the expense of the credulous!  He charges the authors of these things with being greedy men, who aim at procuring for themselves dishonest Gains by this traffic in superstitious objects!  And he forbids the publishing from the pulpit, without leave, of any account of a miracle, even though its authenticity should be attested by another Bishop!  This is good.  His grace deserves credit for setting his face against this miserable business, of palming off false miracles upon the people.”

[Footnote:  Since the above was written, we have met with the following explanation of this modern miracle: 

“A few years ago there was a great stir among ’the simple faithful’ in France, occasioned by a well-credited apparition of the Holy Virgin at La Salette.  She required the erection of a chapel in her honor at that place, and made such promises of special indulgences to all who paid their devotions there, that it became ‘all the rage’ as a place of pilgrimage.  The consequence was, that other shops for the same sort of wares in that region lost most of their customers, and the good priests who tended the tills were sorely impoverished.  In self-defence, they, well knowing how such things were got up, exposed the trick.  A prelate publicly denounced the imposture, and an Abbe Deleon, priest in the diocess of Grenoble, printed a work called ‘La Salette a Valley of Lies.’  In this publication it was maintained, with proofs, that the hoax was gotten up by a Mademoiselle de Lamerliere, a sort of half-crazy nun, who impersonated the character of the Virgin.  For the injury done to her character by this book she sued the priest for damages to the tone of twenty thousand francs, demanding also the infliction of the utmost penalty of the law.  The court, after a long and careful investigation, for two days, as we learn by the Catholic Herald, disposed of the case by declaring the miracle-working damsel non-suited, and condemning her to pay the expenses of the prosecution.”—­American and Foreign Christian Union.]

Another of Rome’s marvellous stories we copy from the New York Daily Times of July 3d, 1854.  It is from the pen of a correspondent at Rome, who, after giving an account of the ceremony performed in the church of St. Peters at the canonization of a new saint, under the name of Germana, relates the following particulars of her history.  He says, “I take the facts as they are related in a pamphlet account of her ‘life, virtues, and miracles,’ published by authority at Rome: 

“Germana Consin was born near the village of Pibrac, in the diocess of Toulouse, in France.  Maimed in one hand, and of a scrofulous constitution, she excited the hatred of her step-mother, in whose power her father’s second marriage placed her while yet a child.  This cruel woman gave the little Germana no other bed than some vine twigs, lying under a flight of stairs, which galled her limbs,