There is no fact more apparent or more full of significance in the history of the church than the constant acting and reacting upon each other of races and nations in the perpetual struggle between civilization and religion with barbarism and infidelity, light with darkness. While the faith seems dimmed and its professors the victims of persecution in one land, in another the torch of learning and piety is slowly but surely kindling into brilliancy, and the ardor of apostolic zeal is being awakened, even by the supineness and apostasy of its neighbors. That this should be permitted or ordained by divine Providence is a mystery to all, but its effects can easily be perceived by any ordinary student of history.
For proof of this mutation and transition we need not go beyond our own day and generation. Europe of the XIXth century presents a spectacle, if not alarming, at least discouraging to many who have the cause of Christianity sincerely at heart. In one country we perceive a direct attack on the Sovereign Pontiff, wholesale spoliation of his temporal possessions, restriction of his personal liberty, and a general onslaught on the religious orders—those most efficient agents for the propagation of morality, charity, and intelligence—which surround him—and that, too, by a prince of Catholic origin and education, who claims the right to govern twenty millions of subjects. In another we have a stolid, sordid imperator, instigated by a more intellectual but not less arbitrary minister, not only claiming complete dominion over the lives and property of twice that number, but assuming also the right to dictate the terms upon which they shall worship their Maker, what shall be their faith, and who may be their teachers and guides in the way of salvation.
Again, in such countries as Austria, France, Spain, and Belgium, until very recently considered the bulwarks of Catholicity on the Continent, indifferentism, communism, and open infidelity, if not yet triumphant, have certainly of late made rapid strides towards power and authority, and to the human eye seriously threaten the very existence of society, of all order and all law, human and divine, in those distracted nations. And still, a prospect such as Europe now presents, though seemingly gloomy, is actually full of hope and promise. While the hitherto supine Catholics of the Italian peninsula are being aroused into earnestness by the outrages daily perpetrated on the Holy Father and the religious orders, and their co-religionists of Germany are forming themselves into a solid, compact, and energetic array in defence of their rights, elsewhere the cause of the church is progressing with a rapidity and uniformity that equally astonishes and alarms her enemies.
Take our own republic, for example, with its seven archbishops, its forty-nine bishops, thousands of priests, and millions of earnest and obedient spiritual children, where a century ago a priest was an object of curiosity to most of the people, and a Catholic was generally regarded with less favor than is now shown the Chinese idolaters. Now, what has wrought this change; what has scattered broadcast over this vast continent, and engrafted in the heart of our vigorous young republic the doctrines of the church, but the persecutions which our co-religionists have endured and are still enduring, in the Old World? To the irreligious maniacs of the French Revolution, to the penal code of Great Britain, and now to the mendacity of Victor Emanuel and the truculent tyranny of Bismarck, are we mainly indebted, under Providence, for the origin, growth, and increase of Catholicity among us. Like a subterranean fire, the spirit of the church can never be repressed. Subdued in one place, it will burst forth in another with redoubled force, intensified by the very attempts made to confine it.
Then let us look at England—England which among the nations was the land of the Reformation; who not only stoned the prophets, but whose annals for nearly three centuries are the most anti-Catholic and intolerant to be found in the records of modern history. She, also, as in the early ages of her conversion, felt the effect of continental barbarism and persecution. At the very time when the faith seemed to have been utterly extirpated within her boundaries, the French Revolution drove to her shores many Catholics, lay and clerical, of gentle birth, cultivated manners, and varied accomplishments, and to those exiles does she owe primarily the revival in her bosom of the religion planted by S. Augustine. She has now sixteen archbishops and bishops, sixteen hundred priests, over one thousand places of worship, where assemble large congregations, including many of the most eminent and distinguished of her sons.
