After seeing the handsome, dark-eyed boys of the college, its fine library and other interesting apartments, I ascended with Father Osoro to look at the observatory en the top of the building.
This solid and business-like structure possesses the newest and most complete astronomical and meteorological instruments, and the accuracy of the scientific results arrived at by the Fathers, has become justly celebrated. They received a manifestation of merit from the Centennial Exposition of '76, on account of their meteorological observations, and the Parisian Exhibition presented them with a magnificent medal. Father Benito Vines, the president, communicates regularly with Washington and nearly every civilized nation. After viewing the interior of the observatory, we came out on the roof, and here I beheld a novel and wonderfully lovely sight. Stone and brick walks, four or five feet wide, with railings at each side spread away, intersecting each other at different points, and all were above the dark, red-tiled roofs of the institution. Strong little edifices like watch towers, painted in blue and white, stood out prominently near the walks, and no sooner did the eye turn from these immediate objects, than it was dazzled by the superb panorama of city, ocean, bay, sky and woodland that spread before it.
Father Osoro enjoyed the expressions of admiration that escaped me, as I gazed on the high and low roofs on every side, the black turrets, the walls of houses, red, green, blue, crimson, yellow, and white all mellowed by age. Down below us were the narrow streets, the iron-barred windows, the curious shops, verandas, balconies, flag staffs, flying pigeons, flowers blooming on the roofs, and bananas growing. Away to the north-east stood the grand Morro Castle, the sentinel of the harbor, with its frowning guns, and its grand, revolving light shining like a gem above the sea. Behind it, Fort Cabaña looked long, bold and ancient, backed on the east by evergreen hills, and decorated on the south by palms and other tropical trees. The harbor, which glittered with sunlight, was full of ships, buoys, sail-boats, music and sailors. On this side of the bay appeared the old cathedral, with its dark gray walls and black and brown roof. Yellow pillars, old towers, picturesque wind-mills, brown iron stairs running up to the roofs of mansions, palaces, domes, cupolas, plants of great beauty in vases on roofs, and numerous old spires intervened. On the right, near the bay, could be seen the old church, de San Francisco (now a customs storehouse), the church de San Augustin, the church de Sancto Spiritu, and the palace of the admiral to the south, the church de Mercede, that of St. Paul, the arsenal, military hospital, gas houses, the Castello de Princepe, and the suburban gardens of the captain-general. On the north, we beheld the ocean, the Castello de Punta and the Casus de Benefecentia. The Campo de Marte, Parque de Isabella, the parade grounds, trees, statues, fountains and hotels appeared to the west. A refreshing breeze stirred an atmosphere of seventy-eight degrees, and not a particle of dust arose on street or house-top as the rain which fell on the preceding night made all things clean. I would have remained on the top of the college 'till dusk, contemplating that superb prospect, but I had no time, so bidding good-by to the kind Fathers I determined to see more of the city. Before leaving them, however, I could not help reflecting upon the immense amount of good which they were doing in Havana. Before the Liberals got hold of the Spanish government, the constitutional authority of the church in Cuba was not interfered with, but since the accession of Freemasons and Freethinkers to power, ecclesiastical property has suffered violence from the hands of the State, and the nomination and appointment of priests and bishops to place has been arrogantly wrested from those appointed by God to legislate in spirituals, and assumed by a class of irreligious despots. Though the State pays the clergy, still it owns the church property, and entirely cripples the power of the bishop, who cannot remove a bad and refractory priest, if it suits not the pleasure of the civil authorities. Such a state of things naturally caused some demoralization among the clergy, and, as a consequence, much religious indifference among the people. Societies like the Jesuits, who have been but a few years in Havana, are gradually removing pernicious influences like these by the learning, piety and zeal which they exhibit from the pulpit and among the people. Hundreds of men, as well as of women, are drawn to the sacraments by their persuasive eloquence and self-sacrificing, holy lives. The good work will continue and bear glorious fruit, if these noble men be not persecuted in Havana. My earnest hope is that the glorious influence of Catholic Spain will protect them from danger.
A Valiant Soldier of the Cross
In describing scenes over which mine eye has wandered, I have kept so faithfully to the land of the sun, where winter seldom or never leaves his icy footprints, that my discursive papers were not improperly styled "Southern Sketches." Yet other latitudes in America are not wholly unknown to me. Month after month have I gazed on the white monotony of unthawing snow. No one could admire more than I the chaste beauty of the feathery flakes, or the gorgeous sparkle of trees bereft of leaves and covered with crystals that flashed every hue of the rainbow. But even in this bright September day, with the mercury among the eighties, I get chilled through and through, and shake with the "shivers" when I imagine myself once more among the hard frosts of New Hampshire. Unlike the brave soldier of Christ whom I am about to introduce to the readers of the "Irish Monthly," and who found the heat of a short Northern summer simply "intolerable," the tropics and their environs rather allure me. True, soldiers and old residents speak of places between which and the lower regions there is but a sheet of non-combustible tissue paper. Nevertheless, the writer who has lived in both places would rather, as a matter of choice, summer in the Tropics than winter in New Hampshire.
Though this State, in which my hero passed the greater part of his holy life, be the Switzerland of America, a grandly beautiful section, full of picturesque rivers, tall mountains, and dreamy-looking lakes, attracting more tourists than any other place in America save Niagara, yet I will pass over its stern and rugged scenery to write of a man whose titles to our admiration are wholly of the supernatural order.
To me, the finest landscape is but a painted picture unless a human being enliven it. Just one fisherwoman on a sandy beach, or a lone shepherd on a bleak hill-side, and fancy can weave a drama of hope and love and beauty about either. Faith tells of a beautiful immortal soul imprisoned in forms gaunt and shrunken; a prayer that we may meet again in heaven surges up in my heart. The landscape is made alive for me in the twinkling of an eye, and stretches from this lower world to the better and brighter land above. Father MacDonald was for forty-one years the light of a manufacturing town. And when I think of its looms and spindles and fire-engines, and forests of tall, red chimneys, and tens of thousands of operatives, Father MacDonald is the figure which illumines for me the weird and grimy spectacle, and casts over it a halo of the supernatural. Little cared he for the sparkling rivers, or bewitching lakes, or romantic mountains of the Granite State; his whole interest was centred in souls.
Some fifty years ago, Irish immigrants began to come timidly, and in small numbers, to the little manufacturing town of Manchester which rises on both sides of the laughing waters of the Merrimac. Here, in the heart of New Hampshire, one of the original thirteen States, and a stronghold of everything non-Catholic, these poor but industrious aliens knocked at the gates of the Puritan6 for work. Strong and willing arms were wanted; and Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston, learning that some hundreds of Catholics working in the Manchester factories were sighing for the ministrations of a parish, sent Father MacDonald, in July, 1844, to take charge of their spiritual interests.
William MacDonald was born in the county Leitrim, in 1813, being the youngest of a family of six sons and one daughter, whose parents were John MacDonald and Winifred Reynolds. The now aged daughter is the sole survivor of this large family. They were very strictly