabated; and never was the Gallican

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Church so rich in holy and eloquent men, as at the very time she most needed their example and defence in her warfare with the partisans of error. But the calm which succeeded the mighty burst of religious discord, proved more enervating and destructive to the Church of France, than the fierce wars she had so successfully waged against the assailants of her ancient faith. The crimes and scandalous lives of her princes brought odium upon the name of royalty; the vices of a Cardinal Dubois reflected disgrace upon the Roman dignity, in him so prostituted; a race of clergy sprung forth, the younger sons of noble families, who, instead of following the ecclesiastical state in obedience to an especial vocation, embraced it with no other view than as a qualification for holding valuable benefices. The foul stain of simony defiled the distribution of clerical patronage; men were named to bishoprics for their rank and court influence, without reference to-frequently, indeed, in defiance of-their private character. The young abbé, whose spruce costume alone distinguished him from the hordes of gay and dissipated worldlings, the ordinary companions of his pleasures, was to be met with in the boudoir of the court mistress, in the ball-room, the theatre, and in every other resort where he had no business to be found. In many instances, indeed, he had not taken orders at all, only wearing the habit of a priest that he might with impunity enjoy the snug revenues of some abbacy or advowsons to which a titled or powerful relative had procured his nomination. All this time the parochial clergy of the provinces, aloof from metropolitan corruptions, sustained the purity of the sacerdotal character; it was in the high places of the Establishment that the worldly vanity and vices of their incumbents brought the priesthood into obloquy and contempt. The noxious horde of self-styled philosophers now sprung into notice; and it was no difficult task to insinuate into minds already prejudiced, with some justice, against the ministers of religion, doubts regarding the truth of religion itself. The phalanx of infidels thus arrayed against all that till then mankind had held most sacred, became by the force of circumstances omnipotent for purposes of evil; and France was inundated with their specious and seductive blasphemies. When a people virtually reject the restraints of religion, they are not long in shaking off those of social order; it is not to be wondered at, therefore, that having renounced their GOD, the French should have proceeded to upset their monarchy and murder their sovereign, amid whole hecatombs of noble, and virtuous, and martyred victims. Unparallelled alike in ancient or modern history were the excesses of that great and bloody revolution; and its fitting climax was the installation of the infamous Goddess of Reason on the altars of the GOD of Truth!