The Catholics of Ireland, always true to the faith and loyal to the head of the church, were common sufferers with their co-religionists across the Channel, and, though in a different manner and at an earlier period, they were equally the gainers with those of England, and from causes almost similar. The property of that cruelly tried people was not only confiscated by the penal laws, their clergy outlawed, and their persons subjected to all sorts of pains and penalties, but they were denied the poor privilege of acquiring the principles of the commonest education. The consequences of such persecution, continued generation after generation, were what might have been, and no doubt was, expected to be—that the people, persistently refusing to yield to cajolery or threats in matters of conscience, within two centuries after the "Reformation" had almost universally sunk into abject poverty and secular ignorance. In fact, had it not been for their traditional knowledge of the great truths of religion, and the instruction sometimes stealthily given them by some fugitive priest in remote mountains and the fastnesses of the bogs, they must inevitably have degenerated into something like primitive barbarism.
However, such an anomalous state as this could not last for ever. All Christendom was about to cry out against it, and an incident occurred in 1745, under the administration of the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, which awakened at home general attention to the wretched manner in which four-fifths of the inhabitants of the country were obliged to worship their Creator. It happened that in that year a small congregation was assembled secretly in an old store, in an obscure part of Dublin, to hear Mass, when the floor gave way, and the entire body was precipitated to the ground below. F. Fitzgerald, the celebrant, and nine of his parishioners, were killed, and several others severely injured. The viceroy, who, whatever may have been his other faults, was certainly less bigoted than his predecessors, thereupon took the responsibility of allowing the Catholics, under certain restrictions, to open their chapels, and worship in public. This limited concession was the commencement of a new era in the affairs of the Irish Catholics. The number of priests began to increase; churches, rude and small of necessity, sprang up here and there, generally in secluded localities, as if afraid to show themselves; and incipient efforts for the education of the masses of both sexes were soon noticed.
In this latter great work of benevolence the most zealous and efficient was the lady whose name heads this article. She seems to have been endowed by Providence with all the gifts, mental and moral, necessary to constitute her the pioneer of that host of noble women who, since her time to the present, have devoted themselves to the education and training of the females of Ireland. Born of an ancient and thoroughly Catholic family of considerable wealth and wide popular influence, she grew up amid home scenes of comfort, peace, and charity, a devout believer in the sanctity of religion, and in perfect accord with the instructions of indulgent but watchful parents. The position her father held among his poorer and less fortunate neighbors, his charity to the needy, and his protection to the helpless, afforded her, even in her extreme youth, many opportunities of studying the wants of the distressed, and of sympathizing with their afflictions: principles which, then perhaps nourished in her heart unconsciously, were in after-years destined to grow and fructify into those nobler deeds of charity that have made her memory so cherished and revered.
Honora, or, as her friends and beneficiaries loved to call her, Nano Nagle, was the daughter of a gentleman named Garret Nagle, of Ballygriffin, near Mallow, in the county of Cork, where she was born A.D. 1728. Through both parents she was related, not only to many of the old Catholic houses, but to several of the most influential Protestant families in the South; which is only worthy of remark as furnishing a clew to the fact of her parents' wealth and social standing in times when those of the proscribed religion were not only disqualified from accumulating or holding property in their own right, but were personally objects of contempt and contumely to the dominant class. It may also, perhaps, account for the impunity with which Mr. Nagle, despite the numerous statutory enactments, was enabled to send his favorite child to the Continent to complete an education the rudiments only of which could be obtained in the privacy of her family.
Accordingly, at an early age, Nano quitted her pleasant and cheerful home by the Blackwater for the retirement and austerity of a convent on the banks of the Seine, in which institution she acquired all the accomplishments and graces then considered befitting a young lady of position.
