Volume 22 / Part 2 — PART II. (continued 4)

It is thus, in his last chapter, our author surveys the future:

“During the last three centuries, from the nature of the work the church had to do, the weight of her influence had to be mainly exerted on the side of restraining human activity. Her present and future influence, due to the completion of her external organization, will be exerted on the side of soliciting increased action. The first was necessarily repressive and unpopular; the second will be, on the contrary, expansive and popular. The one excited antagonism; the other will attract sympathy and cheerful co-operation. The former restraint was exercised, not against human activity, but against the exaggeration of that activity. The future will be the solicitation of the same activity towards its elevation and divine expansion, enhancing its fruitfulness and glory.

“These different races of Europe and the United States, constituting the body of the most civilized nations of the world, united in an intelligent appreciation of the divine character of the church, with their varied capacities and the great agencies at their disposal, would be the providential means of rapidly spreading the light of faith over the whole world, and of constituting a more Christian state of society.

“In this way would be reached a more perfect realization of the prediction of the prophets, of the promises and prayers of Christ, and of the true aspiration of all noble souls.

“This is what the age is calling for, if rightly understood, in its countless theories and projects of reform.”

The zealous religious who is the author of this important manifesto traversed the seas in order to submit it to the Holy Father. [A mistake. Father Hecker went to Europe for other reasons, and took advantage of the opportunity to submit his pamphlet to the examination of the Roman censors and other eminent theologians.] If we are well informed, the Roman Curia found in it neither error nor rashness.[172] It is a complete plan of action proposed to the apostolate of the church for the future. The old era would close, a new one would open.

On this ground all ancient differences should disappear. Bitter and useless recriminations would be laid aside. All would be moving towards the same future, in accord not only as to the end, but as to the means.

(From Le Monde.)

The Culturkampf advances daily. Its war-cry in precipitating itself upon the church, bent upon her destruction, is: “The doctrine of infallibility has made spiritual slaves of Catholics, who are thus a hindrance to civilization.” In presence of so furious an attack, every voice which suggests means of safety deserves our best attention.

Of this kind is a pamphlet published lately in London, and which has been already translated into French, German, and Italian, and of which the journals of different countries, of the most opposite views, have given very favorable opinions.

The lamented M. Ravelet would, had he been spared, have introduced it to the readers of the Monde; for he had met its author at Rome, and knew how to appreciate the breadth of his views. Father Hecker, its author, the founder of the Paulists of New York, is celebrated in his country for a style of polemics admirably adapted to the genius of his fellow-countrymen. Does he understand Europe, to which he has made prolonged visits, equally well? On that point our readers will soon be able to judge.

How is it that the Catholic religion, which reckons more adherents than any other Christian religion, does not succeed in making itself respected? Evidently because many Catholics are not on a level with the faith which they profess. “We want heroes,” said J. de Maistre at the beginning of our century. At this moment is not the demand the same? There is no lack of religious practices; a number of exterior acts of exterior piety are performed; but the interior life of souls is not exalted; they seem to be afflicted with a kind of spiritual dyspepsia. The crises which threaten terrify them, instead of inflaming beforehand their courage and their confidence in God. It is in the sources of religion itself we shall find energy; it is to them we must betake ourselves to reinvigorate our strength, in the direct action of God upon our consciences, and in the operation of the Holy Spirit upon our souls. From this source issues the true religious life, and our external practices are availing only so far as they are inspired by this internal principle, itself inspired by the Spirit of God. Herein are the primal verities of Christianity. At every epoch of decadence the voices of saints remind the world of them; the spirit of the church inclines us to them; but, distracted by external agitations, we forget to correspond with its suggestions. We do not possess enough of God! Here is our weakness. A little more of divinity within us! Lo, the remedy!

Father Hecker has well written upon the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and upon the men our age wants. Intelligences illuminated from on high, wills divinely strengthened—is not that what is wanted to maintain the struggle? Is he not right when he asserts that one soul adorned with these gifts would do more to promote the kingdom of God than a thousand deprived of them?

