circumstance that proves, if proofs were wanting, that Italians owe their vices to the negligence, the folly, and sometimes to the wickedness of their governments. Another vice, with which the Italians are reproached, idleness, and its concomitant beggary, were banished from Lucca and its territory. None even among the nobles appeared exorbitantly rich, but none seemed poor; the taxes were light, provisions cheap, and competency was within the reach of every individual.”

Things are greatly changed for the worse since these happy days for Lucca. General Serrurier, who entered the town in 1799, while professing the greatest regard for the ancient republic, soon overthrew it altogether and abolished the Martinian law. In 1805 Napoleon I. gave Lucca as a principality to his eldest sister Elisa, who married Pasquale Bacciochi. She did what she could for her adopted country in the way of opening new roads and schools, but the prosperity of the place waned by the failure of the silk manufactories which had enriched it for four centuries. Elisa was driven out by the Allies in 1814, when the Congress of Vienna bestowed her states upon Maria Luisa de Bourbon, Queen of Etruria. Her son Carlo Ludovico succeeded to the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza upon the death of Maria Luisa of Austria, widow of Napoleon, and Lucca was united to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, after which it had a transient return to prosperity, but, in 1860, it was induced to vote for Italian unity, and has since fallen to the rank of a second-class provincial town, ground down and impoverished by the most exorbitant taxes, against which only the elastic spirits of its inhabitants enable them to contend.

But we have been lingering too long at the town gate, and must enter the square where Maria Luisa's statue stands, for close by upon the right is the Cathedral of San Martino, the noblest of the many basilican churches in the town. It was begun in 1063 by Bishop Anselm, who afterwards, as Pope Alexander II., blessed the enterprise of William the Conqueror; but only the apse remains of his time. The glorious façade was built by Guidetto of Como in 1204: it has three grand arches in the lower story, above which rise successive tiers of galleries with open arches resting upon short pillars. Within the portico are three noble doorways, of which that on the left is surmounted by a Deposition from the Cross by Niccolo Pisano, which, c. 1237, proclaimed a new era in the history of art. Up to that time the finest

Christian sculptures had been those on the early sarcophagi, and it is only by comparison with these that we can give the work of Niccolo its true importance. He had rediscovered the right path in art by his study of the story of Hippolytus as represented on the ancient monument used for the tomb of Beatrix, mother of Matilda of Tuscany, in the Campo Santo of Pisa.

Through the open doorways we look from the sunlit square into the shade of the church, where only a subdued coloured light falls from richly-stained windows upon the simple. and solemn nave. From the centre of the roof hangs a cresset, used when an archbishop officiates pontifically, to remind him of the vanity of all earthly things, the choir singing "Sic transit gloria mundi," as the flax with which it is filled blazes up and dies away.

Nothing is more dull for those who are not visiting a church than to read a detailed account of its pictures and statues, but the Cathedral of Lucca has a universal interest as containing a collection of the sculptures of the great Lucchese artist Matteo Civitale, whose works

with the exception of a few statues in the Cathedral of Genoa-cannot be seen out of his native town. First we have a noble tomb with the serenely beautiful statue of Pietro di Noceto, the secretary of Pope Nicholas V., celebrated for the cleverness with which he conducted the negotiations of his master to heal the schism which had long harassed the Church, by bringing about the abdication of the anti-pope Felix. More conspicuously still is the sculptor's power shown in the altar of St. Regulus, an African bishop murdered by Totila, who now sleeps in the crypt beneath, having walked, like St. Denis of France, for a long time after his martyrdom. carrying his head in his hand. The altar bears reliefs of the Beheading of St. Regulus, the Martyrdom of Sebastian, and the Reception of Head of John the Baptist by Herod. But the principal work of Matteo Civitale in the cathedral is his little temple, a gem of the Renaissance, which was ordered in 1484 by Count Domenico Bertini and which preceded by seventeen years the more ambitious but almost similar temple of Bramante in San Pietro in Montorio at Rome. Within its golden grille, which has caused some irreverent writer to liken the temple to a glorified birdcage, is preserved the relic of relics, the "Volto Santo." It is said that, after the ascension or Christ, Nicodemus, being skilled in sculpture, was ordered by an angel to carve an image in his likeness. He laboured

THE presence of God lies at the root of all religion and of all religious belief. It has always done so. The meaning which is attached to the phrase may vary; it may be associated in one age with what is narrow or material, and it may in another age convey a more spiritual idea. The notions which men have about a fact do not alter the character of the fact. In the old days, when men associated God's presence with the Ark or the Tabernacle, or with the Cloud of Smoke or Pillar of Fire, there was a very different idea entertained of what God's presence was. Eli trembled and fell down dead when he heard that the Ark of God was taken taken; Solomon blessed God when the cloud filled the inner chamber of the Temple; Isaiah fell on his face when he saw the vision in the Lord's House; and throughout all history kings and prophets and wise men of old regarded these outward symbols of the Divine presence with awe. Our ideas of the unseen and eternal are transformed. A pillar of cloud by day or a vast stream of light in the sky by night would fail to awaken within us the same sentiments of dread or reverence which arose in the minds of those who were witnesses to the deliverance wrought on behalf of the Jews thousands of years ago. But God's presence has not altered in character, and the idea of God without those external symbols of light and darkness is quite as deep and quite as sacred in our minds as it was in theirs. We have changed the outer for the inner, the symbol for the reality, the sign for the thing signified; but that has not changed the nature or the needs of man.

1. God's presence with the Church.--God's presence in His Church does not depend on visible signs or tokens such as we choose to select and prescribe. People fix in their own minds on certain outward signs of God's presence, and when these signs exist they say, God's presence is with us ; when these signs are absent they fear that their prayers are unanswered. But the presence

of God is not to be limited in this manner. The presence of God is seen and expressed in the very fact that men meet in His name and in His Spirit. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name." said Christ, "there am I." God's presence is not brought thither by prayer, or by vehement feeling, or

by any effort of mind or body. Two good men cannot meet together without His presence. Whatever one man has of the spirit and mind of Christ is increased by what another has who unites with him in worship or act. God's presence in the Church has numberless ways of showing itself, and it has numberless ways of proving itself by the results which follow. It is the experience of many good men that, whether it be in silent meditation or in words of prayer and praise, there is often little evidence of the heart being drawn nearer to God at the moment, and yet afterwards the life is made more sacred and more true by such devotion. Just as in the daily intercourse of home there are treasures of affection and sympathy being silently and unconsciously stored. We do not see or feel their growth. Only when the wrench of separation comes does one become aware how constant and unbroken had been the growth of life into life; and only when we can no longer be together do we understand how, like the unceasing motions of plants of which science tells us, the sympathies and affection of the heart had been gaining force by mutual growth. So it is with as and the presence of God in religion, in thought, in worship, in Divine trust. Day by day, and year by year, there has been a calm, uneventful growing up in the ways of religion, with no special appreciation of the blessings which the soul was inwardly gaining, and with only a faint perception that they were blessings at all, and yet, when far away from home and from such opportunities of religious life, the memory of faces and words once familiar acts on the soul, and brings good influences to bear on it. The presence of God has been the source of all that affection and of all that sympathy. It was the presence of God which, like an atmosphere, embraced all human thoughts, sentiments, devotions, desires, and enabled them to breathe and live, and we may well regard that as the only true blessing of life and spiritual health to the Church.

II. Coming to individual experience, one may see how and when this expression may be taken as the ruling principle of the heart. (1) At the outset of life. This may be taken as a motto for every undertaking and for life