earthly to a heavenly place in the great chorus of Christian song? Sunday by Sunday, in every Englishspeaking land, children's voices sing the verses she wrote for their uplifting. Of all hymns We are but little children weak and All things bright and beautiful shake earth's rafters by their innocency. And we may believe the incense of such praises is wafted straight to heaven.

So we may go on enumerating sacred songs that have on some occasions and with some natures, worked for the conversion or for the stimulating of souls. Not always those most poetically conceived become most popular. A variety of qualities contributes to or takes from the success of hymns. Many hymns by Churchwomen delight only coteries. The verses of some-notably of Mrs. Alexander and of Charlotte Elliott-have the wider appeal. They are couched in a language which, though English in word, is in feeling universal.

Bearing a name that stands in the consciousness of some devout ones for a synonym of things beautiful but forbidden, Christina Georgina Rossetti does not, in first suggestion, seem that of an English Churchwoman. She was, however, a devoted member of the Anglo-Catholic Communion, and is the only English poetess whose name may be named as sharing the worth and significance of that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We have the statement of Mrs. Browning, as Miss Barrett, that she did not belong to the National Church. Yet she was married to her poet-lover in St. Marylebone Parish Church, and held most fervently to all the main doctrines of the primitive Catholic faith. Because of her own statement, we may not consider her as an English Churchwoman, yet there was in her no quality of the sectary.

The writer of Aurora Leigh stands above all other poetesses, having in her a human breadth rare for woman to compass, and withal a womanliness that is unequivocal. But Christina Rossetti has also her own distinction. Lacking in breadth, and in the superlative power of creation, she gains in height on her greater sister. And who is like Christina for sweetness? As beautiful, but even more

curious and informing than her poetry, was Christina Rossetti's life. Both she and her sister, Maria Francesca, were devout Anglo-Catholics. The father of the poetess and authoress of Speaking Likenesses, Called to be Saints, and of a commentary on the Book of Revelation entitled The Face of the Deep, was an Italian patriot of literary rather than of political tastes. But his views and aspirations had driven him out of the Italy of nearly a century ago. His book on the anti-papal spirit that produced the Reformation, was placed on the Pontifical Index. He wrote much, both in Italy and in the free land of refuge where he brought up his family, on the anti-papal and esoteric meaning of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Like her brother-Dante Gabriel, poet and artist-Christina was precocious. Genius truly burned in her from her earliest years, and she was by nature and by the encouragements of her surroundings, such a rare student and workwoman that she wrote equally well in Italian and in English. The devotional fervour characteristic of the highest minds of Latin races, was hers and her sister's in special degree. But the grace, purity and discrimination which mark their literary expressions were the outcome of natures abhorrent of all coarseness and vulgarity. Vatican tyranny and the gross superstitions promoted by the rule of Rome were in all respects objectionable to them. As Catholics of a race that has produced the most magnificent examples of dominating and crafty priesthood, and from a country wherein the Church has made its lowest compromises with the world, the flesh and the devil, Christina and Maria Rossetti found in the English Church a Via Media by which they escaped from superstition on the one hand and materialism on the other. That their forthreaching intellects and strongly individual views brought them neither to agnosticism nor to nonconformity, is due to the high spirituality and wide humanity of our English Church system. Both sisters were too poetic in life and in feeling not to have need of sacraments, and not to fall adoring before that Light which has come into the world-the Light

of purity, peace, beauty, intelligence and submission. No Rossetti could remain enslaved either religiously or politically. But the sisters, at least, had in them that impulse to service and sense of divine grace that made them long to lay on the altar of faith their gifts of free-will, talents and activity. These gifts they knew they did but render back to the Giver of all.

Maria Francesca became early a Bible-class teacher, but she occupied herself also with purely literary and humanistic tasks. There came for her, as there came in another period for Hannah More, a moment when she turned from secular to sacred composition. The time was short, and only those things which religion showed her to be supremely vital, were things about which she felt she could be concerned. A conversion had taken place. She published Letters to my Bible-class on Thirty-nine Sundays, and became a sister of the community of All Saints, Margaret Street. She died in 1876.

Christina pursued her life and work at her mother's side in their house in Torrington Square with no lesser devotion than that of her immured sister. On Christina the trials and sorrows of life beat more directly than on Maria. There was a time when the responses of her nature went out towards one who sought her for a wife. But dear as her love was, religion was dearer. She could not be less than loyal to the principles of her faith, less than obedient to the directions of her Church. And since her lover did not profess himself an Anglo-Catholic-had not, perhaps, any sense of obligation to baptismal vows-she gave up what to all true women is dear as life.

For her there lived and reigned a Heavenly Bridegroom. Christina Rossetti was of those whose apprehensions of God go beyond the recognition of His attribute of Fatherhood. Yet she was guiltless of the profanity of degrading the Divine to the low limits of an amorous personality. In The Master is come, and calleth for Thee, she gives beautiful expression to her sense of the many manifestations of Himself, the All-Father, has vouchsafed to us.

"THE MASTER IS COME, AND CALLETH FOR THEE. "Who calleth ?-Thy Father calleth,

Run, O Daughter, to wait on Him:
He Who chasteneth but for a season
Trims thy lamp that it burn not dim.
Who calleth ?—Thy Master calleth,
Sit, Disciple, and learn of Him:
He Who teacheth wisdom of Angels
Makes thee wise as the Cherubim.

Who calleth?-Thy Monarch calleth,
Rise, O Subject, and follow Him:
He is stronger than Death or Devil,
Fear not thou if the foe be grim.
Who calleth ?-Thy Lord God calleth,
Fall, O Creature, adoring Him:
He is jealous, thy God Almighty,
Count not dear to thee life or limb.

Who calleth?-Thy Bridegroom calleth,
Soar, O Bride, with the Seraphim :
He Who loves thee as no man loveth,
Bids thee give up thy heart to Him."1

We may not peer behind the barriers that enclosed the later existence of Maria Rossetti. It is a safe presumption, in view of her pursuits before she entered the sisterhood and of the general character of the work of Anglican sisters, that she led an active and beneficent life in her seclusion. But it is certain that disproportionate contemplation of Christ as the Heavenly Bridegroom induces in many devotees both within and without convent walls—an ecstasy that is unwholesome and profane. Churchwomen of the school of Elizabeth Carter do wrong in suppressing all thought of our Lord as the Spouse of His Church. The Marriage service gives us constant reminder of Christ's love for His Church as for a bride. We are taught to wait for the hour of coming of the Bridegroom, and to look for the time when we shall sit down at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. But these things do not justify the

1 Poems, by Christina G. Rossetti. Macmillan & Co.