This urgent call to a more intensely spiritual life will touch Christian hearts. But the pamphlet foresees an objection. Does not this development of our faculties and of our initiative under the divine influence expose us to some of the dangers of Protestantism? Do we not run the risk of the appearance of strong individualities who, filled with their own ideas, will think themselves more enlightened than the church, and so be seduced into disobeying her authority?

This eternal question of the relation of liberty to authority! Catholics say to Protestants: “Liberty without the control of the divine authority of the church leads insensibly to the destruction of Christianity.” Protestants reply: “Authority amongst you has stifled liberty. You have preserved the letter of the dogmas; but spiritual life perishes under your formalism.” We are not estimating the weight of these reproaches; we merely state the danger. The solution of the religious problem consists in avoiding either extreme.

No Catholic is at liberty to doubt that the Holy Spirit acts directly in the soul of every Christian, and at the same time acts in another way, indirect, but no less precious, by means of the authority of the church. Cardinal Manning has written two treatises on this subject, one on the external, the other on the internal, working of the Holy Spirit. It is these two workings which Father Hecker endeavors to connect in a lofty synthesis, and this is the main object of his work.

The first step of the synthesis is the statement that it is one and the same spirit which works, whether by external authority or by the interior impulse of the soul, and that these two workings, issuing from a common principle, must agree in their exercise and blend in their final result. The liberty of the soul should not dispute the authority of the church, because that authority is divine; the church, on the other hand, cannot oppress the liberty of the soul, because that liberty is also divine. The second step is to prove that the interior action of the Holy Spirit in the soul alone accomplishes our inward sanctification and our union with God. The authority of the church, and, generally, the external observances of religion, having only for their aim to second this interior action, authority and external practices occupy only a secondary and subordinate place in the Catholic system, contrary to the notion of Protestants, who accuse us of sacrificing Jesus Christ to the church, and of limiting Christianity to her external action. The completion of the synthesis is in the following: The individual has not received for his interior life the promise of infallibility; it is to Peter and his successors—that is to say, to the church—that Jesus Christ has conceded this privilege. The Christian thus cannot be sure of possessing the Holy Spirit, excepting in so far as he is in union with the infallible church, and that union is the certain sign that the union of the two workings of the Holy Spirit is realized in him.

We have no doubt that this theory is one of the most remarkable theological and philosophical conceptions of our age. Father Hecker is no innovator, but he seizes scattered ideas and gathers them into a sheaf of luminous rays; and this operation, which seems so simple, is the result of thirty years’ laborious meditation. One must read the pamphlet itself to appreciate its worth. The more we are versed in the problems which agitate contemporary religious thought, the better we shall understand the importance of what it inculcates.

We shall briefly dispose of the application the author makes of his synthesis. One most ingenious one is that Protestantism, by denying the authority of the church, obliges her to put forth all her strength in its defence.

If Luther had attacked liberty, the church would have taken another attitude, and would have defended with no less energy the free and direct action of the Holy Spirit in souls. It is this necessary defence of divine authority which gave birth to the Jesuit order, and which explains the special spirit which animates that society. If, however, the defence of assailed authority has been, for three centuries, the principal preoccupation of the church, she has not on that account neglected the interior life of souls. It is sufficient to name the spirituality, so deep and so intense, of S. Philip Neri, S. Francis of Sales, S. John of the Cross, and S. Teresa. Moreover, does not the support of authority contribute to the free life of souls by maintaining the infallible criterion for testing, in cases of doubt, the true inspirations of the Holy Spirit?

The church, in these days, resembles a nation which marches to its frontiers to repel the invasion of the foreigner and protect its national life; its victory secured, it recalls its forces to the centre, to continue with security and ardor the development of that same life.

According to Father Hecker, the church was in the last extremity of peril. He sees in the proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope the completion of the development of authority provoked by the Reformation, and believes that nothing now remains but its application.

