THE PIERCED STONE.

put forth when the miracle was first said | to have occurred are still in circulation, and the frescoes in the churches remain. There is one in the church of St. Ann, at Tours, painted in 1874, and it does not differ, except in material, from one just put up in a hospice chapel at Amboise, in which the figures are of painted plaster. That at Marmoutier appeared in the distance similar: I could not go close, for it is at the end of an ancient avenue of arching trees where the saints used to walk, and which is now almost as sacred from common footsteps as the Santa Scala itself. But it is plain that the Salette miracle is already conventionalized. In all the representations the little peasant girl and boy have on their best Sunday clothes, and were not surprised by their Lady in shabby attire. The girl clasps her hands in true tableau style, and the boy starts forward with a cowed attitude. The third recent apparition, that at Pont - Main, though attested by more witnesses, does not seem to make so much of an impression.

The Lourdes apparition, it will be remembered, had an opportuneness to a new dogma: the Lady said to the child, "I am the immaculate conception." But the interest in that agitation having passed away somewhat, the Salette apparition seems to have got ahead a little in popular

esteem. She seems to have been more gorgeously arrayed, more brilliantly haloed, having not merely a halo around her head as usual, or half way like a veil, as in the Lourdes case, but is represented with one fringing her entire person like zigzag lightning. For the rest, I can not but remark the change which seems to have supervened in her personal appearance as compared with the famil iar portrait transmitted from the past. According to this, her latest appearance on the earth, she has become a fine lady, a woman of the world, with the air of an English countess.

St. Martin was the founder of Mar moutier, and is its patron saint. In the French Revolution the saint's body, it is said, was burned at Tours; but one little bone of the fore-arm was rescued, and that was divided equally between St. Martin's church and shrine in Tours, and this his old abbey. The relic (four inches long) is here kept on an altar beneath an effigy of the saint, is quite visible on its cushion of red velvet, and a lamp perpetually burns before it.

In this region (Sainte-Maure) is a mysterious pierced stone. For ages it has been believed that a bit of lichen scraped from it, or grass gathered at its base, would preserve one from evil spirits. Near Mettray there is a "Fairies' Grotto," whose sanctity, originating in pagan times, has gradually connected with it the name of St. Anthony. Near the glorious château of Ussy there was of old a well holy to pagans: something abnormal in it has led to the wide-spread belief that its waters ascend and fall with the waxing and waning of the moon. St. Martin presumably came to Gaul to convert people from these superstitions; but the holy rocks and healing fountains and sacred trees are all flourishing in his historic abbey of Marmoutier.

Here with my bounteous Love and me

Sweet Nature, Queen of all green things that be!
For over all

Some high Spirit mystical,

With vaporous form and golden-dropping hair,
Breathes through the drowsy skies-

The mellow-tinted Indian-summer air-
And offers sacrifice!

Ah! what's so sweet

As the tripping, twinkling feet

Of the brooklet 'neath the willows?
And what, ah! what's so fair
As the summer air,

And the lark high up in its fleecy billows?
And here in the meadow-land far below
We can listen and catch the streamlet's flow,
And hear the lark till he's out of sight
In the breezy blue above the hill,
And watch the sunbeams drop and fill
Each little flower-cup with delight;
For here the shadows are soft and still-

Hist! be hushed as a startled mole
Curled in its cradle; for over the knoll
I see the soft brown twitching ear
Of the shy gray rabbit peeping!
He thinks that we are sleeping-
Nature and I! Ha, ha!

And soon more near

He'll crouch his form and crop the hill-side tender:
And if the winds blow by,

He knows them, knows them just as well as I,
Nor fears their shrill pipes slender.
Hear how aloft the old crows caw!-

Wicked black crows that fill their maw
With pretty field-fares. What a shame!
Here's one that built his nest close by,
Last summer, and the grasses lie

Trampled by the path he came.

See! here deep down are mosses and sweet ferns,
And meadow-fire that burns:

Love's torch, they call it rather,

Or Cupid's cup, if maidens pluck and gather.

Here's Indian-pipe, the fairies smoke:

They light it by the meadow-fire.
And here's the magic ring they broke
When dancing to their cricket choir.
And here are spicy mints,

And club-head lichens full of freakish dints
Of toothsome elves, and prints

Of winding pathways thro' the reedy grasses,
Where, hurrying wild, the emmet's army passes;
Here dainty roads,

Where, shining soft, the velvet-coated toads,
Crushing the herbage, pant when rain is over,
Hopping to meet their loves in

musky clover;