Volume 20 — New Publications.

The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for the United States, for the Year of our Lord 1875. Calculated for Different Parallels of Latitude, and Adapted for Use throughout the Country. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This annual is already known in almost every Catholic home in the land. Its cheapness places it within the reach of all, whilst its literary and artistic excellence renders it acceptable even to the most fastidious. The issue for 1875 even surpasses its predecessors in the variety of subjects treated and in the beauty of its illustrations.

Publications of this kind undoubtedly do very much to awaken a truly Catholic interest in the contemporary history of the church, and therefore tend to enlarge the views and widen the sympathies of our people. The life-current of the universal church is borne through the whole earth, and whatever anywhere concerns her welfare is of importance to Catholics everywhere.

The opening sketch in the Almanac for the year which even now “waiteth at the door” carries us to Rome, in a biographical notice of Cardinal Barnabo, whose name will long be held in grateful remembrance in the United States.

There are also sketches of the lives of the late Archbishop Kenrick, Archbishop Blanc of New Orleans, Bishop Whelan. Bishop McFarland—brief, but sufficiently comprehensive to give one an insight into the character and labors of these apostolic men. Col. Meline and Dr. Huntington, who strove so faithfully and so successfully, as men of letters, to defend and adorn Catholic truth, receive due tribute, and are held up as examples for those of our Catholic young men to whom God has given talent and opportunity of education.

Cardinal Mezzofanti, the greatest of linguists; Cardinal Allen, who was the first president, and we may say founder, of the Douay College, which, during the darkest period of the history of the Catholic Church in England, gave so many noble confessors of the faith to Great Britain; Archbishop Ledochowski, who is to-day suffering for Christ in the dungeons of Ostrowo, all pass before us in the pages of the Catholic Almanac for 1875.

Then we have sketches of John O'Donovan, the famous Irish antiquarian; of Father Gahan, the great Irish preacher; of [pg 430] Father Clavigero, the historian of Mexico and California, and of Joan of Arc, whose name may yet be inscribed by the church among those of her saints. The miscellaneous matter with which the present issue of the Catholic Almanac is filled has been chosen with admirable tact and with a special view to the wants of our own people.

If the standard of excellence which this publication has now reached be maintained, it cannot fail to command a steadily increasing patronage, and to become in yet wider circles an instrument for good.

Notes on the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. By Rev. S. Smith, D.D., formerly Professor of Sacred Scripture, Canon Law, and Ecclesiastical History at Seton Hall Seminary. New York: P. O'Shea. 1874.

The author of these Notes makes his observations on a considerable number of very practical questions, some of which are of the greatest moment and of no small difficulty, with great modesty and moderation of language. Evidently, he seeks to promote piety, discipline, and the well-being of the church in an orderly manner, and with due respect to authority and established usage. The Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore is intended as a text-book of instruction for the clergy and seminarists on what we may call “pastoral theology”—that is, on the whole range of subjects relating to the conduct, preaching, and administration of those who are invested to a lesser or greater degree with the pastoral office. The author makes the Acts of the Council therefore the basis of his Notes, or familiar disquisitions on practical topics of canon law, giving also a general exposition of certain fundamental canonical principles and laws, chiefly derived from the standard authors Soglia and Tarquini. Some valuable documents are also contained in the appendix. Such a work as this is evidently one that, if it can be made complete, and also carry with it sufficient intrinsic and extrinsic authority to give its statements and opinions due weight, will be one of great utility. Due respect to the author, who has given us the results of careful and conscientious labor, as well as the great importance of the topics he discusses, demand that we should not attempt to express a judgment upon his work or the opinions contained in it without a minute and detailed examination and discussion of every point, supported by reasons and authorities. We are not prepared to do this at present. We may say, however, that, in our opinion, a work of this kind cannot easily be brought to completion by a first and single effort. It is, in many respects, tentative in its character. As such, we regard it as a promising effort, creditable to its author, and in many ways likely to prove a serviceable manual for the clergy and those who are engaged in teaching canon law in seminaries.

The Mistress of the Manse. By J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

We never pardon the reviewer who praises a novel by telling us its plot. Therefore we shall not spoil the pleasure of the reader by revealing the story of this poem. We will only say that the heroine is the wife of a “country parson,” and that their conjugal life is beautifully drawn. A Catholic will not find anything to move his righteous indignation, as he did in the author's Marble Prophecy though here and there he will come upon something which

“In the light of deeper eyes

Is matter for a flying smile.”

For instance, a poet who can write such Tennysonian verse does not blush to place in the same “evangelical” library “Augustine” and “Ansel” (we suppose he means S. Anselm) by the side of

“Great Luther, with his great disputes,

And Calvin with his finished scheme.” (!)

After the flood of light which even Protestant research has poured on the characters of Luther and Calvin, how can a poet (of all men) dare to hold them up to admiration?

Maria Monk's Daughter. An Autobiography. By Mrs. L. St. John Eckel. New York: Published for the Author by the United States Publishing Co.., 13 University Place. 1874.