If, since the XVIth century, external action has predominated in the church, without, however, ever becoming exclusive, so now the internal working will predominate, always leaving to the external its legitimate share. Only, this new phase will be, in a way, more normal than the preceding, because, in religion as in man, the internal infinitely surpasses the external, without, however, annihilating it, as does Protestantism. This internal is the essence of Christianity; it is the kingdom of heaven within us, and whose frontiers it is our duty to extend. It is the treasure, the hidden pearl, the grain of mustard-seed, of the Gospel. It is to this interior of the soul that our Lord addressed the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. The external church—the priesthood, the worship, the sacraments—are only means divinely instituted to help the weakness of man to rise to the worship in spirit and in truth announced by our Saviour to the Samaritan woman. And the time has come for a fuller expansion of this internal life, for the more general development of the spirit of S. Francis of Sales and of the other saints of whom we spoke above.

As to those outside the church, they will never believe in this evolution, because they suppose that the doctrine of infallibility has condemned us to a kind of petrifaction. But if they study the actual situation, events will undeceive them from this present moment.

The persecutions which deprive the church of her temporalities, of her exterior worship, of her religious edifices, which go the length even of depriving the faithful of their priests and bishops, which suppress as far as they can the external part of Catholicity, do they not reveal the power of its interior?

In the parts of Switzerland and Germany where the populations are robbed of their clergy and worship, do we not see faith developing in sacrifice, and piety becoming more serious and fervent in the privation of all external aid? This example is an additional proof of the opportuneness of Father Hecker’s pamphlet. If God wills that the persecution should increase, we must be prepared to do without the external means which he himself has instituted, and which he accords to us in ordinary times. For we must not forget that no human power can separate us from God, and that so long as this union exists religion remains entire as to its substance.

The merit of the Christian is in the intention which inspires his acts. Religion exists only in the idea which clothes its rites; the sacraments, the channels of grace, are only effective in us as they are preceded by the dispositions of our soul. For a religion not to degenerate, it must perpetually renew the internal life, in order to resist the encroachments of routine.

Here the author asks what is the polemic best suited to help the people of these times to escape from their unbelief, which often proceeds from regarding the church as having fallen into formalism and into a debasing authoritativism. He believes they might be undeceived by disclosing to them the inner life of religion and the internal proofs of her divinity—an idea he shares with the most illustrious writers of our age. Lacordaire wrote to Mme. Swetchine that he had reversed the point of view of the controversy in scrutinizing matters from within, which manifested truth under a new aspect.

Father Hecker quotes in this sense the striking words of Schlegel: “We shall soon see, I think, an exposition of Christianity appear which will bring about union among all Christians, and convert the unbelieving themselves.” Ranke said with no less decision: “This reconciliation of faith and science will be more important, as regards its spiritual results, than was the discovery, three centuries ago, of a new hemisphere, than that of the true system of the universe, or than that of any other discovery of science, be it what it may.”

The pamphlet ends with a philosophy of race. And here the author, whilst acknowledging his fear of wounding susceptibilities, expresses the hope that none of his views will be exaggerated. He inquires what natural elements the several races have offered to the church in the successive phases of her history; and, starting from the principle that God has endowed the races with different aptitudes, he examines in what way those aptitudes may co-operate in the terrestrial execution of the designs of Providence. The Latin-Celtic races, who almost alone remained faithful to the church in the XVIth century, have for authority and external observances tastes which coincide with the more special development of the church since that epoch.

On the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon races have subjective and metaphysical instincts which, in a natural point of view, should attract them to the church in the new phase on which she is entering. Father Hecker has been accused with some asperity of predicting that the direction of the church and of the world will pass into the hands of the Saxon races, whose conversion, sooner or later, he anticipates. But he does not in any sense condemn the Latin races to inferiority. He merely gives it as his opinion that the Latin races can only issue from the present crisis by the development of that interior life of independent reason and deliberate volition which constitutes the force of the Saxon races. God has not given the church to the Latin races. He has not created for nothing the Saxon, Sclavonic, and other races which cover the surface of the globe. They have their predestined place in the assembly of all the children of God, and are called to serve the church according to their providential aptitudes.

