He was an inventor of astonishing fertility. All the latest discoveries in practical scientific work were familiar to him. You all, I dare say, remember the very remarkable fact that, though only an amateur, he was for two years in succession elected by the Gas Engineers of Great Britain to be their president. A distinguished chemist said of Denny Lane that, had he settled in London, he would have acquired a European reputation in chemistry. That he did not, but remainad amongst us, may have been his loss, but it certainly was our gain. Yet, I am not quite certain that from any point of view it is to be regretted. The great imperial market of intelligence is gorged by drawing from the provinces their best, and it is to my mind a question whether this is altogether for good. Without denying the importance of having a great radiating centre, I venture to doubt whether it is not equally desirable that the intellectual level of the nine-tenths should be kept as nearly as possible at the height of that of the chosen one-tenth. Certainly I think the influence and example of a man like Denny Lane in the heart of a community such as ours, was calculated to stimulate culture and to raise the tone of those who enjoyed intercourse with him.

I cannot help recalling here a circumstance which I think not without significance. Shortly after the years of famine and abortive rebellion, Thomas Carlyle, the grim, the soured, made a tour in Ireland. He had not yet got over the disgust which the slow appreciation of his genius had infused into him. Amongst his Irish experiences was a dinner at the hospitable board of Denny Lane in the company of such men as Father O'Shea and Canon William O'Sullivan; and here he seemed at last to have found something that soothed his rugged spirit. It is impossible not to be struck with Carlyle's published references to this meeting and not to contrast them favourably with the almost resentful strain with which he referred even to kindness experienced in other quarters. In reading his grateful allusion to Lane-" fine, big, brown man -one cannot help feeling that here in this Cork circle he has found what was better than the "solid pudding" offered him elsewhere the admiration of high-toned and really cultured intelligence. Now, such influences working day by day in a community cannot be without effect. They are full of suggestion and stimulus, and in the case of a man like Denny Lane, of actual help. His career has been a lesson for all of us how we may fulfil the highest duties

of a citizen. It is so in an especial degree for the young. Amongst the things which are taught in this gallery a glance at the bust, which now for the first time occupies a place in it, may remind the youthful observer that there lived in Cork a man gifted with the qualities which command success in any sphere, who was content to play a comparatively humble part in his native city, and to lend the aid of his manifold endowments to the advancement of its interests. To some of those who are older, who have known and loved and admired him in life, it will recall the memory of a charming companion and a dear friend.”

A

MOONRISE: AN IMPRESSION.

LL in the dreamful, blue-gray twilight-time,
When tremulous silence rests o'er land and sea
And Nature waits on tiptoe for the night,
A paly radiance quivers in the East
Silvering each sleepy brook and lone hill-tarn :
The gilded vanes and slender, far-off spires
Catch something of the magic, and the plumes
Of crested forest monarchs ebon frown
Athwart the glow effulgent. Lo! the zone
Of glory broadens and a pearl-strewn path
Reveals itself adown the fields of heaven,
Dimming the splendours of the Milky Way.
A million twinkling points of steely flame.
Herald the coming of the Queen of Night-
And see! she comes, in grace ineffable,

Icily virginal as curded snow

Now doth it seem as if some Angel-Prince
Had hung his buckler on the walls of heaven;
An orbed shield emblazoned dimly o'er,
And deeply dented in that shock of fright
When Lucifer, son of the roseate morn,
Was hurled in blazing ruin to the abyss.
Chaste Dian smiles on a transfigured world.
And gilds the uncharted pathways of the deep,
While every wavelet, lingering in its fall,
Mirrors her beauty to the wondering shore.

C. QUINN.

SISTER MARY STANISLAUS MacCARTHY, O.S.D.

R. I. P.

THOUGH her own shrinking modesty would forbid it, and though it may be distasteful to some whose wishes ought to be consulted in all that concerns her, I cannot refrain from recording the happy death of this gifted Dominican Nun-happy for her, but for many full of grief and sadness. It took place at St. Mary's Convent, Sion Hill, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, August 11th, 1897.