The writer of this notice well remembers reading, when a boy of fifteen, the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, and Six Months in a Convent, by Rebecca Reed. With great satisfaction he recalls the fact that his own father, who was a Presbyterian minister of Connecticut, together with a very large number of other most respectable Protestants, condemned [pg 431] and repudiated the calumnies of Maria Monk from the first moment of their publication. The effect of these books and of the exposure so honorably made by Col. Stone on our own young mind, and undoubtedly upon the minds of thousands besides, to open our eyes to the falsehood and dishonesty of the gross misrepresentations of the Catholic religion and its professors which have been rife among Protestants, and are still prevalent among the less enlightened of them, both gentle and simple. Afterwards the task devolved upon us to prepare a set of documents concerning Rebecca Reed and Maria Monk which Bishop England had collected, for publication in the edition of his works issued by his successor in the see of Charleston. While we were correcting the last proofs of the printer at Philadelphia, the Times of that morning furnished us the last item of news respecting the unfortunate Maria Monk, which came to the knowledge of the public before the publication of the volume under notice, viz., that she had died in a cell on Blackwell's Island. After the lapse of twenty-five years, we find before us the autobiography of a daughter of Maria Monk, who seeks to expiate her mother's crime, and to make reparation for the wrong done to the clergy and religious of the Catholic Church by her pretended disclosures made in the fictitious character of an escaped nun. The unhappy young woman herself, though we believe she was the daughter of an English officer at Montreal, seems to have had a very unkind mother, and, for some reason to us unknown, to have been brought up without education, and early turned adrift without any protection. Having fallen into a condition of desperate misery, she resorted to the expedient of inventing her Awful Disclosures in order to get money and escape from present wretchedness. The men—far more malicious and base in their villainy than this poor forlorn girl, so much sinned against and so fearfully punished for her own sins that we pity more than we blame her—who prepared the vile book of Awful Disclosures, and published it under the name of Howe and Bates, cheated her out of her share of the profits. We are glad to see their infamy once more exposed, and the honor of the Catholic religion avenged. Although the most honorable class of Protestants are exempt from complicity with this and similar gross libels on Catholics and caricatures of all they hold dear and sacred, nevertheless their cause and name are disgraced by the fact that they are so frequently and generally implicated in a mode of warfare on the Catholic Church which is dishonorable. The statements which are continually made current among them respecting Catholics and their religion, and which are so generally believed, do no credit to their intelligence or fairness. We remember hearing the Archbishop of Westminster remark that the most ridiculous fables about the Catholic religion are accepted as truth among the aristocratic residents of the West End of London. The coarse and angry assaults of the English press upon the Marquis of Ripon, on account of his conversion, show, what Dr. Newman has so humorously and graphically described, the extent and obstinacy of vulgar prejudice and hostility in England. There is less here, and it is diminishing; yet there is enough to make Mrs. Eckel's audacious spring into the arena of combat against it well timed as well as chivalrous.

We do not intend a criticism on her book, but merely, as an act of justice to one who has braved the criticism of the world, to aid herself and her book to meet this criticism fairly, without prejudice from any false impressions which may be taken from its title. We therefore mention the fact, which may not be known to those who have not read the book or any correct account of its contents, that Maria Monk, according to the probable evidence furnished in the book, and which does not seem to have anything opposed to it, was really married to a man who was a gentleman by birth and of respectable connections, although reduced by his youthful follies to a condition which was always precarious and sometimes very destitute. Mrs. Eckel is the offspring of this marriage. After a childhood of hardship, she was adopted into a respectable family related to her father, Mr. St. John, and made the most strenuous efforts to acquire the education and good manners which are suitable for a lady. She married a gentleman of respectable position and of very superior intellectual gifts and culture, Mr. Eckel, who afterwards fell into distressed circumstances, and died in a very tragical manner. Mrs. Eckel separated herself from him some time before this occurred, and very shortly before the birth of her [pg 432] daughter, as it seems to us for very good reasons which exonerate her from all blame for the misery into which her husband fell when he lost the support of her sustaining arm. The remarkable history of her subsequent career in Paris must be sought for in the pages of the autobiography. The circles in which she moved while there were the highest, and many of her intimate friends were persons of not only exalted rank, but of the most exemplary piety, and of universal fame among Catholics. Of her own accord, without either compulsion or advice, she did what she was not bound in conscience to do—abandoned her brilliant position in the world, made known the secret of her origin, and has now thrown open the history of her life to the inspection of the world. That history must plead for itself and for the author before impartial and judicious readers. In our opinion it is substantially true. We believe the author has written it from a good motive, and that she is sincere in her statements. Divested of all the adventitious glitter of the successful woman of the world, she presents herself for precisely what she is in herself, and, as we think, is far more worthy of honor and respect now than ever before, or than the most brilliant marriage in France could have made her.

Everybody who can read this book will do so, as a matter of course, even if they have no other motive than they would have in reading one of Thackeray's romances. It is a romance in real life, and an instance of the truth of the old adage, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Such fictitious works as Lothair and the Schönberg-Cotta Family have served as a polemical weapon against the Catholic Church, and we do not see why a romantic but true history, of much greater literary merit than the whole class of that sort of trash, should not answer a good purpose on the other side. If the readers of the book find in it many things open to criticism, and jarring upon a delicate and cultivated Catholic sense of propriety and reverence, they should remember that the author lacks the advantage of long and careful Catholic discipline, is still comparatively young, and a novice in everything that relates to the spiritual and religious life. She does not profess to give the history of her life as a model to be imitated, or to instruct others as one competent to teach on spiritual matters, but to write her confessions for the encouragement of other wayward and wandering souls, and to speak out freely what she thinks as she goes along, with very little regard to censure or fear of it.

There seems a Nemesis in the publication of such a book which should give a salutary lesson to those who dare to throw dirt on the spotless robe of the Catholic Church. We have often thought that this Nemesis is frequently apparent of late in the punishments which have come from divine or human justice on notorious corrupters of public and private morals. Dreadful as are the actual corruptions and the corrupt tendencies in the bosom of our political and social state, we hope this is a sign that God has not abandoned us. It is hardly necessary to say that this is not a book suitable for very young people.

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