e the modest cradle of this
great congregation, which now, from its mother-house at Neuilly, is
sending out Catholic life and faith all over the world, and the pulse of
which is beating higher in France to-day than at any time since that
true and simple servant of God, Dujarie, took it upon himself, from his
obscure little parsonage, to begin the restoration of the Church from
the crash of the Terror and the calamities of the First Empire.'

'How many years ago was it,' I asked, 'when this Congregation began its
work in the United States?'

'Not quite fifty years ago,' he replied, 'and, as you know, its schools
are flourishing in all parts of your Union, from the University (in
Indiana) of Our Lady of the Lake, to New Orleans and New Jersey, and
from Wisconsin to Texas. It numbers its pupils, too, by thousands here
at home in France.

'I ask you to join me in the Limousin because I hope to be there in
October, and then I can show you at Limoges what I am sure you would
like to see--one of our best cathedrals, and some beautiful old glass in
St.-Michel and St.-Pierre, not to mention the enamels still hidden away
here and there in certain houses I wot of!'

ST.-OMER

Two of the most interesting places in the Pas-de-Calais are St.-Omer,
once a name of terror to the worthy Englishmen who went in constant fear
of the Pope and wooden shoes, and Aire-sur-la-Lys, which now embraces
within its communal limits all that remains to-day of the once famous
and important city of Therouanne, the ancient capital of Morinia, and
for thirty years the episcopal seat of the great Swiss bishop, St.-Omer,
who made North-Eastern Gaul Christian in the seventh century.

St.-Omer still preserves a certain grave and austere physiognomy,
half-Spanish and half-scholastic; and it is easy for the imagination to
people its quiet streets with the English and Irish students who
frequented its collegiate halls from the days of Guy Faux to the days of
Daniel O'Connell. But its importance is now military, not theological.
M. Pierre de la Gorce, the accomplished historian of the Revolution of
1848, who lived here seven years as a magistrate, and who still resides
here because he finds in the place 'a still air of delightful studies'
congenial to his tastes and favourable to his historical labours, told
me, in the course of a most interesting afternoon which I passed here
with him, that the town is full of families living here on their
incomes; and