Mr. QUINN, the secretary, read letters of apology and encouragement from Dr. Ives and CHARLES O'CONNOR.

Dr. O. A. BROWNSON was introduced amid prolonged applause. He advocated the claims of the infant institution to Catholic support, on the ground that it was eminently calculated to create and foster a Catholic public opinion.

Mr. JAS. A. McMASTER, in the course of a brief address stated that though in this city there were 300,000 baptised Catholics, there was not, outside their homes, a room twelve feet square specially set apart for the purpose, where they could meet in friendly intercourse and intellectual communion. And this was the more strange because Catholics were to be found in the first rank in the legal, the medical, and all the learned professions, as well as of those engaged in the commercial pursuits. That they were not negligent in their public duty, as Catholics, was sufficiently manifested in the magnificent temples and multiplied charities for which their purses were always open, and which were created by their liberality.

Mr. RICHARD O'GORMAN spoke in favor of the objects of the association, basing his appeal on the dignity and worth of Catholicity in a social point of view. He wound up by a glowing tribute to the spirit of religious freedom which the Church, no less than the primitive teachings of Christianity itself, recognized.

9. DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.-On the 19th of March in the Convent Chapel of the Sisters of Mercy, Providence, R. I., Sister Mary Winifred (Miss Margaret Richil), made her solemn vows and received the black veil.-Painful apprehensions are still entertained for the safety of the beloved Bishop of Hartford. There is scarcely any doubt but that he was on the steamer Pacific, and his fate is involved with that vessel, whatever may be the result.

10. ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO. From the California Herald we gather the following particulars of the interesting and impressive ceremonies of the "reception and of the "profession" of the "Sisters of our Lady of Mercy," performed in the chapel of the City Hospital of that city, which institution is at present under the supervision of the religious order named. A very large company of our most esteemed citizens were present on the occasion. The first ceremony was the profession of Sylvia Brown, whose novitiate of two years had just expired. At this period the novice has completed her term of probation and may assume the black veil. The solemnities that preceded the administration of the Sacrament in this ceremonial, were of a character to impress every beholder with a deep sense of the holy obligations incurred. When these were concluded, the novice pronounced her vows, as follows:-"In the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and under the protection of His Immaculate Mother, Mary, ever Virgin, I, Sylvia Brown, called in religion Mary Grabriel, do vow, and promise to God poverty, chastity, and obedience, and the service of the poor, sick, and ignorant; and to persevere until death in this Institute of our Lady of Mercy, according to its approved rule and constitution, under the authority, and in the presence of you, my Lord and Most Reverend Father in God, Joseph Allemany, Archbishop of this Diocese, and of our Reverend Mother, Mary Russell, called in religion St. -- Mother Superior of the Convent of Mercy, San Francisco, this 6th day of March, in the year

of our Lord 1856."

The candidates for reception were Winifred O'Brien and Catherine Murray. This ceremony takes place after the first period of the novitiate-six months. The novice puts aside the secular dress and assumes the habit of the Order and the white veil, which is worn during the probationary period of two years. The novice kneeling at the foot of the altar, the Archbishop interrogates her. In this ceremonial no vows are required of the novice, and she may withdraw from the Order at any time during the succeeding years of her novitiate. The title of Sister Mary Vincent was conferred upon Miss O'Brien, and the title of Sister Magdalene was conferred upon Miss Murray.

OBITUARY.-Death of the Rev. Father Nobili.-This lamented Father died of the lockjaw, occasioned by a nail running into his foot, at the Jesuit's College, Santa Clara, California, on the 1st of March.

Father Berrill died on the 11th inst., at Nicetown, Pa., in the 75th year of his age. The venerable deceased was a native of Drogheda, Ireland.

The Rev. Michael McGinn departed this life on the 18th ult. at his residence in Fort Hamilton, L. I.

The Rev. Father Augustus Murphy died on Good Friday, at his mission, nine miles from Nashville. Father Murphy was a native of Ireland, and in the 50th year of his age. On the evening of Easter Sunday, Miss Henrietta Martina Dyer, aged twenty years. She entered the Convent of the Visitation, Washington City, and received the white veil, with the name of Sister Mary Angela, on the 8th December (feast of the Immaculate Conception) 1854. May they rest in peace.

The

Metropolitan.

VOL. IV.

JUNE, 1856.

No. 5.

MEMOIR OF ARCHBISHOP CARROLL.*

JOHN CARROLL, afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore, was the son of Daniel Carroll and Eleanor Darnall, and was born at Upper Marlboro', Prince George's County, Maryland, on the eighth day of January, in the year seventeen hundred and thirty-five. Daniel Carroll, the father of our illustrious Archbishop, emigrated from Ireland when a youth, together with his family, who were compelled to abandon their native country on account of the persecutions there waged against their religion, and shortly after his arrival in the province of Maryland engaged in mercantile pursuits. Eleanor Darnall, the mother of John Carroll, was a native of Maryland, and a daughter of Henry Darnall, a wealthy Catholic gentleman of the province. She was educated with every care in a select school at Paris, and was highly remarkable and admired for her profound piety, and for her varied and elegant accomplishments. The virtues of the mother were deeply impressed upon the character of the son, and gave a charm to his long and useful life. These pious parents encountered great obstacles in the education of their son. Catholics, whom persecution had driven from Catholic Ireland, encountered even in Catholic Maryland the cruel tyranny of persecution; Catholic schoolmasters were hunted down by the law and its officers, and Catholic parents were prohibited from educating their children in the faith of their ancestors. But the zealous Jesuit missionaries of the province had established at Bohemia, a remote and secluded spot on the Eastern Shore, a boarding school for youths, where, without observation, the rudiments of a classical and Catholic education were imparted. Here the youthful Carroll, his illustrious cousin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Robert Brent, Esq., were entered as scholars in the year 1747. In the following year the three students were sent to Europe and placed at the Jesuit College of St. Omers in French Flanders. During the six years of his collegiate life at St. Omers, our youthful Carroll was ever distinguished for his piety, good example, his close application to his studies, his ready and brilliant talents, and for his gentle and amiable deportment. In 1753 he entered the novitiate of the So

*Compiled from the Memoir of the Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, by B. U. Campbell, in the U. S. Catholic Magazine of 1844. &c.; Biography of Archbishop Carroll, by John Carroll Brent; and from some original sources.

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VOL. IV.-No. 5.

ciety of Jesus, and in 1755 was removed to Liege to make his course of philosophy and divinity. In 1759, being then in his twenty-fifth year, he was ordained in the holy ministry, and in obedience to the injunction of our Divine Lord, he gave his patrimony and all his worldly possessions to his brother and sisters in America, and in poverty took up his cross to follow Christ. Having served as professor at St. Omers and at Liege, he was received as a professed father in the Society of Jesus in 1771. During the year 1772, and part of 1773, he made the tour of Europe as tutor to the son of Lord Stourton, an English Catholic nobleman, and in July, 1773, was made prefect at Bruges, whither the Jesuit Fathers, expelled from St. Omers and Watten by the orders of the Parliament of Paris, had removed their college. While Mr. Carroll was pursuing a life of study and meditation at Bruges, the Society of Jesus, of which he was a devoted and zealous member, was suppressed by the brief, Dominus ac Redemptor, of Pope Clement XIV, dated July 21st, 1773, and published on the 16th of August of the same year. The brief of the Pope reached Bruges in September, and plunged in the most profound grief the members of that illustrious and calumniated order. Mr. Carroll, in common with his companions of the Society, submitted without a thought of resistance or even of hesitation to this most severe and disastrous blow. In a letter to his brother, Daniel Carroll, Father Carroll on the subject of the suppression of the Society, after expressing the grief of his heart, exclaims: "God's holy will be done, and may his name be blessed forever and ever." The history of the Church does not present a scene more sublime or more admirable than the submission and obedience of the Jesuits to that most unfortunate brief, by which their existence as an order in the Church was blotted out. The annals of the world present nothing comparable to this splendid act of true Catholic heroism. Upon the publication of the brief, the Jesuit institutions were given up by most of the governments of Europe to plunder, desecration, and every species of vandalism. The English Jesuits of Flanders retired to England, whither Mr. Carroll accompanied them, acted as the Secretary of their meetings, and, in fact, carried on an important correspondence with the French Government in relation to the property of the suppressed order in France. While thus engaged in England he received the appointment of chaplain to Lord Arundel, and took up his residence at Wardour Castle, one of the most splendid and luxurious seats in England. But the charms of Wardour Castle did not withdraw the attention of this holy priest from the most laborious and self-sacrificing duties of his sacred calling, which he continued to perform with unabated zeal and activity.