Having entered school a mere girl from a remote part of a semi-civilized country, untutored, undeveloped, and, it is even said, a little petulant and self-willed, she now, at her twenty-first year, emerged from the shadow of the convent walls into the sunshine of Parisian life, an educated, beautiful, and self-sustained woman. Her family had many friends in the French capital, particularly in the households of the Irish Brigade officers and other Catholic exiles, and her entrance into the best society was unimpeded, and was even signalized by rare scenes of festivity and mutual gratification. Her native naïveté and buoyancy of spirits, tempered with all the well-bred courtesy and dignity of a French education under the old régime, made her a general favorite; and though it does not appear that she was in the least spoiled by the admiration and adulation that everywhere awaited her, there is little doubt that she participated in the fashionable dissipations of the gay capital with all the ardor and impetuosity latent in her disposition. Admitted to such scenes, it is little wonder that for a time she forgot the land of her birth, its persecutions and tribulations, its degraded peasantry and timid and degenerate aristocracy. One so young and so capable of appreciating the refinements and elegancies of the most cultured city in Europe, might well have been excused if she found it difficult to exchange them for the obscurity and monotony of a remote provincial town.
But the spell which at this time bound her was soon to be broken. The still, small voice of duty and conscience was soon to find a tongue and speak to her soul with the force almost of inspiration. The circumstances of this radical change in her life are thus graphically described in a very valuable book recently published:
"In the small, early hours of a spring morning of the year 1750, a heavy, lumbering carriage rolled over the uneven pavement of the quartier Saint Germain of the French capital, awakening the echoes of the still sleeping city. The beams of the rising sun had not yet struggled over the horizon to light up the spires and towers and lofty housetops, but the cold, gray dawn was far advanced. The occupants of the carriage were an Irish young lady of two-and twenty, and her chaperon, a French lady, both fatigued and listlessly reclining in their respective corners. They had lately formed part of a gay and glittering crowd in one of the most fashionable Parisian salons. As they moved onward, each communing with her own thoughts, in all probability reverting to the brilliant scene they had just left, and anticipating the recurrence of many more such, the young lady's attention was suddenly attracted by a crowd of poor people standing at the yet unopened door of a parish church. They were work-people, waiting for admission by the porter, in order to hear Mass before they entered on their day's work.
"The young lady was forcibly struck. She reflected on the hard lot of those children of toil, their meagre fare, their wretched dwellings, their scanty clothing, their constant struggle to preserve themselves and their families even in this humble position—a struggle in many a case unavailing; for sickness, or interruption of employment, or one of the many other casualties incidental to their state, might any day sink them still deeper in penury. She reflected seriously on all this; and then she dwelt on their simple faith, their humble piety, their thus 'preventing the day to worship God.' She contrasted their lives with those of the gay votaries of fashion and pleasure, of whom she was one. She felt dissatisfied with herself, and asked her own heart, Might she not be more profitably employed? Her thoughts next naturally reverted to her native land, then groaning under the weight of persecution for conscience' sake—its religion proscribed, its altars overturned, its sanctuaries desolate, its children denied, under grievous penalties, the blessings of free education.
"She felt at once that there was a great mission to be fulfilled, and that, with God's blessing, she might do something towards its fulfilment. For a long time she dwelt earnestly on what we may now regard as an inspiration from heaven. She frequently commended the matter to God, and took the advice of pious and learned ecclesiastics; and the result was that great work which has ever been since, and is in our day, a source of benediction and happiness to countless thousands of poor families in her native land, and has made the name of Nano Nagle worthy of a high place on the roll of the heroines of charity."[199]
Miss Nagle then set out for Ireland, firmly determined to commence the noble work so suddenly contemplated and so maturely considered; but on her arrival in Cork, she found her friends exceedingly lukewarm, and the amount of ignorance and destitution in that city so appalling that she shrank from the very magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome, and began to fear that she had, in a moment of enthusiasm, overrated her ability and mistaken her vocation. This was natural. What could a young lady, scarcely entered on womanhood, delicately nurtured, and hitherto accustomed only to the society of the most fastidious—what could such a frail scion of aristocracy do to remove even an infinitesimal part of the incubus of poverty, ignorance, and crime, the result of centuries of misgovernment, which then weighed so heavily on the people?
