The best English epitaphs are remarkable for terseness and point. Ben Jonson's is : O RARE BEN JONSON! To him is ascribed the epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke, though some writers declare William Browne to be the author: Underneath this sable hearse Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother: Learned, fair, and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee. Saintsbury, in his Elizabethan Literature, calls these lines the crown and flower of all epitaphs." Herrick on Charles I. : Be not dismaide, tho' crosses cast thee downe; Thy fall is but the rising to a crowne. On Mary Queen of Scots : Death is Release. Somewhat similar is the quatrain which the poet, Father Robert Southwell, S.J., wrote on his own death-he suffered at Tyburn under Elizabeth: My skaffold was the bed where ease I found, The block, a pillow of eternal reste : My hedman cast me in a blissfull swounde, His axe cutt off my cares from combred breste. Johnson in the Rambler says: Pontanus, a man celebrated among the early restorers of literature, thought the study of our own hearts of so much importance, that he recommended it from his tomb. I am Pontanus, beloved by the powers of literature, admired by men of worth, and dignified by the monarchs of the world. Thou knowest now who I am, or more properly who I was. For thee, stranger, I who am in darkness cannot know thee, but I entreat thee to know thyself. Johnson adds that the advice enforces " a precept, dictated by philosophers, inculcated by poets and ratified by saints." Elegies and epitaphs are not, indeed, the sole means by which the memory of the dead can be perpetuated. Great names may be inseparably associated with natural objects, with seas, fields, and mountains. Of Greece Byron says:— While kings in dusty darkness hid A mightier monument command, The mountains of their native land! There points thy Muse to stranger's eye Nevertheless such association owes much, if not all, of its permanence to the monumental inscriptions, graven at first on marble or brass and then stereotyped for ever in literature; and many a heroic deed has doubtless failed to survive because it lacked a written memorial. It is well for the world that the memory of the choicest spirits of the human race-its sages, its heroes, and its saints— has not perished. The example of the dead is ever before us, their unwearied patience in life's combat, their high ideals, their love of truth, their hatred of wrong, their courageous, and even passionate, striving for all that is noblest and most becoming an immortal, spiritual nature: all this teaches the invaluable lesson that if we are true to ourselves, to duty and to God, we can walk in their footsteps, can front life with hearts full of hope and courage, and can become, like them, to some extent an influence to cheer, to guide and to bless. M. WATSON, S.J. THE CALL OF THE SPRING WITH banners green and gold unfurled By pasture green and babbling rill And at her touch my heart, too, wakes, Clad in dull robes of grey and brown— Where for a little, even I NORA TYNAN O'MAHONY. IN THE HAPPIEST TIME OF LIFE N some back number of this magazine, probably in some batch of "Pigeonhole Paragraphs," we discussed the question, which is the happiest time of human life. We see the same question started in almost the only number we have ever seen (August 9, 1907) of Le Gaulois, which calls itself "le plus grand journal du matin " in Paris-it is left far behind in size by the morning papers of Dublin, London, and New York. M. Henri Lavedan, an eminent writer of the day, has published a novel called Le Bon Temps; and this suggested to some one who does not give his name the idea of going round to sundry celebrities and trying to extract their answer to the question, "Quel est le bon temps? Est-ce la jeunesse? l'âge mûr? ou la vieillesse ?" The first person that the inquisitor caught was M. Paul Bourget ; but he was feverishly busy, writing an article, and not a syllable could be got from him except that the new story is a masterpiece. Not a word on the abstract question mooted by one of its heroes, that youth alone is happy. Better luck with the Marquis de Ségur. By the way, it is mentioned elsewhere in the Gaulois that M. Lavedan is backing the Marquis's candidature for one of the two vacant fauteuils in the French Academy. Is he a nephew of the Blind Apostle of Paris ? "Ah, sir, what a question to put to me? At what moment do I place what is called le bon temps? There is no harder question to answer. It was yesterday,' M. Lavedan assures us in the delightful book which has started you on your present quest. As for me, I should be tempted to say, 'It will be to-morrow,' if I were not touching the age when the mind. feels near to the dreadful never again! Doubtless the time of youth, more than any other, knows the joy of living; but this fugitive joy, the impatient looking forward to the future and la fière du mieux, prevent us from enjoying it thoroughly at the time, and, when we look back on it later on in life, the memories that we have preserved of it are too much mingled with regrets." The Marquis goes on to remark that, though it is hard to find in the past a period of conscious and stable happiness, most people cherish the memory of certain glorious moments of the heart's expansion, rapture, perfect gladness—“ certaines minutes supérieures d'épanouissement d'enivrement, d'allégresse absolue." The one that he describes as his own most vivid recollection of the sort was the afternoon of September 2nd, 1870, when his father came running from the village postoffice in a hidden nook of Normandy with the ecstatic news that at last the hour of vengeance had come, that the Prussian army was annihilated. The rest of the day was spent in preparing fireworks and other tokens of triumph. But the morning brought the news of Sedan. This was the strongest impression of my first youth. I had at once before me the two faces of human happiness, the intoxication and the disillusionment." Our inquisitive friend seems to have called on the persons who took no notice of his letter of enquiry. He found M. Chaplain (is he a painter ?) in his office or studio at the Institute. "I don't read." But the good time of life-is it the time that the artist consecrates to his art? M. Chaplain replied, "My best time was the four years I spent in Rome." The only lady questioned-Madame J. Marni, whose titles to distinction are unknown to us-has no opinion on the point. "I have seen gloomy childhoods, despairing boyhoods, triumphant manhood, and silly old age." M. Paul Adam gives the most elaborate answer of all, but it does not lend itself to quotation. He places the happiest time of life between thirty and fifty, and he advises a young man not to have un ami but des amis. "Celui qui ravage l'existence, c'est l'intime." No particular friendship-but many good and true friends. "Le bon temps commence apèrs la trentaine." M. Huysmans is better known to us than M. Adam. The mystic author of La Cathédrale lives in religious solitude at St. Sulpice-or rather did live there till that historic home of piety and learning was broken up by an infidel and tyrannical government, of which a Dublin newspaper that pockets much Catholic money has quite lately declared, with abominable effrontery, that it has "given proof on proof of its anxiety to avoid wounding the susceptibilities of Catholics!" Are * The Saturday Review of January 26 informs us that "according to the French Government's own organ, the Journal Officiel, 1,252 of the churches and chapels which a few years ago belonged to religious communities, military and civil hospitals, colleges and schools, etc., have already been desecrated and turned to profane purposes. The chapel of the Invalides, which only a month ago was used as a parish church and had a large congregation, is now, by order of General Picquart, Minister of War, closed to the public for divine service, and as recently as last week, when the Spanish Ambassador inquired whether the baptism of a well |