went boldly to the house of the priest and
proclaimed herself. Bat, instead of delivering
her up to the authorities, he gave her
bread and money, and set her in the right
way to the frontier town.

Her personal appearance, says our English
lady, is decidedly " handsome, her profile
something like Mrs. Siddons in Hayter's
Queen Katharine," swelled to such an
"immense size as she is, that she looks in the
last stage of dropsy." In character she is
  " gay, vigorous, even merry, nothing graceful
or sentimental about her," speaking "abruptly,
awkwardly, without commentary or reflection.
She is like a rough old covenanter,
despising the world in the evils as well as in
the goods it had to offer her. She is a brave
old soldier of her faith, with a true touch of
the woman in the extreme interest which she
takes for other people's scratches, while her
own wounds are forgotten. She manufactures
lint as well as gun-cotton. She has none of
the pedantry of martyrdom. ' She should
regret all her life,' she said, ' having shown
the marks of the chains, to a friend, upon one
occasion.' Makrena had acquiesced, because
she thought it ungracious to refuse, but she
had a fit of remorse afterwards for having
paraded the cross she bore. There is
something of greatness in her rough humility, and
this vulgar simplicity is her best certificate."

The Abbess Makrena is probably now the
sole Popish representative of the order of
St. Basil. She is more than sixty years
of age, and is about to found the order
of St. Basil at Rome, in a house near the
Scala Santa, and has already four novices,
three Poles and one Italian. " Her conversation
is vehement, rapid, gesticulative" (we
are again quoting our English lady), "her
spirit as strong to bear persecution as it
was likely to attract it and ready to
forget it. Like a female Luther, or St.
Ignatius, she seemed violent, daring,
uncompromising. I kissed the hand of the brave
' guerriera,' and departed, feeling that she
was one who did fight

                            As they fought
            In the brave days of old."

THE ART OF BOREING.

THERE are many indications which seem to
augur that we shall do greater deeds in
tunnel-making by and by than our railway
engineers have yet accomplished. The
Romans, we know, anticipated us not only in
the principle, but in the actual execution of
tunnels like our Thames Tunnel; for there
was re-discovered, about ten years ago,
a tunnel under a narrow arm of the
sea at Marseilles: this tunnel, whose
existence had long been suspected, is said to
be both larger and wider than the Thames
Tunnel. Various writers, ancient or modern,
speak of another tunnel, four thousand
Greek feet in length, bored through a
mountain as a channel whereby water
could be conveyed to Samos; of another
three-quarters of a mile in length, near
Naples, forming part of the old road from
Naples to Pozzuoli; of another, a mile
long, for draining the Alban Lake; of
another, nearly three miles in length, to
serve as a  drainage-channel from the Lake
of Celano to the river Siris, in the Neapolitan
states.

So far as mere digging is concerned, the
tough old Romans well understood the art
of tunnel-making; it is only by means of
new machines that we can hope to excel
them. Railways have almost driven canals
out of our thoughts; but in the days of
Brindley and his successors the great bores in
the shape of canal tunnels were neither few
nor uninteresting. There are the Blisworth
tunnel on the Grand Junction Canal, three
thousand yards in length; and the Sapperton
tunnel on the Thames and Severn Canal,
nearly two miles and a half in length; and
the Thames and Medway tunnel, now forming
part of the North Kent railway, upwards of
two miles in length; and the Pensax tunnel,
on the Leorninster Canal, about the same
length; and the yet longer Marsden tunnel,
on the Huddersfield Canal, more than three
miles in length. "What our railway tunnels
are like, and what are their relative lengths,
and what were the troubles and difficulties
incident to their formation, railway literature
has fully informed us. We know all
about the Kilsby tunnel, which cost three
hundred thousand pounds; and about the Box
tunnel, pierced in all its vast extent through
solid rock; and about the Dover tunnels,
honeycombing Shakspere's cliff, and its
neighbouring chalk hills; and about the three
or four tunnels which grope their way
beneath proud Liverpool; and about the summit
tunnel on the Lancashire and Yorkshire line,
and the still larger summit tunnel on the
Manchester and Sheffield railway, which
had quite a special social history in respect
to the lives and welfare of the navvies
employed in digging it; and about the
Glasgow tunnels, which boldly cut across,
one under the other, at the outskirts of the
city.

The general mode in which the tunnels are
made is this:—The men make a cutting at
each end, until they come butt up against the
hill to be tunneled; and then they dig or
blast and dig, until they have finished their
great bore. They make shafts up to the surface,
perhaps to let in light, perhaps to let out
rubbish, but, more likely, to aid in ventilating
the excavated passage.

The circumstance which leads us to
think that greater tunnels will be made than
have hitherto been made, is, that men are
trying to invent machines that shall aid
in the work. Hitherto it has been altogether
hand-work. We are afraid to say how