[Transcriber's notes] This text is derived from THE CATHOLIC WORLD, http://www.archive.org/details/catholicworld01pauluoft http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39367 and http://www.archive.org/details/catholicworld02pauluoft http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40068 It is the collection of serialized chapters for the convenience of the reader who wishes to read the whole work. [End Transcriber's notes] From The Month. CONSTANCE SHERWOOD. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. CHAPTER I. I had not thought to write the story of my life; but the wishes of those who have at all times more right to command than occasion to entreat aught at my hands, have in a manner compelled me thereunto. The divers trials and the unlooked-for comforts which have come to my lot during the years that I have been tossed to and fro on this uneasy sea--the world--have wrought in my soul an exceeding sense of the goodness of God, and an insight into the meaning of the sentence in Holy Writ which saith, "His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts like unto our thoughts." And this puts me in mind that there are sayings which are in every one's mouth, and therefore not to be lightly gainsayed, which nevertheless do not approve themselves to my conscience as wholly just and true. Of these is the common adage, "That misfortunes come not alone." For my own part, I have found that when a cross has been laid on me, it has mostly been a single one, and that other sorrows were oftentimes removed, as if to make room for it. And it has been my wont, when one trial has been passing away, to look out for the next, even as on a stormy day, when the clouds have rolled away in one direction and sunshine is breaking overhead, we see others rising in the distance. There has been no portion of my life free from some measure of grief or fear sufficient to recall the words that "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward;" and none so reft of consolation that, in the midst of suffering, I did not yet cry out, "The Lord is my shepherd; his rod and his staff comfort me."