Father Hecker and Dr. Newman are not the only ones who think that the absence of the Saxon races has been, for some centuries, very prejudicial to the church. J. de Maistre, whose bias cannot be suspected, expressed himself even more explicitly to that effect. The Latin genius, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has been and will continue to be of the utmost value to the church. Under the divine influence, the Saxon genius will, in its way, effect equally precious conquests.

In conclusion, we summarize thus the ideas of Father Hecker:

1. We have need of a spiritual awakening.

2. The definition of infallibility has lent such strength to the church that henceforth personality may become as powerful as possible without the risk, as in the XVIth century, of injuring unity.

3. This definition having completed the external system of Catholicity, the initiative of the church proceeds logically to concentrate itself on the aggrandizement of the interior life, which is the essence of religion.

4. This is proved by the persecutions, which augment and strengthen the religious life of Catholics.

5. The result of these persecutions will be to unveil to Protestants and unbelievers the interior view of Catholicity, and to prepare the way for religious unity.

6. This unity will be effected when Protestants and unbelievers see that Catholicity, far from being opposed to the aspirations of their nature, understands them and satisfies them better than Protestantism and free-thinking.

7. This expansion of Catholicity advances slowly, because it meets few souls great enough to admit of the full development of its working, and of showing what it is capable of producing in them.

8. The way to multiply these souls is to place ourselves more and more under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Whatever opinion may be formed of certain details, on the whole, this work manifests a high grade of philosophical thought and theological insight. But to appreciate it fully it must be read and studied.

Exceptions have been taken to it, on the ground that one meets nothing in it but theories, without any practical conclusion. Yet what can be more practical than the exhortation which confronts us on every page, to seek in all our religious acts, in sacraments, worship, and discipline, the divine intention involved therein? What more practical than to urge us to develop all the forces of our nature under the divine influence, and to tell us that the more conscientious, reasonable, and manly we are, the more completely men we are, so much the more favorable ground will the church find within us for her working?

Far from urging any abrupt change, Father Hecker recommends that everything should be done with prudence, consideration being had for the manners of every country. He is persuaded that, by placing more confidence in the divine work in souls, they will become insensibly stronger, and will increase thus indefinitely the force and energy of the whole body of the church. Such a future will present us with the spectacle of the conversion of peoples who at present are bitterly hostile to her—a future which we shall purchase at the cost of many sacrifices. But our trials will be full of consolations if we feel that they are preparing a more general and abundant effusion of divine illumination upon the earth. Per crucem ad lucem.

Personal Recollections of Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others. The Bric-à-Brac Series. Edited by R. H. Stoddard. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.

This volume is a compendium of one of those books of memoirs or personal recollections bequeathed to us by the survivors of the English Renaissance of the beginning of the century—My Friends and Acquaintances, by P. G. Patmore. This the editor has supplemented, in the case of Hazlitt, by some letters and reminiscences culled from the Memoirs published by his grandson, W. Carew Hazlitt. These works, it might be fairly supposed, would be of themselves light enough for the most jaded and flippant appetite. However, the aid of the “editor” is called in—heaven forgive the man who first applied that title, honored by a Scaliger and a Bentley, to the modern compiler of scandal!—the most entertaining and doubtfully moral tidbits are picked out; and the result is the class of books before us, which is doing for the national intellect what pastry has done for its stomach. The mutual courtesies—honorable enough when rightly understood—existing between publishers and the periodical press make honest criticism seem ungracious; and thus the public judgment is left uninstructed by silence, or its frivolous tastes are confirmed by careless approval.

