vana. Before
the Liberals got hold of the Spanish government, the constitutional
authority of the church in Cuba was not interfered with, but since the
accession of Freemasons and Freethinkers to power, ecclesiastical
property has suffered violence from the hands of the State, and the
nomination and appointment of priests and bishops to place has been
arrogantly wrested from those appointed by God to legislate in
spirituals, and assumed by a class of irreligious despots. Though the
State pays the clergy, still it owns the church property, and entirely
cripples the power of the bishop, who cannot remove a bad and refractory
priest, if it suits not the pleasure of the civil authorities. Such a
state of things naturally caused some demoralization among the clergy,
and, as a consequence, much religious indifference among the people.
Societies like the Jesuits, who have been but a few years in Havana, are
gradually removing pernicious influences like these by the learning,
piety and zeal which they exhibit from the pulpit and among the people.
Hundreds of men, as well as of women, are drawn to the sacraments by
their persuasive eloquence and self-sacrificing, holy lives. The good
work will continue and bear glorious fruit, if these noble men be not
persecuted in Havana. My earnest hope is that the glorious influence of
Catholic Spain will protect them from danger.

REV. M. W. NEWMAN.

A Valiant Soldier of the Cross.

By the Author of "Leaves from the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy."

In describing scenes over which mine eye has wandered, I have kept so
faithfully to the land of the sun, where winter seldom or never leaves
his icy footprints, that my discursive papers were not improperly styled
"Southern Sketches." Yet other latitudes in America are not wholly
unknown to me. Month after month have I gazed on the white monotony of
unthawing snow. No one could admire more than I the chaste beauty of the
feathery flakes, or the gorgeous sparkle of trees bereft of leaves and
covered with crystals that flashed every hue of the rainbow. But even in
this bright September day, with the mercury among the eighties, I get
chilled through and through, and shake with the "shivers" when I imagine
myself once more among the hard frosts of New Hampshire. Unlike the
brave soldier of Christ whom I am about to introduce to the readers of
the "Irish Monthly," and who found the heat of a short