in honour of her Feast of the Visitation (July 2nd); and, speaking of her lily, our author is reminded of the translation of a "Hymn to the Blessed Virgin," written by Pero Lopez de Ayala, when in prison in England, and thinks it may give pleasure to her clients.

"Virgin star of brightest ray,

Which this world of darkness guides,
Light thy pilgrim on his way,
For his soul in thee confides.

Thou art like the fragrant bough
Of the beauteous Cassia tree;
Like the Orient myrrh art thou,
Whose sweet breath is worthy thee
Lady, when the sufferer mourns,
'Tis to thee he bends his eye;
'Tis to thee the sinner turns,
Virgin of the cloudless sky.

Thee has wisdom's son compared
To the towering cedar trees:
And thy church, which thou dost guard,
To mount Sisro's cypresses.
Thou art like the palm-trees green

Which the richest fruits have given,

Thou the Lily, radiant queen,

Blooming in the smiles of Heaven.

Brighted planet of the sea,

Dazzling gate in Heaven's abode,

Virgin in the agony,

Mother, daughter, spouse of God.

Though the curse that Eve had brought

O'er her children threat'ning stood,
All the evil she hath wrought,

Lady! thou hast turned to good."

The white clematis, known in many parts of England as "Travellers' joy," is called in others "The White Virgin's Bower," or the "Assumption flower," from having been used in Catholic times to decorate the Virgin's altar on that feast, when "besides the celebrated Ave Maris Stella,' different antient hymns were recited in the churches in her honour," and one is given "for the amusement of any poetic reader "but should we be far wrong in thinking that the following sonnet is our author's own composition ?

"O Virgin Mother of our gracious Lord,
Thou at whose shrine all nations lowly bend,
Mother of mercies! who thine aid dost lend
To lips that hail thee with the heart's accord;
Solace of sinners, load-star ever nigh,

Whose saintly feet the serpent sin have crushed
How much I love when all rude winds are hushed,
And silvery moonbeams light the motley sky,
Beneath high heaven's blue vaulted conopy,
In hallowed stillness to invoke thy aid,
And feel my cares released, my sorrows fly,
For but to hail thee once, O spotless maid,
Seems a bright ray of hope in realms on high
Where pain dissolves in joys that never fade."

"Our Lady's fringes," the "gentiana ciliata," blows about the date of her Nativity, and so is dedicated to that joyful day, the 8th of September.

The Snowdrop is "the fair maid of February," " Our Lady ""Our of February," and was used to decorate the altar on the Feast of the Purification, and hence sometimes is also called "the flower of the Purification."

The goose-foot, (polygona Persicaria) is in some parts of the country "the Virgin's pinch." Then there is "Our Lady's Thistle," whose green leaves remain spotted to this day with our Lady's milk. The maiden hair is "Our Lady's hair." Lilies of the Valley are "ladders to Heaven," or "Virgin's Tears"; the Arum, "Lords and ladies," was long ago "Our Lord and our Lady," the country children figuring our Lord in His Mother's

arms.

The Lungwort, or Jerusalem Sage, is still, in some parts of England, "our Lady's Milk-wort." "Our Lady's Vetch" is the Astralagus Glycy-phyllus, and with these two "ill words," as a Scotch child would say [hard words], we end our list of Our Blessed Lady's flowers.

One more quotation we should like to give, not from the "Circle of the Calendar," but from a Christmas hymn written in Catholic times by a Scotch Monk.

"Rorate Cæli desuper."

Heaven, distil your balmy showers,
For now is risen the bright day-star
From the Rose-Mary, Flower of Flowers.

FRANCES MAITLAND,

This article was already in print when a letter was received from Mr. James Britten, F.L.S., of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, one of the highest authorities on all subjects connected with flowers. He writes: "The Circle of the Seasons,' though published anonymously, is perfectly well known to be the work of that extraordinary man, Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster, of whom you will find an account in Gillow's Biographical Dictionary of English Catholics. He really was a very interesting man, but he was a most unscrupulous fabricator of documents, and his books are full of quotations from works and authors that existed only in his own brain. For instance the pretty poem with which your article concludes is said by him to come from Anthologia Australis et Borealis; but there never was any such book. This is not all. His dedication of certain plants to certain saints is absolutely and entirely bogus; he invented them all himself. St. Faine had no more to do with that Viburnum (which is more familiar to us as Laurustinus) than the man in the moon-and so all the way through. One never knows where Forster will turn up next; but I confess I did not expect that you would fall a victim to his wiles."

