Would it be overstraining matters to say, that a hint of this was also given by Providence in the Irish name of the future metropolitan see of the United States—the first in time, and always to be the first in dignity? The word _Baltimore_ is an Irish word, and, through the founder of the colony, was derived from an Irish hamlet, which from the extreme south-west coast of Ireland, is looking, as it were, over the waters of the Atlantic to this continent for the full realization of its name. The word, in the Irish language, means “the town of the great house”, and it was beyond the Atlantic that Baltimore, in becoming the chief see of a great church, has truly become “the town of the great house”, for the church, or house at the head of which it stands, extends probably over a wider surface than any other church or churches amongst which any one bishop holds pre-eminence, excepting only the church governed by the Vicar of Jesus Christ, to whom is committed the care of _all_ the sheep and lambs of God’s fold, that is, the whole of Christ’s Church. In names, which God has given, or permitted to be given, he has frequently foreshadowed the destinies of individuals and races. Would it be superstitious to suppose that in the Irish name of this American ecclesiastical metropolis—the only important city in this country that has an Irish name—Providence pointed, on the one hand, to its future position in the Christian hierarchy, and on the other to the character of the chief portion of the family of that house or church? But, be this as it may, it was a scion of the Irish race who was the founder of the new American hierarchy. For some time he held the crozier alone. The whole country was his diocese. But he did not depart until he saw suffragans around him forming a regular hierarchy, that was destined to multiply and, mainly on Irish shoulders, carry, everywhere, the ark that would spread blessings throughout the land. The work that has thus been commenced is no doubt destined to prosper. It is not without a motive that in this country the lines are drawn, and the foundations laid by Providence for a noble church. Its beginnings (for we may say it is yet in its infancy) bear many of the marks of the process by which the work was effected, It is destined to grow, and may it grow, particularly in the mild beauty of Christian virtue, and win, by love, the homage of all the children of the land, that all may receive through it the graces of Heaven, and even their Earthly prosperity be consolidated and become the means of their acquiring higher blessings. But whatever be said of the United States, the Irish race is certainly almost alone in the work of diffusing Catholicity in the various other countries in which the English language is spoken.