In the history of nations, as in the life of individuals, there is a not unfrequent repetition of events bearing the same type though not the same in fact. They give a characteristic coloring to the biography of the individual or the history of the people. The events and the man react on each other. But this is especially true, and in a far deeper sense, with the history of God’s church. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they spoiled the Egyptians. They carried away as a tribute the treasures unwillingly conceded by their former masters. The Christian world, on the conversion of Constantine, stepped forth from the darkness and despotism of paganism, and Charlemagne, as if in commemoration of this antitype of that deliverance, endowed the church of S. Peter with rich tributes from Egypt for the benefaction of the clergy, and for the lighting and repairing of the great Basilica. Human governments are generally ungrateful; but the church is a divine government, though carried on through human agents, and gratitude is one of her virtues and one of her most distinctive attributes. Constantine and Charlemagne are not forgotten. Their statues guard the entrance of S. Peter’s, as erstwhile their power guarded and endowed the see of Peter. Nor shall even the weaker sex fail of the tribute liberally paid to loyalty and devotion. There is something sublime in the gratitude depicted in the monument to the Countess Mathilda, who holds in her hands the mitre and the keys, as though to suggest the idea of consigning them to the protection of the great mediatrix of the incorrigible Emperor of the West, Henry IV., and who had sheltered in her own dominions the great S. Gregory, and done so much to increase the patrimony of the church. A royal father giving his crown and sceptre into the hands of a favorite child could not more touchingly portray the loving appreciation of the sovereign pontiffs towards one who had been so true to the church’s cause. And time has no effect in diminishing the gratitude of that church which is built upon a rock, and where all is enduring, any more than it has in diminishing the glory of the saints; for it was Urban VIII. who erected the monument in S. Peter’s to the spiritual daughter of the great Hildebrand, Gregory VII.—a grateful memory of more than six hundred years’ standing!