The motives impelling the awful scissors of the “editor” not only deprive the original works which fall under them of the modicum of value they may possess, but affirmatively they do worse. They give an absolutely false impression of the persons represented. Thus, in the case before us the character and genius of Lamb are as ridiculously overrated as his true merits are obscured; and the same may be said with even more justice of the portrait given of Hazlitt. Singularly enough, though the editor derives all he knows, or at least all he presents to the reader, from Mr. Patmore and Mr. Carew Hazlitt, he speaks in the most contemptuous terms of both. One he pronounces “not a man of note,” and the other he terms, with a delightful unconsciousness of self-irony, “a bumptious bookmaker, profusely addicted to scissors and paste”; and both he bids, at parting, to “make room for their betters.” If such be the character of Mr. Patmore and Mr. Hazlitt, what opinion, we may ask, is the reader called upon to entertain of the “editor” who is an accident of their existence? Nor is it in relation only to the authors after whom he gleans that the “editor” shows bad taste and self-sufficiency. The immortal author of the Dunciad, speaking of a kindred race of authors, tells us,

“The ricketty little papist, Pope,” is the witticism the editor levels at the brightest and most graceful poet of his age—a master and maker of our English tongue, and a scourge of just such dunces as himself.

Of the writers whose habits and personal characteristics are treated of in this volume we have little or no room to speak, nor does the work before us afford any sufficient basis to go upon. Lamb occupies a niche in the popular pantheon, as an essayist, higher than posterity will adjudge him. His essays are pleasing and witty, and the style is marvellously pure; but they want solidity; they are idealistic, humorous, subjective; they fail to present that faithful transcript of manners, or to teach in sober tones those lessons of morality, which make the older essayists enduring. Lamb’s other works are already forgotten. He was an amiable man in the midst of unhappy surroundings, and his unassuming manners have enshrined his name with affection in the works of his contemporaries.

Hazlitt’s was not a character to be admired, nor in many ways even to be respected. He was devoured with vanity and grosser passions. His work was task-work, and therefore not high. ’Tis true Horace tells us,

—poverty has often been the sting which urged genius to its grandest efforts. But Hazlitt, though undoubtedly a man of genius, was not gifted with that genius of the first order, which abstracts itself wholly from the miserable circumstances about it. The great body of his work is criticism, brilliant, entertaining, even instructive at the moment in which it was produced, but substantially only the fashion of a day.

Of the poet Campbell and Lady Blessington it would be an impertinence to say anything on the slight foundation this volume gives us.

The editor of the “Bric-à-Brac” Series has placed on the cover of each volume this motto:

We will suggest one that will take up even less room:

The Civil Government of the States, and the Constitutional History of the United States. By P. Cudmore, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, Author of the Irish Republic, etc., etc. New York: P. Cudmore. 1875.

The author of this work informs us in the preface that his object has been to condense into one volume the colonial, general, and constitutional history of the United States. This volume professes to be a digest of the writings and speeches of the fathers of the Constitution of the United States, the statutes of the several States, the statutes of the United States, of the writings and speeches of eminent American and foreign jurists, the journals and annals of Congress, the Congressional Globe, the general history of the United States, the decisions of the Supreme Courts of the several States, the opinions of the attorneys-general of the United States, and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States; of extracts from De Tocqueville, the Madison Papers, the Federalist, Elliott’s Debates, the writings of Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and Vattel, and of extracts from Jefferson and other eminent authors on parliamentary law. The platforms of political parties are also given. This list is copied verbatim from the author. It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Cudmore has set himself no contemptible task to accomplish, and, as he has executed it in a thin octavo of 254 pages, it may reasonably be conjectured that he possesses a talent for condensation that Montesquieu might have envied. Mr. Vallandigham finds a powerful advocate in this author, and his philippics against Mr. Stanton are proportionately severe. Mr. Cudmore has a fondness for notes of exclamation; and such is the ardor of constitutionalism with which he pursues this latter-day “tyrant of the blackest dye” (we quote Mr. Cudmore) that it often takes three notes of admiration to express his just abhorrence of his measures. The bulk of the work is taken up by a civil and military history of the late conflict, and the disputes that preceded it. If we might venture a hint to Mr. Cudmore, we would say that his tone is a little too warm for this miserably phlegmatic age, which affects a fondness for impartiality in great constitutional writers. The fact is, the questions which the author discusses with the greatest spirit are dead issues. They still preserve a faint vitality for the philosopher and speculative statesman, but they have sunk out of sight for the practical politician and man of to-day. The vis major has decided them. We might as usefully begin to agitate for a re-enactment of the Agrarian Laws. Mr. Cudmore’s Chapters IV. and V., containing a digest of State and Federal law, show much meritorious industry. The history of land-grants, the homestead law, and the laws pertaining to aliens and naturalization, will be found useful.

