in search of him were directed to the place of his concealment by a celestial light, and the fugitive was discovered and brought back to Rome. No sooner had he assumed the tiara, thus forced upon him against his will, than he showed himself in all respects worthy of his elevation. While he asserted the dignity of his station, he was distinguished by his personal humility: he was the first pope who took the title of ‘Servant of the Servants of God;’ he abolished slavery throughout Christendom on religious grounds; though enthusiastic in making converts, he set himself against persecution; and when the Jews of Sardinia appealed to him, he commanded that the synagogues which had been taken from them, and converted into churches, should be restored. He was the first who sent missionaries to preach the Gospel in England, roused to pity by the sight of some British captives exposed for sale in the market at Rome. Shocked at the idea of an eternity of vengeance and torment, if he did not originate the belief in purgatory, he was at least the first who preached it publicly, and made it an article of faith. In his hatred of war, of persecution, of slavery, he stepped not only in advance of his own time, but of ours. He instituted the celibacy of the clergy, one of the boldest strokes of ecclesiastical power; he reformed the services of the Church; defined the model of the Roman liturgy, such as it has ever since remained—the offices of the priests, the variety and change of the sacerdotal garments; he arranged the music of the chants, and he himself trained the choristers. ‘Experience,’ says Gibbon, ‘had shown him the efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites to soothe the distress, to confirm the faith, to mitigate the fierceness, and to dispel the dark enthusiasm of the vulgar; and he readily forgave their tendency to promote the reign of priesthood and superstition.’ If, at a period when credulity and ignorance were universal, he showed himself in some instances credulous and ignorant, it seems hardly a reproach to one in other respects so good and so great. His charity was boundless, and his vigilance indefatigable: he considered himself responsible for every sheep of the flock intrusted to him; and when a beggar died of hunger in the streets of Rome, he laid himself under a sentence of penance and excommunication, and interdicted himself for several days from the exercise of his sacerdotal functions. Such was St. Gregory the Great, the last pope who was canonised: celestial honours and worldly titles have often been worse—seldom so well—bestowed. * * * * * During the last two years of his life, his health, early impaired by fasts and vigils, failed entirely, and he was unable to rise from his couch. He died in 604, in the fourteenth year of his pontificate. They still preserve, in the church of the Lateran at Rome, his bed, and the little scourge with which he was wont to keep the choristers in order.