Mary MacCarthy was the eldest daughter of Denis Florence MacCarthy and Elizabeth Donnelly, and was born in Dublin, December 26th, 1849. She inherited the sweet, gentle disposition of her mother-who died about twenty years ago-and in no scant degree the literary gifts of her father. It was in order to be as near as possible to her convent-home that Mr. MacCarthy, as if feeling that his term was running out, transferred for the last time his favourite books and his belongings to a house in Merrion Avenue, Blackrock, where he died on Good Friday, April 7th, 1882. On that date in The Birthday Book of Our Dead this anniversary was evidently before the mind of his loving daughter in selecting the memorial prose and verse linked with the day. The poetical extract is from Mr. MacCarthy's own ode on the death of the young Earl of Belfast; and the prose is from Father Joseph Farrell, the "Certain Professor" of this Magazine in its early years. "It were hard to die if all we loved were here to leave behind, but not hard when those are gone before us who, since souls die not nor change their essence, will meet us on the further side of the dim, dark sea that flows between the living and the dead. The ghosts beckon us with their shodowy arms, and sometimes the voices of the dead draw us like songs of sirens."

In the poems of Denis Florence MacCarthy there are many allusions to the Christmas gift with which '49 gladdened his household. She was a singularly bright and winning child, when I saw her first about her tenth year in the poet's beautiful home of Summerfield, near Dalkey-the subject, by the way, of one of his most graceful and touching poems, in which Summerfield is

disguised as its Spanish equivalent, Campo de Estio.

Bright and winning she remained till the end, with much of the freshness and all the innocence of childhood, keeping "a young lamb's heart amid the full-grown flocks."

Mary MacCarthy was educated at the Convent where she has just died. The schoolgirl became a novice there on the 18th December, 1867, when her eighteenth year had a week still to run. She was admitted to her solemn vows on the 14th June, 1870. She would thus in two or three months have completed her thirty years as a Dominican Nun. Her work was done at Sion Hill, and for the last two or three years in Dublin, at St. Mary's University College, Merrion Square. She was a most attractive and efficient teacher, beloved by all the young people round her; and her happy influence over them did not cease with their schooldays.

With all her modesty and self-effacement she could not restrain altogether the exercise of her poetical gift. Our own pages have sometimes been enriched with holy little lyrics, signed S. M. S., in which many were delighted to recognise the initials of Sister Mary Stanislaus. But it will be more seemly to discuss hereafter the too scanty literary remains of the dear friend whom we have lost.

Three or four weeks ago Sister Mary Stanislaus seemed as likely as most people to work on for God some twenty years more. But her work was over. Forty eight years will appear a long enough term to some of our readers; one year more was all that was allowed for the brilliant work of Father Faber, the English Oratorian, and of Father Burke, the Irish Dominican. But those whose lives were wound up with hers may be pardoned for finding it hard not to wish that she had been kept waiting a little longer for her crown.

A sister-poet, alluding to her death, speaks of "a bright soul gone to take its place in the high heavens;" and another sisterpoet says: "Her poems were very sweet and true, and she must herself have been the same." She was indeed one of the sweetest, holiest, most amiable, and most gifted of God's human creatures— one of those whose presence, or whose memory, helps many to love God and to believe in purity and sanctity and Heaven.

THE REFINER'S TEST.

I.

'TIS whisper'd of St. Eloy's laboratory,

What time the smith would prove the precious ore

As virgin metal in its molten glory,

Fit for the ransom of an emperor ;

Above the crucible attentive bending,

He sees the golden bubbles rise and break,
Yet ceases not his watching or his tending,
Till on the surface of that mimic lake,

That still, smooth surface, he hath, clear, detected
(What ev'ry alchemist would fain behold),

His own resemblance faithfully reflected
As in a mirror of the purest gold.

II.

A symbol this of that grand Laboratory
Wherein God tries His chosen ones with fire,
In the red furnace of Love's purgatory,
His saints refining by afflictions dire.

The human dross may in them boil and bubble
Rebellious 'neath misfortunes manifold:
The flesh revolt against the toil and trouble
That, cleansing, prove the Master's purest gold;

Still doth He test them with divine affection,
Nor stays His hand, nor cools one fiery coal,
Until He sees His own sublime reflection,
Distinctly mirrored in each chastened soul.

ELEANOR C. DONNELLY.

VOL. XXV.

No. 291.

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