_St. Agnes_ was so great a favourite that her festivals were celebrated with more than ordinary pomp. She was descended from a Roman family of rank and opulence, and endowed by nature with great personal beauty. She was beheaded at the early age of thirteen, in the year 306. By the sentence of her judge, she was ordered to be treated in a most shameful manner, but through a providential interposition she was saved from the ignominy her persecutors intended for her. After that event the Roman women worshipped her. The parents of St. Agnes were blessed with a vision while praying at her tomb, in which she appeared to them in white raiment, with a lamb standing by her side, being the universally acknowledged emblem of innocence. On the fast held on St. Agnes's Day, two of the whitest lambs that could be procured were presented at her altar, and afterwards carefully reared until they were shorn. Their wool was then hallowed, and converted into white cloth for holy garments. Rural virgins were said to practise singular rites, in keeping St. Agnes's Fast, for the purpose of discovering their future husbands. In the time of Liberius, a Roman of wealth and rank, named John, having no children, resolved to make a gift of his whole substance to the Holy Virgin. With the consent of his wife, the entire estate was therefore conveyed to Mary, whom they thenceforth jointly entreated in their prayers to let them know by some token in what manner she chose to dispose of it. Their prayers were heard. On the night of the 4th August, when the heat was great at Rome, there was a miraculous fall of snow, which covered part of the Esquiline Mount. The same night John and his wife were advised in their dreams to build a church on the ground which they should find covered with snow. Next morning they went to acquaint Pope Liberius with what had happened. Strange to say, the Pope had had a similar dream. A grand procession of the whole clergy, in which the Pope walked himself, attended by crowds of people, went to the above-mentioned mount, and having discovered the snow-covered spot, the Pope laid the foundation of a magnificent church there, long known as Saint Mary in the Snow.