Part 11 — CHAPTER XV. (continued 5)

This handy little volume is evidently the result of a good deal of painstaking and conscientious labor. As the production of several hands, it is a monument of somewhat heterogeneous scholarship. It professes to be “critical”; and critical and scholarly we are sure it is, so far as it is indebted to the contributions of Dr. Ezra Abbot, a gentleman whose minute bibliographical knowledge is only equalled by his rare modesty, and by his readiness to place his learning at the disposal of others. To his careful hand, we take it, is due the collection of various readings as given by Griesbach, Lachmann, and the latest editions of Tischendorf and Tregelles. The student will find in this compilation a mass of information which we do not remember to have seen in so compact a form elsewhere. For the rest, the work will doubtless fulfil the purpose announced by the editor-in-chief, as a “book available to the mere English reader,” and will be welcomed by evangelical ministers of all denominations who may have felt more or less keenly the need of supplementing the defects in their early classical education by some easy artificial helps. How convenient, for example, when we run against the word γυνή, to find, on the authority of Messrs. Hastings and Hudson, that, in a given number of passages, the majority in fact, it signifies woman, undoubtedly woman, whereas in several other given passages, including 1 Cor. ix. 5, it means wife—even though there may be some misgivings about the “margin.” Whether or not it be “critical,” under cover of scholarship, to turn a supposed Greek concordance into nothing more nor less than a quiet vindication of the accuracy of the King James Version, we leave it to ordinary unbelievers to determine.

Life of John Bunyan, with Notices of some of his Contemporaries, and Specimens of his Style. By D. A. Harsha, M.A., author of “Life of Philip Doddrige, D.D.,” etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.

Nothing, we suppose, is more likely to strike the ordinary Catholic reader, supposing him even to waste his time over books of the kind, than the great meagreness and poverty of what are known by Protestants as religious lives. Even a non-Catholic, like Mr. Matthew Arnold, has somewhere commented on the superiority of Catholic biographies to Protestant ones, with that air of easy insolence which has made him anything but a pleasing subject for contemplation to the majority of his countrymen and co-religionists.

Mr. Harsha’s life of the allegorizing tinker of Bedford can boast of no advantage in this respect over other efforts of the same general description. It is not, we should say, the fault of the biographer, who seems to have genuine religious instincts, and to be principally hampered by his ignorance of what true spirituality means, and the poverty of the material he works in. These, however, are in his position necessary evils.

This book has other faults for which he is more actively responsible. A man who wonders that Bunyan should have been molested for his religious views under what he, perhaps facetiously, calls the “mild rule of Cromwell” (a characterization that John Evelyn Pilgrim’s Progress and Bunyan’s sermons to qualify him for the task of a biographer. Perhaps, however, a thorough knowledge of history would be as successful an agent in the work of un-Protestantizing a sincere man as any other merely human one that could be named.

Graduale de Tempore et de Sanctis, juxta Ritum Sacrosanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ cum cantu Pauli V. Pont. Max. jussu reformato cui addita sunt officia postea approbata sub auspiciis Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Pii PP. IX. Curante Sacr. Rituum Congregatione, cum privilegio. Ratisbonæ, Neo-Eboraci et Cincinnatii: Sumptibus, chartis et typis Frederici Pustet.

About the time of the opening of the Œcumenical Council, the firm of F. Pustet were permitted by special indult to publish a revised edition of the Gradual known as the Medicean. A commission was appointed by the Sacred Congregation of Rites to undertake this revision, but the suspension of the Council and the political troubles ensuing prevented the completion of their labors. A dispensation, however, was granted to Mr. Pustet to publish and sell the work, adding the portion yet unrevised as it stands in the original edition. We reserve a fuller notice for some future date, when we hope to lay before our readers a critical essay on the various editions of the Gradual and other books of chant published in Europe and Canada.

The Grand Demonstration in Baltimore and Washington, D. C., in honor of the XXVth Anniversary of the Election of Pius IX. to the Chair of St. Peter, June 17, 18, 19. A.D. 1871. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.

It would be scarcely possible to add anything on the general subject of this handsome brochure—the theme of so many thousand eloquent pens and voices. The celebration in the Province of Baltimore, however, was an exceptional one, as became the oldest See in the United States. Besides the addresses, letters, and resolutions, etc., which we naturally look for in such a publication, it includes encyclical and other letters from His Holiness, and some historical and chronological matter which the reader will find highly useful.

The Martyrs of the Coliseum; or, Historical Records of the Great Amphitheatre of Ancient Rome. By the Rev. A. J. O’Reilly, Missionary Apostolic at St. Mary’s, Capetown. London: Burns, Oates, & Co. 1871. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

The basis of the narratives of this volume is furnished by the ancient Acts of the Martyrs. The story of several of the most illustrious martyrs of the early ages is told by the author, according to history and legend, with some embellishments of imagination, poetry, and fancy. There is also an account of the history of the Coliseum itself, as far as knowledge or probable conjecture can furnish it. The author’s style is warm, exuberant, and brilliant. The volume is instructive and entertaining, and ought to be a favorite, with young people especially.

Manual of Piety, for the use of Seminarians. Second American Edition. Baltimore: Published by John Murphy & Co., 182 Baltimore Street. 1872.

This is a new edition of an excellent and well-known manual for seminarians. It can hardly be too highly commended either as regards matter or form. It contains an immense amount of matter in a very small space, and the type is clear and beautiful.

Mr. Robert Coddington has in press, and will publish about Christmas, The Vicar of Christ; or, Lectures upon the Office and Prerogatives of our Holy Father the Pope, by Rev. Thomas S. Preston, pastor of St. Ann’s Church, New York, and Chancellor of the Diocese. It will be published uniform in style with the other volumes of Father Preston’s lectures.

The Catholic Publication Society will publish, November 1, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Her Latest English Historian, a narrative of the principal events in the life of Mary Stuart, with some remarks on Mr. Froude’s History of England, by James F. Meline. This work will contain not only the thorough criticism of Mr. Froude’s History of England as far as made in the five articles on the subject in The Catholic World—articles which have attracted general attention, and put Mr. Froude upon his defence—but also a complete narrative of the life of Mary Stuart, with a review of those volumes of Mr. Froude’s history not noticed in the articles.

Mr. P. Donahoe, Boston, will soon publish To and from the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Bavaria, from the pen of the Rev. George H. Doane, Chancellor of the Diocese of Newark. It will be dedicated to the Rt. Rev. J. R. Bayley, D.D., Bishop of Newark.

Kelly, Piet & Co. announce as in press The Martyrs of the Coliseum, by Rev. A. J. O’Reilly.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

From Charles Scribner & Co., New York: The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611), with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter. Vol. I. Part 1. Genesis-Exodus.

From Kay & Brother, Philadelphia: A Collection of Leading Cases in the Law of Elections in the United States, with Notes and References to the latest Authorities. By Frederick C. Brightly.

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