About this time the quarrel between the mother country and her colonies was hastening to a crisis. Mr. Carroll at once took sides with his own country. Bidding adieu to his beloved companions of the late Society of Jesus, and to his noble and generous friends at Wardour Castle, he sailed from England and reached his native land on the 26th of June, 1774. His first impulse was to visit his venerable mother and devoted sisters, with the former of whom he took up his residence at Rock Creek, where at first a room in the family dwelling, and subsequently a wooden chapel, were the scenes of the holy and zealous priest's ministerial offices. The wooden chapel has since been superseded by a neat brick church, now so well known as Carroll's chapel.

At the time of Father Carroll's arrival in America there was not one public Catholic church in Maryland. The Holy Sacrifice could be offered up to Almighty God alone under the family roof, which explains the fact of the old Catholic chapels of Maryland containing large hearths and fire-places within

them, and massive brick chimneys projecting through the roofs. The number of Catholic clergymen then in the province of Maryland was nineteen, whose names and places of residence, as given by Col. B. U. Campbell, will be read with interest by the present Catholics of Maryland: "Rev. George Hunter, an Englishman, Vicar-General of the Vicar Apostolic (Bishop) of London, was superior of the clergy in Maryland and Pennsylvania. He resided near Port Tobacco, in Charles County, upon a beautiful and productive estate, still known as St. Thomas' Manor. With him resided the Rev. John Bolton, also a native of England; Rev. Lewis Roels, a Belgian, and Rev'ds Charles Sewall, Benedict Neale, and Sylvester Boarman, natives of Maryland. At Newtown, in Charles County, were Rev. James Walton, an Englishman, and Revs. Augustine Jenkins, Ignatius Matthews, and John Boarman, natives of Maryland. Rev'ds John Lucas and Joseph Doyne, occupied the ancient establishment at St. Inigoe's Manor on the St. Mary's River, near the spot chosen by the first settlers of Maryland for the City of St. Mary's. In Prince George's County the Rev. John Ashton was stationed at the Jesuits' farm called White Marsh, Rev. Bernard Diderick, at Boone's chapel, Rev'ds John Boone and Thomas Digges, natives of Maryland; the latter, who was then advanced in years and infirm, resided with an aged sister on the family estate, Melwood. Rev. Joseph Mosely at Deer Creek, in Harford County, Rev. James Framback at Frederick Town, and Rev. Peter Morris resided on Bohemia Manor, in Cecil County, on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay." These Rev. gentlemen having been members of the suppressed order of Jesuits, were supported from the income derived from the Jesuit estates; but in this common fund the Rev. Mr. Carroll, maintaining always the kindest and most affectionate relations with his brethren, chose not to participate, since in order to do so, he would have been required by the regulation adopted by the clergy to abandon the particular field of missionary labor which he had chosen for himself at Rock Creek, and perhaps to leave his venerable and aged mother, to whose declining years he was anxious to minister. His missionary labors were chiefly performed at Carroll's chapel and the neighboring country. He traveled always on horseback, making long and frequent journeys to distant Catholic families and settlements, riding frequently thirty miles or more to sick calls, and paying monthly visits to a small congregation of Catholics at Stafford County, Virginia, which was fifty or sixty miles distant from Rock Creek.