She therefore resolved to visit the French capital again to consult eminent clerical friends, and to lay before them all her doubts and difficulties. They heard her explanations and arguments with attention, weighed her objections with proper gravity, and finally, having dispelled her doubts and strengthened her self-confidence, assured her that in their opinion—and it was a unanimous one—God had evidently called her to be the succor and comfort of her afflicted countrywomen—a decision which subsequent events proved to have been little short of prophetic. Thus reassured, and casting aside once for all the allurements of life, the rational pleasures which youth, beauty, and wealth might reasonably command, Miss Nagle resolved to eschew the things of the world for ever, and devote herself heart and soul to the self-imposed duties from the performance of which she had lately shrunk, more from a consciousness of the weakness of her position than from any lack of intention to perform them faithfully. The resolve she so solemnly made then she kept till the day of her death, thirty years afterwards, with unflinching fortitude and fidelity.
In 1754 we find her back in Cork, steadily but quietly, almost secretly, as the spirit of the times demanded, initiating her crusade against squalor and ignorance. With what precocious circumspection she commenced her labors is best shown in a letter to a friend, Miss Fitzsimmons, then in the Ursuline Convent at Paris. The extract is long, but it will repay perusal, as it may be considered an exact reflex of the working of her strong, simple, but thoroughly earnest mind. She writes under date July 17, 1769:
"When I arrived, I kept my design a profound secret, as I knew, if it were spoken of, I should meet with opposition on every side, particularly from my own immediate family; as, to all appearances, they would suffer from it. My confessor was the only person I told of it; and as I could not appear in the affair, I sent my maid to get a good mistress, and to take in thirty poor girls. When the little school was settled, I used to steal there in the morning. My brother thought I was in the chapel. This passed on very well until, one day, a poor man came to him, to speak to me to take his child into my school; on which he came in to his wife and me, laughing at the conceit of a man who was mad and thought I was in the situation of a schoolmistress. Then I owned that I had set up a school; on which he fell into a violent passion, and said a vast deal on the bad consequences that may follow. His wife is very zealous, and so is he; but worldly interests blinded him at first. He was soon reconciled to it. He was not the person I most dreaded would be brought into trouble about it; it was my uncle Nagle, who is, I think, the most disliked by the Protestants of any Catholic in the kingdom. I expected a great deal from him. The best part of my fortune I have received from him. When he heard it, he was not at all angry at it; and in a little time they were so good as to contribute largely to support it. And I took in children by degrees, not to make any noise about it in the beginning. In about nine months I had about two hundred children. When the Catholics saw what service it did, they begged that, for the convenience of the children, I would set up schools for children at the other end of the town from where I was, to be under my care and direction; and they promised to contribute to the support of them. With this request I readily complied, and the same number of children that I had were taken in; and at the death of my uncle, I supported them all at my own expense. I did not intend to take boys, but my sister-in-law made it a point, and said she would not allow any of my family to contribute to them unless I did so; on which I got a master, and took in only forty boys. They are in a house by themselves, and have no communication with the others."
This letter, it will be observed, was written fifteen years after the first school was founded, and already there were in active operation, in various parts of the city, two schools for boys and five for girls, all under the supervision of Miss Nagle, and supported from her private purse, or by a contribution of one shilling per month, which she was in the habit of collecting from a few of the more wealthy of the citizens. In these nurseries of intelligence and morality—model schools, in fact—the children of both sexes were taught to read and write, to say their daily prayers, learn the catechism, and, in the case of the older girls, to acquire a familiarity with such useful work as befitted their condition. Those who were of sufficient age heard Mass every morning, went to confession monthly, and to communion as frequently as their confessor considered advisable.
