strong common sense—a valuable quality in one who has at all times to place himself in the front—is endowed with indomitable energy and perseverance. Like his predecessor, Archbishop Connolly is one of the many prelates whom Ireland has given to the American Church. Besides the four churches and that which has been just completed, there are in Halifax three convents—two of the Order of Charity, and one of the Sacred Heart—with a House of the Christian Brothers, whose new schools form one of the most conspicuous of the architectural ornaments of the city. Nor is Halifax without a Society of St. Vincent, which finds the fitting time for its benevolent operations in the depth of the hard winter, when business is usually dull, employ ment consequently not so general as in the milder seasons of the year, and the feeble, the sick, and the improvident feel its rigour most keenly. There are likewise more purely religious associations, whose object is to stimulate to the constant practice of piety, and protect the young and inexperienced from the dangers incidental to their period of life. Thus the machinery of the Church is so improved by increased means of usefulness as to be, if not fully equal to the spiritual requirements of the faithful, a complete protection against those contingencies to which loss of faith on the part of individuals or families may be fairly attributable. There is no longer an instance—at least in Nova Scotia—of a Catholic who has been for years without having seen a priest; but there is still hard work for the missionary priest in a territory so widely extended, and whose population is so thinly scattered over a vast space.
Perhaps the hardest and most trying duty which a Catholic clergyman has to discharge is connected with what are so well known to laity and clergy as sick calls, requests made by the relatives or friends of the sick or dying for the attendance of a priest. From this duty the Catholic priest never shrinks. It matters not what the
