It was a beautiful morning in the Lent of 1678. The sun had risen over the Apennines, and flung its magnificence over the Bay of Naples. The smoke of Vesuvius cast its shadow like a monstrous pine over the vineyards and villas that adorned the mountain-side to the sea-shore. The morning was such as Byron gazed on in fancy through the sorrowful eyes of the eloquent heroine of one of his tragedies: "So bright, so rolling back the clouds into Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky, With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains, And billows purpler than the ocean's, making In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth, So like we almost deem it permanent, So fleeting we can scarcely call it aught Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently Scattered along the eternal vault!" Whilst the eight hour was chiming from the tower of the old Gesu there issued from the monastery attacked to the church a priest accompanied by an acolyte bearing a large, plain cross and ringing a small bell. They moved in the direction of the mole or old fortress of the city. Soon a crowd followed--some bare-headed; others, especially the females, told their beads in silence. The traveller in Italy is aware of the pious custom practised by some of the religious communities of preaching in the open air to the people during the season of Lent. Extraordinary things are related of these harangues. The lives of the sainted missionaries ring with tales of the marvellous and miraculous powers given to God's servants when, in moments of fire and zeal, they went from their cloisters like beings of another world to awaken sinners to a sense of future terrors. At one time we read of the saint's voice carried miraculously to a distance of several miles; the peasant working in the fields would hear the sweet sounds without seeing the speaker. At another the funeral procession was arrested and the dead called from the bier to testify to the truth of their teaching. Curing the cripple and restoring health to the sick were of ordinary occurrence. Our blessed Lord told the messengers who came to enquire about him to report his miracles as a proof of his divinity: the blind see, the lame walk, the sick are restored to health; but greater than all his reversions of the natural laws were the humility and the mysterious arrangement of his providence which he prophetically announced when he told his disciples that those who should come after him would perform greater miracles than he. There are few of the Thaumaturgi more celebrated than the humble father who has just issued from the Gesu to thunder forth with superhuman eloquence the truths of God and religion. No sooner had the people heard the little bell of the attendant and seen the venerable priest leave the college than they gathered from various quarters, and seemed to vie with each other in getting nearest to him.