lady, who after her conversion to the Catholic Church in Italy so burned
with the love of God, as to return to her native land in her early
widowhood to form a flourishing religious sisterhood in New York; of
Nano Nagle, an Irish aristocrat, who turned from a useless fashionable
life to the lowly spirit of the gospel on seeing the poor artizans of
Paris crowding to early Mass in the Church of Notre Dame before
beginning their daily toil, while she lolled weariedly in her carriage
after a midnight ball; heroically putting her hand to the plough, she
never turned back, and left behind her another religious Sisterhood in
Ireland to perpetuate her philanthropic sanctity: of Catharine McAuley,
who receiving from her adopted Protestant parents a princely fortune,
expended every shilling of it in building up the Order of Mercy, one of
the latest and most flourishing outposts of the Church of God; of St.
Jane de Chantal, who after having been tried in the fire of affliction
for years--founded in her advanced widowhood the Order of the
Visitation, under the direction of St. Francis de Sales--and who
attained such an extraordinary degree of perfection as to be seen
ascending to heaven like a luminous meteor after her happy death.

If the perusal of the lives of these, and a host of other sainted women,
such as the Catholic Church alone can produce, has filled many a young
heart with high and holy aspirations--perhaps the contents of this
little volume will not be less efficacious for the glory of God, the
interests of religion, and the salvation of souls.

A literal translation has been adhered to as far as possible--one or two
remarks at the close being the only additions. So if any defects exist
in the work they belong solely to the translator, whose aim has not been
rhetorical composition, but the greater glory of God. And if but one
heart be won more closely to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ by