“On the last day she [Mary, daughter of A. P. de Lisle, of Garendon Park, Esq.], longed much for a cup of cold water, but it was not thought good for her; and so, when reminded of our Saviour’s thirst on the Cross, she offered up her own thirst in union with His, and said she would ask for it no more.[68] Her faculties, however, continued entire and clear to the end, and by her particular request indulgenced prayers[69] were recited to her that she might frequently repeat them. Thus her life ebbed softly away; the last words on her lips being a prayer to her ‘Sweet Saviour to have mercy upon her.’ And are not such things as these natural grounds for having a sure hope that she died in the favour of God? It is true that we have even supernatural grounds in the fact that on the night before her decease (whilst she was receiving with devout mind the last anointing of Holy Church to prepare her for her end) there was heard distinctly and by several persons the sound of a celestial chant, proceeding from her chamber, hymned by no earthly voices. Does not this look as if the blessed spirits themselves had been assisting to prepare her that she might soon become one of their company?” “Four men,” continues the author of the Sermon from which the above is taken, in a note to it, “none of them [Roman] Catholics, heard the chanting three several times. They all agreed in their conviction as to whence it came, that it was from the chamber of the dying child. The third time it was so loud that they could distinguish, as it were, the several voices that blended in this celestial harmony, some of which sung the treble notes, while others took the deeper parts. The character of the music was indescribably beautiful; and one of the men, who had been in the habit of attending the Catholic service in S. Mary’s chapel, at Grâce-Dieu, declared that the style of it was exactly like that of the solemn Plain Chant used in that chapel which he was accustomed to hear there. They described the chanting as having no air in it that they could carry away, but the effect was solemn and beautiful beyond expression. They supposed, at the moment, that it was some service, according to the Catholic rites, which was being sung in the sick chamber by the priest and his attendants. When they heard it, therefore, they were not surprised at the sound, except that its beauty exceeded that of any religious service they had ever heard; and it was not until the following morning, at the breakfast hour, when relating what they had heard to their fellow-servants, and being then informed that there had been no service _chanted_ in the sick room, that the conviction flashed upon them, as upon all to whom these facts have been since related, that the chanting proceeded from heavenly spirits and departed saints, who had come hither on an errand of mercy, to hedge round the dying bed of the departing child.”--Note, p. 13.