and Thucydides and Demosthenes have rendered him has been by enabling
him to understand St. Chrysostom. What is Herodotus to the Lives of the
Saints, or Livy to Baronius? Why should he waste his time on human
nature in Tacitus, or follow, with Guicciardini, the tortuous paths of
princes, when he can find lessons more to his taste, and wisdom more to
his purpose, in Mabillon and Pallavicini? His daily conversation is
about the interests and concerns of his order, and, as he enters upon
its duties, about the questions which those duties raise, and the
rewards which their fulfilment promises or brings. It was a great day
for him and for his friends, when he first ascended the altar in cope
and stole; but mass soon becomes a daily exercise, and, like all things
done daily, sinks into routine. A still more anxious day was it, when he
first took his seat in the confessional to absolve and to condemn, to
interpret and to enjoin, to listen to secrets which are like the lifting
of the veil from one of the darkest mysteries of life, and feel the
breath that bore them through the punctures of the thin partition fall
on his cheek with a warmth that made his veins glow and his own breath
come fast and thick.

I once heard a confession of murder from the murderer's lips, as we sat
alone, side by side, on the same sofa. It was of a Sunday morning,
bright, beautiful, and still, one of those days in which earth looks so
pure and lovely that you can hardly believe sin could ever have found a
home thereon. He was a Sicilian, a gentleman by birth and fortune; and
when he first came into the room, apologizing for the intrusion, and
regretting that he was taking up my time with the business of a
stranger, I thought that I had never seen a more intelligent face or
felt more immediately at home with an utter stranger. He began his story
in a low, musical voice,--Italian loses none of its softness in the
mouth of a Sicilian,--and I had followed him through a midnight ride
over a wild and solitary road before I began to suspect how it was to
end. Then came the details: a sudden meeting,--angry words, heating to
madness blood already too hot,--a shot,--a body writhing on the ground
in its own blood. His voice hardly changed, though the tones, perhaps,
were somewhat deeper; but his cheek flushed and his eye kindled, and I
felt such a sickening shudder come over me as I had never felt before.
He was dressed in white, too,--spotless white, as it seem