work of S. Francis of Sales, his Treatise on the Love of God, in which the Saint has brought together the subjects of sermons preached by himself to the people.

Those who wish to use this little book during the Month of Mary, will do well to take the 26th chapter first. It would have been placed at the beginning of the book, had it not been our intention to offer to the faithful a work which might be equally useful to them at every period of the year. They will find here a series of lectures, religious, dogmatic, moral, and ascetic, on the privileges of Mary, and on the graces which correspond to those privileges; on the life of the Mother of God according to the Gospels, and on the lessons which it contains; on the cultus or the worship which is due to her, and on the practices of piety flowing from it. All these lectures, like the chapters of S. Liguori's Glories of Mary, are followed by prayers.

It may, perhaps, be matter of surprise that one of his disciples and children should have thought of writing another book in honour of Mary, when S. Alphonsus himself has written a work on the glories of his Mother, so full of life and unction, that truly pious souls cannot read a single page of it without being deeply moved and enlightened thereby. We can enter into this feeling; but we believe, nevertheless, that S. Alphonsus loves to see us follow his steps, and that he desires to hear us speak of Mary after our poor fashion to the Christians of our own day, in their own language; so as to draw to their Mother souls which, in order to love her better, need chiefly to know her better, and who require to be led to the Glories of Mary.

But the motive which induced us to write will be

better understood by the relation of a fact which suggested it.

One day, when we were visiting a learned and pious friend, we found the Glories of Mary among the books which covered his table. He saw that we had observed it, and took it up, saying: "This is my spiritual thermometer; when I am in some degree faithful to grace, a few words from this book enlighten and encourage me; when I am careless and lukewarm, it no longer suits me; it becomes, as it were, too strong for me. When I feel this, I look into myself, and I soon find that it is not the light which has grown dim, but the interior eye which is no longer able to bear its brightness. I then labour to restore this eye of the soul to its strength and purity; and the thermometer soon rises, or rather the soul rises, and soon finds itself in union with this precious book."

We have been careful not to draw from this isolated fact a general conclusion which would be incorrect, for experience proves daily that the Glories of Mary touches sinners and brings them back to God, as it consoles the just and encourages them to perseverance; but it is no less true that there is a certain spiritual state unhappily too often experienced, a state of languor and darkness, in which we find the necessity of varying our reading, and of being brought back gently to books which seem at those times to be beyond us.

We therefore offer this book to the world in the hope that it will be of service to those who have yet to learn to enjoy the Glories of Mary.

For this reason we determined to give to it the character of which we have spoken above, and which

distinguishes several pious books by S. Alphonsus, especially his great Treatise on Prayer, which is at the same time ascetic and dogmatic, and in which he refutes the Jansenistic errors then popular, as we refute here and there, and especially in the 9th chapter, the errors which men are making strenuous efforts to render popular in our day, and which we have heard maintained by poor artisans in our streets, perfectly au fait at the arguments of Protestantism, by which they are constituted doctors of free examination at a very cheap rate. The work of S. Alphonsus is even more dogmatic than ours, in which we have abstained from purely theological terms in order to be useful to a greater number of souls, after the example of our holy founder, who afterwards simplified his admirable Treatise on Prayer. The same desire for general utility has induced us to translate the Latin quotations which are to be met with in this work, or at least to give their meaning in the passage of the text which precedes or follows them.

We have only now to express to our readers the consolation which we feel in offering to them these Recollections and Prayers, or rather in offering them, through their hands, to our common Mother, under the pontificate of a Pope whom she has so visibly marked as her own. Pius IX. has been her favoured son from his baptism, when he received the name of John Mary, and has been predestined by Divine Providence, among all the successors of Peter, to the high privilege of solemnly defining the belief of Christendom in all ages in the second Eve's plenitude of grace.

Do we wonder after this that Mary has chosen Pius IX. to stand nearest to her at the foot of the Cross?

Did she not choose S. John to be with her there, the beloved Apostle whom Jesus gave her to be her son, and to be the first who should treasure up those blessed words: "Behold thy Mother"?

But if the beloved disciple shared most closely and most deeply the sufferings of his Master and of his Divine Mother, if he was the nearest to them in sorrow, he was the nearest to them also in joy, and the first of the disciples to confess his faith in the Resurrection. We see, then, why the great heart of Pius IX., which is so full of sadness, is so full of hope-or rather, of the certain expectation-of the triumph of the Church; and we can find no words to express that sadness and that hope but those of the inspired Psalmist, who was himself so admirable a figure of Christ suffering and triumphant. He expressed beforehand what has been always experienced in a certain measure by all the living members of Christ, all the true children of His grace, but which is experienced in its fulness in our day by the visible head of the mystical body of the New Man, the Vicar of the Man-God Himself.

Nations and not followed

Credidi, propter quod locutus sum: I have spoken to the world the words of faith, not only on the greatness of Mary ever Immaculate, but on the greatness of the stain which pollutes itself, and on the depths of the evil whence all its iniquities proceed. kings have heard those words, but have them: Ego autem humiliatus sum nimis. In my desolation I sought whether no man loves the truth among those who have power to defend it, and I found none among the mighty, not even among those who call themselves my sons. I have found nothing but the

love of falsehood: Ego dixi in excessu meo: Omnis homo mendax. But what I found not among the mighty, I have found among the weak, and I have heard the voice of a great multitude of nations calling me father! Quid retribuam Domino, pro omnibus quæ retribuit mihi? What shall I do for these children whom God makes so faithful to me? Calicem salutaris accipiam: et nomen Domini invocabo. O my God, I am ready to suffer for the whole Catholic world; I am ready to die for it, if such be Thy will, as Thou didst die for it Thyself: Vota mea Domino reddam coram omni populo ejus: pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors sanctorum ejus. But whether it be my life or my death which is to be to it the source of grace, I know, O Lord, that that grace shall be full. O Domine, quia ego servus tuus: ego servus tuus, et filius ancillæ tuæ. Yes, I know that grace shall be full, for I am thy servant, and the son of thy handmaid, him whom she has deigned to choose among Thy Vicars upon earth to make known the full sense of that salutation: Hail, full of grace!" Yes, I shall obtain the grace of the liberty of the Church, the liberty of the Holy See. Dirupisti vincula mea: tibi sacrificabo hostiam laudis. And for that liberty I shall bless Thee, O Lord, either from the bosom of the Church militant or in the bosom of the Church triumphant. Vota mea Domino reddam in conspectu omnis populi ejus: in atriis domus Domini, in medio tui Jerusalem.1

1 Psalm cxv.

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