most deeply wound one who is conscious of being a fervent Catholic and a conscientious historian. Without the sufferings of illness, without the bitterness of the final agony, sudden death, though not unforeseen, which is accustomed to be the punishment of sinners and the recompense of the righteous, lately snatched him away. Although a layman, he exercised, upon the earth, an apostleship more fruitful than that of many who are called by God to the highest destinies; and on receiving him to his bosom, the Lord without doubt has given him that reward, which he offered to those, who, without occupying a high place in the Church, duly fulfil their mission, and, being the last in the hierarchic scale, come to be first in heaven.
That which he could not gain in this world by his persistent efforts and courteous appeals to men, he will gain, we trust, in the better land by his prayer to the Almighty—the regeneration of the conferences of San Luis Potosí. May heaven rekindle your fervor, reanimate your charity, and infuse that zeal, as ardent as prudent, and that respect to the ministers of the Church, which animated Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta through his mortal life. Pray for him, and try to imitate him.
MEXICO’S PROTOMARTYR.
Today, it is fifteen months since I terminated the longest pilgrimage of my life, arriving at the shores of that enchanted Japan, in which our Mexican protomartyr was crucified. Terrible are, in all times, the seas of the Far East. The cyclones, which, in the century of Vasco de Gama and Francis Xavier, engulfed so many ships, have not lost their force; and the most that modern science can do is to predict them by a few hours, to indicate their probable course, and to teach mariners, if their vessels are capable of such speed, to fly before these messengers of death.
Just so, steaming at full speed before one of these tremendous hurricanes, our vessel was sailing the night before we reached the desired haven of