In supervising so many schools, and constantly instructing hundreds of pupils, whose moral as well as mental culture had been neglected hitherto most wofully, this heroic woman's self-imposed labors, it may well be imagined, were of the most arduous description, and we are not surprised to find that her health began to show signs of giving way. "In the beginning," she says, "being obliged to speak for upwards of four hours, and my chest not being so strong as it had been, I spat blood, which I took care to conceal, for fear of being prevented from instructing the poor. It has not the least bad effect now. When I have done preparing them at each end of the town, I feel like an idler that has nothing to do, though I speak almost as much as when I prepare them for their first communion. I find not the least difficulty in it. I explain the catechism as well as I can in one school or other every day; and if every one thought as little of labor as I do, they would have little merit. I often think that my schools will never bring me to heaven, as I only take delight and pleasure in them. You see it has pleased the Almighty to make me succeed when I had everything, I may say, to fight against. I assure you I did not expect a farthing from any mortal towards the support of my schools; and I thought I should not have more than fifty or sixty girls until I got a fortune; nor did I think I should in Cork. I began in a poor, humble manner; and though it has pleased the divine will to give me severe trials in this foundation, yet it is to show that it is his work, and has not been effected by human means. I can assure you that my schools are beginning to be of service to a great many parts of the world. This is a place of great trade. They are heard of; and my views are not for one object alone." The fortune here so delicately alluded to was left her by her uncle Nagle, who, profoundly penetrated with a sense of her discretion and of her devotion to the friendless, bequeathed her the bulk of his property. It was a very considerable sum, and was unstintingly devoted by her to further the great objects she had ever in view.
As her schools multiplied, and the attendance on each increased, with a rapidity that astonished every one, Miss Nagle saw the absolute necessity of calling in other and, if possible, organized assistance, that thus, by making her system more perfect, she might perpetuate the good work already so auspiciously begun. She therefore resolved on a bold measure—one that could have entered only the mind of a dauntless spirit, fortified by implicit faith in the protection of Providence. She determined, in fact, despite the many inhuman and ingenious penal statutes against monastic institutions, to establish a convent in Cork.
For this purpose, some time previous to the date of the above letter, four young ladies, representing some of the best families in the neighborhood, were sent to the Ursuline Convent of S. Jacques, in Paris, to enter their novitiate, while Miss Nagle, with her usual generosity and prudence, set silently to work to build a suitable house for their reception on their return. That event took place in 1771, and marks a new era in the history of the church in Ireland and England. The young novices who thus not only abandoned the allurements of the world, home, friends, and future, to serve God, but braved the terrors of the penal laws and the sneers of the anti-Catholic rabble, deserve to have their names handed down for the admiration and homage of their sex in every age and clime. They were "Miss Fitzsimmons, the special friend and correspondent of the foundress; Miss Nagle, her relative; Miss Coppinger, of the Barryscourt family, and cousin of Marian, Duchess of Norfolk; and Miss Kavanagh, related to the noble house of Ormonde." They were accompanied by Mrs. Margaret Kelly, a professed sister of the Ursuline Convent of Dieppe, none of the sisters of S. Jacques being willing to undertake so hazardous an enterprise.
They arrived in May, and on the 18th of September following took formal possession of their convent, and from that day may be dated the reintroduction of the conventual order into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[200]
Thus in the wise designs of God, while the Encyclopedists and the secret societies of the Continent were maturing their plans of attack on the church and her institutions, when monasteries, convents, colleges, and hospitals from one end of Europe to the other, already feeling the premonitory symptoms of that monstrous earthquake of immorality and infidelity which was soon to be felt throughout Christendom, were shaking to their very foundations, in an obscure little city in the South of Ireland were planted the seeds of religion and Christian instruction which have since grown up and produced such marvellous fruits. The incident becomes even more interesting when we consider that the five ladies who commenced this beneficent work were all educated in that country and city, which ere long were to furnish the deadliest enemies of Catholicity.
It is not to be supposed that so daring an act as that of the intrepid Nano could pass unnoticed. Though the sisters studied the greatest seclusion, it was at one time proposed by the local authorities to enforce the laws against them; but better counsels prevailed, and the humble community grew rapidly in popularity and usefulness. A few months after its establishment, a select school, with twelve young ladies as pupils, was founded, and this number was quickly augmented by children from the more wealthy Catholic families of the adjoining counties. There are now five houses of this order in Ireland.
