“Never was there a soul more ardent and single,” Father John said. “His only difficulty arose from a tender regard for the honor of God, and a great reverence for the sacred office. He fancied that it would be an insult to both for a man to seek to enter the priesthood of whom people could say that he did so because he was disappointed in love, and that he gave to God the remnant of a heart which a woman had rejected.” “Dick rejected me,” Edith interposed hastily. “I told him,” the priest resumed, “that if God had called him, he had no right to think of any coarse and uncharitable remarks which might be made. I reminded him that his life-long devotion to you had been a life without faith, and that, after one year in the church, he had given you up willingly. His idea of the true priest was this: one for whose sacred vocation his pious parents had prayed and hoped from the hour of his birth, who had lived from his childhood cloistered in retirement and sanctity, who had never cherished worldly hopes or desires, but, walking apart, had thus approached the altar that had never ceased to shine before him from the hour of his baptism. I owned to him that such a vocation is beautiful, and is often seen by men and angels; but told him that there are others whom the Almighty leads differently. He hides from such souls that he has sealed them also from the beginning, he allows them to drag in the mire of earth, to feel its temptations, to share in its weaknesses. We cannot penetrate the designs of God, but we may well believe that his motive is to humble that soul, and to teach it through its own failings a greater pity and tenderness for the weak and the erring. I warned him that this fear of his might be a temptation of the devil, who saw that his pride was not broken, and who pursuaded him that he was jealous for the honor of God, when in reality he thought but of his own. He was happy at that. ‘If it is nothing but my own pride,’ he said, ‘I have no more trouble.’ “And he has no more trouble, my child,” the priest concluded. “He is the happiest man I ever saw!” SUPER OMNES SPECIOSA. Is any face that I have seen-- Some perfect type of girlhood’s face: Some nun’s, soul-radiant, full of grace-- Like thine, my beautiful, my Queen? Of all the eyes have paused on mine-- And these have met some wondrous eyes; So large and deep, so chaste and wise-- Have any faintly imaged thine? The chisel with the brush has vied, Till each seems victor in its turn: And love is ever quick to learn, Nor throws the proffered page aside: Yet few the glimpses it has caught, For thou transcendest all that art Can show thee--even to the heart Most skilled to read the poet’s thought. That thought can pierce its native sky Beyond the artist’s starry guess: But all that it may dare express, Is through the worship of a sigh.