Note 358 — Front matter (continued 8)

In a letter to his brother Charles, July 3, 1837, he remarks that he has entered the clergy "in order to carry out the wishes of his father." Catholic lives of Leo XIII., which abound, must be read with discretion. They are even more tendentious than lives of Pius IX., and the best of them—by Mgr. de T'Serclacs (2 vols., 1894), L.K. Goetz (1899), J. de Narfon (1899), Mgr. B. O'Reilly (1903), and P.J. O'Byrne (1903)—are very unreliable. Mr. Justin McCarthy's short Pope Leo XIII. (1896) is a summary of these, and shares their defects. With them should be read Joachim Pecci (1900) by Henri des Houx, for the period before his election, and Le Conclave de Léon XIII. (1887) by Raphael de Cesare: both Catholic writers, but more candid and discriminating. See also Boyer d'Agen, La Jeunesse de Léon XIII. (1896) and Monsignor Joachim Pecci (1910) and works to be mentioned hereafter.