At first Miss Nagle lived in the convent; but her impatient soul, her burning love for the children of the lowly, was not yet satisfied; for though the good Ursulines devoted all their available time to the instruction of the poor, while perfecting in the higher branches of education those destined in turn to become teachers, she felt that another and a more comprehensive organization was necessary to combat so vast an array of popular error, ignorance, and destitution. A society that would devote itself, as she had so long done, individually, exclusively, and gratuitously to the service of the impoverished and untrained masses was what she desired, and what she felt called upon to form and direct. With that indomitable energy which I ever characterized her, though enfeebled in health, reduced in fortune, and prematurely old from incessant labor, at the age of forty-four she retired from the companionship of her friends and protégés, the Ursulines, to a house adjacent to the convent, purchased by herself, and, gathering around her some pious women, formed a society that was to be known as "Of the Presentation of Our Blessed Lady in the Temple." The objects of this association were: "Going through the city, looking after poor girls; inducing them to attend school, and instructing them in their religion; and, further, visiting, relieving, and consoling the sick poor in their own homes and in the public hospitals—duties analogous to those now discharged by the Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Mercy."[201] Being approved by the bishop of the diocese, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Moylan, it began its pious labors on Christmas day, A.D. 1777, by entertaining at dinner fifty poor persons, the foundress being the presiding genius, or rather angel, of the entertainment. She also established, in connection with the home, an asylum for aged females.
This was the origin of what is now known as the Presentation Order, and was the last and crowning glory of Nano Nagle's remarkable career. Though of exclusively Irish origin, and notwithstanding that the original design of its foundress has been somewhat changed, and its field of labor circumscribed and partly occupied by other orders or congregations, the institution founded by her with such limited means and materials has, with God's blessing, flourished with amazing rapidity, and has spread its influence, not only over the native land of the foundress, but to Great Britain, the lower provinces of North America, and even to India and Australia. In Ireland alone there are at least fifty convents of the order, with poor schools, industrial schools, and asylums for the aged attached.[202]
In 1791 the society was reorganized and founded into a congregation at the request of the Bishop of Cork. The brief of Pope Pius VI. granting the prayer, directed that the members should observe as near as possible the rules governing the Ursulines, taking, after proper novitiate, simple vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Sixteen years later the congregation was changed into an order by brief of Pius VII., under the title and invocation of the "Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." The rules and constitutions governing the congregation and order were, at the request of His Holiness, drawn up by Dr. Moylan, approved by the archbishops and bishops of Ireland, and upon being forwarded to Rome, and upon proper examination, received the Papal sanction.
The six or seven years spent by Miss Nagle as head of the Society of the Presentation were perhaps the most useful of her life; for not only did she create and perfect a plan of practical instruction and discriminating charity which has since been of infinite benefit in promoting the cause of religion and industry in other parts of Ireland; not only did she inculcate in others who were to survive her, principles of order, charity, and self-denial, but she organized a system of relief and a scheme of instruction which were of infinite benefit to the deserving poor of Cork, and which were afterwards applied with equal advantage by other religious bodies in other cities and towns. None knew so well as she did to whom to give and whom to refuse, though it may be well imagined that her gentle heart, when it erred, leaned in favor of the latter.
Nor must we suppose that the early years of what might be called her missionary labors were devoted exclusively to the instruction of her little waifs. On the contrary, much of her time—all, in fact, that could be spared from her private devotions and her beloved schools—was devoted to the visitation of the sick and the relief of the starving; for starvation, be it remembered, was even then chronic in the South of Ireland. On her return from France, she at first mingled occasionally in society, as much to conceal, perhaps, her immature plans as in deference to the wishes of her friends; but gradually she withdrew from all association with those of her own station, and devoted her entire time to acts of practical charity. Even the most inclement winter weather could not deter her from her duty; and it is said that before daylight she might be noticed wending her way to the little North Cork chapel, to hear Mass as the commencement of a long day's labor, and that far into the night, in the unlighted streets of Cork, a female figure, closely enwrapped in a cloak and bearing a lantern, could be seen hurrying to the death-bed of some poor sufferer, regardless of rain or snow or the cutting night-blast. So familiar had this apparition become to the citizens, and so well her errands of mercy were known, that the vilest of both sexes passed her with respect, and she trod the lanes and alleys of the worst parts of the city with perfect safety. At the sight of that little lantern in the distance, the drunken brawler, as he reeled home, ceased his ribald song or stayed the half-uttered oath; and the ill-starred wanderer, the pariah of her sex, fled to some hiding-place, or came forth for a few words of gentle admonition, which fell like healing balm on her wounded, sinful soul; for Nano Nagle, in humble imitation of her Redeemer, had charity for all, even for the most degraded of mankind.
