but receiving it in Lent is not at Easter. It would be easy, as is done in large London churches, to celebrate it twice or even three times on Easter day, or on Easter Monday or Tuesday, which are Church holy-days with proper services, or on the Sunday following, which is still part of Easter, being the octave. For the proper preface shows that the feast of Easter lasts eight days, and that the Church hopes that the Holy Communion will be celebrated not only on Easter day and Monday and Tuesday, but the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday between also, that is, "Easter day and seven days after." Now in common rural districts with a thin population this difficulty would be met by having the Communion on the Sunday after Easter, which would give all the means of communicating at Easter, as well as make men feel that the Easter sun, which veiled itself with awful significancy on Good Friday, but saw afterwards at its rising the deserted tomb, was greater than Joshua's sun on Gibeon, and "hasteth not to go down by the space" of eight days. This would surely be better than hanging the most joyous of our festal Services as an appendage to the saddest and most broken-hearted ritual of our strictest fast. When I saw the assembly at St. Mark's receiving the Eucharist on the Thursday, I could not help feeling that they, rather than ourselves, were fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah, which our own Church, not theirs, has selected for the evening lesson of this Thursday. They were literally fulfilling

it. "They shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd; and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together; for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness '."

Venice is not much changed since 1535. If we let our imagination go back to that year, the picture requires little alteration in the main features. Let us enter the shady gardens of San Giorgio Maggiore; that house to the left is the residence of the wise Gregorio Cortese, the abbot. 1535 has been a fine year, though not a quiet one, in Italy; and at present the November afternoons are mild and sunny. There is none of the inclemency of the coming winter; no icy winds from the Julian Alps behind, but a warm and gentle gale breathes up the Adriatic. We will join ourselves invisibly to that group there'. The pale man with the well known features 1 Jer. xxxi.

2 The characters of those who take part in the following imaginary conversation, as well as a most interesting account of the endeavors after a reformation within the Roman Church in the middle of the sixteenth century, will be found in Ranke's Popes, book ii. His identifying Pole's and Contarini's doctrine of justification with that of Luther is, I think, inaccurate. The words

of the royal house of England is Reginald Pole, and the person whom he is addressing is Luigi Priuli, the most accomplished of the Venetians. He has come from his villa near Treville, on purpose to meet his friends once more at their old and favorite haunt, the parlor of the Abbot Cortese. You would think from the splendid materials of his dress, from the carefulness with which it has been adjusted, and the studiously graceful attitudes into which he throws himself, that Luigi Priuli was a mere man of the world, a fashionable gallant. But you would be very far from the truth. He is a devoted churchman, and beneath that calm beaming eye there are deep feelings and high-hearted schemes. That asceticlooking man, with a broad countenance and singularly lustrous eye, is Marco of Padua, the Benedictine. See how Pole looks up into his face, and seems to hang with reverence upon his very words. He is Pole's spiritual father; and he too knows not whether more to love or to admire his son. For indeed who ever knew Pole without loving him? There are two others walking apart in the leaf-strewn walk under the wall, where several ungainly fig-trees, which should have been fixed to the wall, are hanging over with thick twisted shoots. We hope the abbot's monastery is not typified by that fig-tree walk: and

in italics are words actually used either by the speaker or by one of his party in those days, and are to be found in the text or notes of Ranke. One or two trifling anachronisms will be detected in the conversation, but not such as affect its general truth.

indeed it is not. The lesser of the two speakers, with a wrinkled brow and sunken cheeks, is the abbot himself, the wise and benevolent Gregorio Cortese, who seems to unite, if ever man did, the simplicity of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent. His companion with a lofty brow and ample chest, and yet so timid and bashful that he fixes his eyes on the dead leaves that he may not meet the gaze of the kind abbot, is the famous Gaspar Contarini. There are who think it a sign of an uneasy conscience not to look another in the face when they speak. We may be sure it was not so with Contarini. He is a man of bold thoughts, often stands single in the republic, and has a courageous soul; yet he is shy of speech, finds a difficulty in clothing the commonest ideas with words, and speaks with an ungraceful emotion. Many of the world's greatest men have experienced this. Contarini's conscience is as pure as a child's, and like a child he lisps and stammers, and yet men look for his words, aye, the noblest men in Venice, and lay them up like pearls of price. They seem to be in earnest converse; for you may hear the tread of their feet upon the dry leaves stop every now and then, while they remain as it were arrested by their own words. Indeed, they may well have important subjects to speak of; for it is but thirteen months since Paul III. ascended the papal throne, and Pole and Contarini are in the famous batch of cardinals which he nominated on his accession; and they are now going to Rome, where

they hope to arrive before the 20th of November. But let us leave Contarini and Cortese for awhile, and rejoin Pole and his companions. The noon-day meal is past two full hours ago; but it has not chimed three yet from the turret at the south end of the refectory. Pole and his friends are sitting on a rough bench within that cove of laurels. You cannot conceive a stiller place. Not a sound is to be heard, but the warning cry of meeting gondoliers outside the wall, and that is too customary all through Venice to be considered harsh. There are no singing birds in the garden; never was there such a sad place for birds as Venice. The feathered songsters will no more roost in the shrubs of Venetian gardens than in plants outside a cabin window at sea. They have never learnt to trust Venice yet. They think that great city a fleet of ships. Who shall wonder that pious Venetians should leave legacies to feed the sacred pigeons that live in the holes of the prison and the ledges of the ducal palace, and walk about confidently and flutter among the men without fear, while the whole Schiavoni is alive with them? But Pole speaks.

POLE.

Indeed, dear father, I think this honour which his holiness has deigned to confer upon me, to be scarcely a subject of congratulation. Some great step must be taken by the holy Roman Church, or Europe will not be held together; and every thing amongst us is in so corrupt a state that envy and