This little settlement of Catholics in Stafford deserves something more than a mere passing notice, as forming a remarkable exception from the uniform system prevailing both in the mother country and in Virginia, by which papists and all others not conforming to the established Church, were molested and proscribed in respect of their religion. There was at least one little spot in Virginia consecrated to religious freedom, and this was called Woodstock, whose inhabitants were exempted from the severities of the penal code, and vested with the franchise of freely exercising their religion, by a grant under the royal signet of James II. Capt. George Brent, of Woodstock, was the leader of this band of Catholic pilgrims in Virginia in 1686, two of whose descendants were married to Anne and Eleanor Carroll, sisters of Rev. Mr. Carroll, at the time of his missionary visits to Stafford in 1775 and '76. Having been favored with the use of a copy of the remarkable and interesting document, which redeemed Virginia from the general reproach of intolerance, I take pleasure in laying it before the public:

"JAMES R.

"Right trusty and wellbeloved, We greet you well, Whereas our trusty and wellbeloved George Brent, of Woodstock, in our County of Stafford, in that our Collony of Virginia, Richard Foote and Robert Bristow of London Merchants & Nicholas Hayward of London Notary Public, have by their Humble Petition informed us, That they have purchased of our Right Trusty and Wellbeloved Thomas Lord Culpeper a certain tract of Land in our said Collony, between the Rivers of Rappahannock and Potomack, containing of estimation thirty thousand acres lying in or near our said County of Stafford, some miles distant from any present Settlement or Inhabitants & at or about twenty miles from the foot of the mountains, upon part of which Tract of Land the Pet'rs have projected and doo speedily dessigne to build a towne with convenient fortifications, and doo therefore pray That for the encouragement of Inhabitants to settle in the said Towne and plantation wee would be pleased to grant them the free exercise of their Religion, wee have thought fitt to condescend to their humble Request, and wee doo accordingly give and grant to the Pet'rs and to all and every the Inhabitants which now are or hereafter shall be settled in the said Towne and the Tract of Land belonging to them as is above mentioned, the free exercise of their Religion without being persecuted or molested upon any penall laws or other account for the same, which wee do hereby signifie unto you to the end you may take care and give such orders as shall be requisite-That they enjoy the full benefit of these our gracious Intentions to them, Provided they behave themselves in all civil matters so as becomes peaceable and Loyall subjects, and for so doing this shall be your warrant, and so we bid you heartely farewell.

"Given at our Court at Whitehall the 10th day of Feb'y 1686/ in the third year of our Reign. /7 "SUNDERLAND.

[Royal Signet.]

66

By his Maj'ties Commands,

"To our Right Trusty and Wellbeloved Francis Lord Howard of Effingham our Lieutenant & Governor General of our Collony and Dominions of Virginia in America, and to our chiefe Governor or Governors there for the time being."

The Catholic settlement in Stafford is said to be near the spot where Father Altham first announced the saving word to the Indians in 1634. From 1687 to the time of Mr. Carroll's arrival, the Woodstock families had rigidly and zealously adhered to their religion in the midst of perils. They were occasionally visited by the Rev. Mr. Hunter and other priests from Maryland, who always crossed the Potomac for that purpose in disguise. They were also frequently attended by the good and indefatigable Father Framback, who had to exercise the greatest caution to avoid discovery, sleeping generally in the stable beside his horse in order to be prepared for a sudden flight; and on one occasion barely escaped with his life, his faithful horse having carried him safely through the waters of the Potomac, though he was fired upon before he had attained the Maryland side of the river. After about eighteen months thus spent in the active duties of the holy ministry, the call of his country summoned Mr. Carroll to her service in other and more public scenes.

Open war was now raging between England and the thirteen Colonies. The hopes, which many of our patriots and statesmen had cherished to the last, that a reconciliation might be accomplished, were growing fainter every day, and the public mind was becoming more and more familiarized with the at first startling thought of Independence. To guard against invasion from the Canadas, and even to obtain perhaps their active coöperation in the war with the colonies, or at least to secure their neutrality, became objects of the greatest importance to the struggling colonies. To gain these ends Congress on the 15th of February, 1776, appointed Dr. Franklin, Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, commissioners, with instructions to proceed to Montreal, and to use every effort of argument, per