Catharine tells her confessor, in the letter from which our account is drawn, that she had the greatest reward granted to her that charity such as hers could receive. At the moment of execution, she raised her heart to heaven in one intense act of prayer; and then she became conscious that she was allowed to see how the soul that had just fled was received in the other world. The Incarnate Son, who had {138} died to save it, took it into the arms of his love, and placed it in the wound of his side. "It was shown to me," she says, "by the Very Truth of Truths, that out of mercy and grace alone he so received it and for nothing else." She saw it blessed by each person of the Divine Trinity. The Son of God, moreover, gave it a share of that crucified love with which he had borne his own painful and shameful death, out of obedience to his Father, for the salvation of mankind. And then, that all might be complete, the blessed soul itself seemed to turn and look upon her. "It made a gesture," she says, "sweet enough to win a thousand parts: what wonder? for it already tasted the divine sweetness. It turned as the bride turns when she has come to the door of the home of her bridegroom; looks round on the friends that have accompanied her to her new home, and bows her head to them, as a sign that she thanks them for their kindness." -------- MISCELLANY. _The Population of Balloons_.--A very curious apparatus for the above purpose has been devised by Mr. Butler, one of the members of the Aeronautical Society, which has been lately established. It consists of a pair of wings, to operate from the car of the balloon, and whose downward blow is calculated to strike with a force exceeding forty pounds, a power equivalent to an ascensive force of one thousand cubic feet of carburetted hydrogen. The action required is somewhat similar to that of rowing, and would be exactly so if at the end of the stroke the oars sprang backward out of the hands of the rower; but, in this case, the body is stretched forward as if toward the stern of the boat, to grasp the handle and repeat the process, during which an action equivalent to "feathering" is obtained. It is anticipated that these wings, acting from a pendulous fulcrum, will produce, in addition to the object for which they are designed, two effects, which may possibly be hereafter modified, but which will be unpleasant accompaniments to a balloon ascent, namely, the oscillation of the car and a succession of jerks upward, first communicated to the car from below, and repeated immediately by an answering jerk from the balloon.--_London Popular Science Review_.