Our contributor had already confided to her readers her suspicion that the anonymous author had himself invented many of his pious quotations. She mentions that the dedication of many of the flowers is certainly not Mr. Forster's fabrication. All those of the Blessed Virgin, with one exception, she had already on her list before the book fell into her hands.

We have consulted Mr. Gillow's interesting sketch of Forster, who lived from 1789 to 1856, and who became a Catholic when about half way through his course. The list of his writings, which are very varied and very curious in their subjects, contains forty-six items. One of these volumes, called, I think, "Nugae Musarum," is said to contain among other things the "Anthologia Australis et Borealis " of which Mr. Britten denies the existence. But Mr. Gillow does not say where he got that bibliography of Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster, or where all those books enumerated are to be seen. We hope that Mr. Britten will speedily carry out his purpose of making this interesting personage better known. Ed. I. M.]

THE

IVREA.

HE present writer-who is not the writer of the following paper but only of these few introductory words-claims the credit of having been the first to sing in English the praises of the Blessed Thaddeus whose connection with Ivrea procures for that Italian town the distinction of being now commemorated in an Irish Magazine. It happened thus. In 1847, the Bishop of Ivrea, in northern Italy, sent Dr. Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, forty pounds for the famine-stricken people of Ireland; and he also took the opportunity of enclosing documents about an Irish pilgrim who had died at Ivrea in 1492, and was revered there from that day till now as a saint and worker of miracles. These documents were given to the learned President of Maynooth, Dr. Laurence Renehan. Among them was a copy of an epitaph written in Gothic characters on parchment. About the year 1854, or 1855, Dr. Renehan gave this to one of the students of the diocese of Dromore, to be translated metrically, as it was written in Latin hexameters. The translation lay among the old President's papers, till they came, after his death, into the care of Dr. Daniel MacCarthy, afterwards Bishop of Kerry. In the first volume (1864) of The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, page 377, Dr. MacCarthy published in his account of Blessed Thaddeus MacCarthy, the following lines which the Editor of this Magazine claims as his own across an interval of more than twice twenty golden years.

'Neath marble tombs in this the Virgin's shrine
The bones of many a saint in peace recline.
Thaddeus here. From Erin's shore he came,

A Bishop, of M'Carthy's royal name;

At whose behest were wondrous cures oft made,
Still Latium, Genoa, invoke his aid

Dying, he mourned that not on Irish soil,

Where sped his youth, should close his earthly toil;
Nor Cloyne, nor Kerry, but Ivrea owns
(For God so willed) the saintly Bishop's bones.
'Tis meet that they, in marble shrine encased,
Should be within the great cathedral placed.
Like Christ, whose tomb was for another made,
He in Eusebius' cenotaph is laid.

Soon sacred prodigies his power attest,
And all the earth proclaims him pious, blest.
O ye who hither come, our saint assail

With prayers and votive gifts; nor, traveller, fail
To greet with reverence the holy dead.

Since Christ was born a thousand years had fled,
Four hundred then and ninety-two beside

Had passed away, when St. Thaddeus died.

A city, which tradition points out as the place where our national apostle, St. Patrick, was raised to episcopal rank, as a prelude to his evangelisation of Ireland, and which for over four hundred years has been the faithful guardian of the remains of that strangely persecuted Irish Bishop, now known to the Catholic world as the Blessed Thaddeus, whose beatification Ivrea celebrated last September in so memorable a manner-this city of Ivrea deserves fuller notice than has been accorded to it in the Irish press. But beyond this special interest for Irish readers, its history is in itself sufficiently curious.

It was known to Pliny, Ptolemy, and Cicero, as Eporedia, and in various public records down to the year 1200, as Iporegia, Iporiensis, Civitas, and Eporeja. This subalpine town, now named Ivrea, was originally a Roman Colony, founded during the sixth Consulship of Caius Marius, 654 years after the foundation of Rome, and about a hundred years before the birth of Christ. Lying as it does, upon the left bank of the river Dora Balta, the Romans founded it as an outpost to confine the aboriginal Salassians in the valleys to which they had driven them back.

From a colony Ivrea rose to be a municipality with its full staff of decurions, ediles, questors, and other Roman officials. On the break-up of the Roman Empire it shared the same fate as the rest of Italy, and passed through the hands of many masters until A.D. 572, when the Lombardians made it a ducal seat, which it continued to be until 773, when it became subject to Charlemagne who placed a Marquess to rule over it. Several of the Marquesses of Ivrea held kingly rank elsewhere. After the death of the Marquess Arduin, the city was for a time governed by its bishop: from whom it passed under the yoke of the Emperors of Germany, These held it till 1248, when they made it over to Thomas II., third son of Thomas I., Count of Savoy, whose successors acquired further rights over it in 1313.