has published six volumes of Obras pastorales y oraciones (Pastoral Works and Orations) and a volume of Oraciones funebres (Funeral Orations). Señor Montes de Oca y Obregón especially shines in oratory. Of him Portilla says: “As a sacred orator, he possesses those endowments of spirit essential to oratory—most brilliant talent, vast and agreeable erudition, exquisite literary taste,—and to these spiritual endowments he joins in happy combination the physical qualities which serve for their realization—a fine presence, a noble bearing, a musical quality of voice—all that, in fine, which constitutes the irresistible enchantment of eloquence. All these qualities shine, in never-witnessed brilliancy, in his famous funeral oration on the Literary Dead, magnificent novelty which will make an epoch in the annals of sacred oratory in Mexico.”
Bishop Montes de Oca y Obregón is a member of the famous Arcadian Academy of Rome, bearing in it the name Ipandro Acaico. He was a member of Maximilian’s Academia de Ciencias y Literatura (Academy of Sciences and Literature). He is a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy. In 1899, he was Secretary of the Latin-American Council at Rome. In travels in Italy, France, and the United States, during the past three years, he has made several notable addresses.
JOAQUÍN GARCÍA ICAZBALCETA.
Great is my satisfaction at presiding over this meeting. It is more than two years that you have not gathered in general assembly; and on seeing three-months after three-months pass, without your coming to invite me to your regular meeting, I had come to ask myself the question: “Do the Conferences of San Vicente de Paul still exist in my diocese?” The President General of your pious brotherhood has, on various occasions in Mexico, directed to me the same question and with that zeal which distinguished him has asked me, with tears in his eyes: “Is it possible that charity is dead among the distinguished gentlemen of San Luis Potosí? Is it possible that there is no one who can arouse the members and revive the almost extinguished meetings?”