If we suppose the population of the United States to increase in the same average annual rate during the next thirty-three years, until the year 1900, that increase will amount to 24,040,797. This amount added to the population of 1867 will make the population in 1900 reach the number 60,784,945, of whom 49,940,419 will not be members of any Protestant church, nor make a public profession of faith in their doctrines, nor partake of their sacraments. It may be said that the average annual increase of Protestantism for twenty-five years subsequent to 1867 will be numerically greater than for the previous twenty-five years. So will also be numerically larger the average annual increase of the population for a like period, but the relative proportion of the denominations to the population would remain unchanged. ON A GREAT PLAGIARIST. Phœbus drew back with just disdain The wreath: the Delphic Temple frowned: The suppliant fled to Hermes' fane, That stood on lower, wealthier ground. The Thief-God spake, with smile star-bright: "Go thou where luckier poets browse, The pastures of the Lord of Light, And do--what I did with his cows."[28] AUBREY DE VERE. FOOTNOTE: [28] He stole, killed, and ate the whole of Apollo's herd, before he was a day old! See Homer's _Hymn to Mercury_. MARY BENEDICTA. We were at school together. We little dreamed, either of us, in those mischief-loving days of frolic and fun, that she was one day to be a saint, and that I would write her story. Yet look well at the face. Is there not something like a promise of sainthood on the pure, white brow? And the eyes, blue-gray Irish eyes, with the long, dark lashes throwing a shadow underneath, "diamonds put in with dirty fingers," have they not a spiritual outlook that speaks to you with a promise--a revelation of some vision or growth of some beauty beyond what meets your gaze? Yet, though it seems so clear in the retrospect, this prophetic side of her beauty, I own it, never struck me then. I am going to tell her story simply, with strict accuracy as to the traits of her character--the facts of her life and her death. I shall tell the bad with the good, neither striving to varnish her faults nor to heighten, by any dramatic coloring, the beautiful reality of her virtues. The story is one calculated, it seems to me, to be a light and a lesson to many. The very faults and follies, the strange beginning, so unlike the end, all taken as parts of a whole in the true experience of a soul, contain a teaching whose sole eloquence must be its truth and its simplicity.