The passionate entreaties of Anselm, another of the shining lights of early Anglo-Saxon days, that the soul of his young disciple Osbern be remembered in prayers and Masses, proves what value he attached to suffrages for the departed: "I beg of you," he writes to his friend Gondulph, "of you and of all my friends, to pray for Osbern. His soul is my soul. All that you do for him during my life, I shall accept as if you had done it for me after my death. ... I conjure you for the third time, remember me, and forget not the soul of my well-beloved Osbern. And if I ask too much of you, then forget me and remember him.... The soul of my Osbern, ah! I beseech thee, give it no other place than in my bosom." And do we not read of those "prayers for souls," incessant and obligatory, which were identified with all the monastic habits--thanks to that devotion for the dead which received in a monastery its final and perpetual sanction. "They were not content," says Montalembert, "even with common and permanent prayer for the dead of each isolated monastery. By degrees, vast spiritual associations were formed among communities of the same order and the same country, with the aim of relieving by their reciprocal prayers the defunct members of each house. Rolls of parchment, transmitted by special messengers from cloister to cloister, received the names of those who had 'emigrated,' according to the consecrated expression, 'from this terrestrial light to Christ,' and served the purpose of a check and register to prevent defalcation in that voluntary impost of prayer which our fervent cenobites solicited in advance for themselves or for their friends." And, of course, this was many years, even centuries, before the Feast of All Souls was instituted by the Abbot Odilo and the monks of Cluny in 998. English history, like every other history, furnishes us, indeed, with innumerable traits of this pious devotion to the Holy Souls. Obviously, our space must prevent us from entering more deeply into the subject. May the few scattered hints we have been enabled to throw out be of interest and profit to our readers! DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY IN THE EARLY IRISH CHURCH. WALSH. [1] [Footnote 1: "Ecclesiastical History of Ireland." Rev J. Walsh.]