It is unnecessary to say that, in all her toils and struggles, Miss Nagle enjoyed the respect and esteem, and, when required, the assistance, of all the more wealthy and respectable of the citizens of Cork, Protestant as well as Catholic; but it was amid her children and in the hovels of the poor that she was best beloved, because best known. Where famine hollowed the cheek and glazed the eye, she was to be found, with her brave words of comfort and hope, and, better still, with her well-filled basket and open purse; where sickness and disease lurked, and the atmosphere of the miserable dwellings of the fever-stricken was laden with almost certain death, her place was at the bedside of the dying, consoling and solacing; now administering the cooling draught to the poor patient's burning lips; now, by prayer and spiritual instruction, endeavoring to smooth the path to a better world of the soul that was struggling to be free. No danger daunted her, no sight, however repulsive, stayed her persistent charity; and it is even said that the once brilliant and accomplished favorite of the Rue St. Germain did not hesitate, when she considered herself called upon to do so, to perform the most menial of domestic offices for her sick or aged pensioners.
Thirty years of such unremitting labor was more than a constitution of ordinary strength could well bear; and even Miss Nagle, buoyed up as she was by intense devotion to the poor, felt that the hand of death was upon her, and that she was about to receive the eternal reward of her virtues, her charity, and her zeal in the service of God. Early in 1784 her health completely broke down, and, thus timely warned, she prepared, with Christian sincerity and humility, to leave the scenes of her earthly labors, and pass through those portals which, for the just, open to an infinity of happiness. In the house of the society, and surrounded by its members, her spirit calmly took its upward flight on the 26th of April, 1784. Her last advice to her little community was: "Love one another as you have hitherto done."
Such, in brief, were the life and labors of one whose name even is seldom heard, and of whose heroic efforts in the cause of religion and education so little mention is made beyond the boundaries of the locality in which she wrought and which she sanctified. Judging her by the sacrifices she made, there may be found many even of our own day equally meritorious; but considering the age in which she worked, the dangers and difficulties which constantly beset her path, the invincible energy with which she surmounted all obstacles, and the widespread and beneficent character of the results of her thirty years' toil, we may assuredly place her among the most remarkable and most devoted of the daughters of the church.
[199] Terra Incognita; or, The Convents of the United Kingdom. By John Nicholas Murphy. London: 1873.
[200] There are now in England and in Wales alone two hundred and thirty-five convents, containing about three thousand nuns of various orders and congregations. Among these is the Presentation Convent in Manchester, to which is attached a female orphanage, a poor school attended by four hundred and seventy-five day and five hundred Sunday-school scholars.
[201] Terra Incognita.
[202] The convents are those of the city of Cork, South, opened in 1777, in which is also an asylum for aged women; the city of Cork, North; Bandom, Doneraile, Youghal, Midleton, Fermoy, Michelstown, Limerick, Killarney, Tralee, Dingle, Milltown, Cahirciveen, Millstreet, Listowel, Castleisland, Thurles, attached to which is an industrial school; Cashel, with an orphanage and an industrial school; Fethard, Ballingary, Waterford, Dungarvan, Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir; Lismore, George's Hill, Dublin; Roundtown, near Dublin, Maynooth, Clondalkin, Lucan, Kilkenny, Castlecomer, Mountcoin, Carlow, Maryborough, Kildare, Bagnalstown, Clane, Stradbally Portarlington, Mount Mellick, Wexford, Enniscorthy, Drogheda, Rahan, Mullingar, Granard, Tuam, Galway, and Banmore.