The Young Catholic’s Illustrated Table-Book and First Lessons in Numbers. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren St. 1875.

This is a very simple and attractive little book, designed to make the beginning of arithmetic, which certainly is rather a dry study in itself, interesting and capable of fixing the attention of the very young children for whose use the work is intended. We do not remember having seen any prettier or more practical little text-book for beginners, and cannot recommend it too highly. It is also very nicely illustrated.

Sadlier’s Excelsior Geography, Nos. 1, 2, 3. New York: Wm. H. Sadlier. 1875.

As a first attempt in this country to prepare a series of geographies adapted to Catholic schools this is deserving of great praise. The type is clear, the maps and illustrations, and the mechanical execution generally, are excellent. It is based, to some extent, on a geographical course originally known as Monteith’s, and adapted by the insertion of additional matter interesting to Catholics. What we should have preferred, and hope eventually to see, is a series of geographies and histories entirely original, and written from the Catholic point of view, and pervaded by the Catholic tone which we find in this.

Sevenoaks: A Story of To-day. By J. G. Holland, author of Arthur Bonnicastle. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.

It gives us great pleasure to express, with slight qualifications, our entire approval of this work, so far as its moral purport is concerned. Its plot and incidents are all within the range of ordinary life and experience, and therefore not calculated to foster in the youthful reader extravagant anticipations in regard to his own future. There are many good hits at the weaknesses and inconsistencies of human nature, and faithful pictures of the vices and miseries to which an unscrupulous ambition leads. Selfishness and injustice prosper for a time, but eventually reap their reward; while integrity and true manliness, even in the rude and uncultivated, are recognized and appreciated.

The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1876. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

“Almanac,” when applied to this publication, seems to us a misnomer. The popular notion of an almanac is a thin, badly-printed pamphlet, containing incomprehensible astrological tables, delusive prophecies as to the weather, tradesmen’s advertisements, and a padding of stale jokes or impracticable recipes gathered from country newspapers; whereas the Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac is an annual of 144 pages, containing each year enough solid, well-digested information to furnish forth an ordinary volume of three hundred pages, to say nothing of the many fine engravings—and this, too, at a price which should extend its circulation to equal that of the once-famous Moore’s Almanac (published in England about the beginning of the XVIIIth century), which is said at one time to have sold annually more than four hundred thousand copies.

The several volumes of the Family Almanac form a valuable manual for Catholics, containing, as they do, articles of great interest to the literary student, the antiquarian, and the archæologist. Much of the information could be gathered only from exceedingly well-furnished libraries; some of it appears here for the first time in print.

In the Almanac for 1876, among other good things, we find an extended and very interesting biographical sketch of His Eminence Cardinal McCloskey; also, biographical sketches of Cardinals Wiseman and Altieri, of Bishops Bruté and Baraga, of Rev. Father Nerinckx and the Cura Hidalgo—the Washington of the Mexican revolution—and of Eugene O’Curry, the eminent Irish scholar—all of these being illustrated with portraits. The approaching centenary has not been forgotten, for in “Centennial Memorials” is shown the part—a glorious one, which received the public endorsement of the “Father of his Country,” as will be seen by perusal of the article—taken by Catholics of Irish origin in the Revolutionary struggle. In the same article are numerous statistics showing the temporal growth of our country during the century just closing; the article closes with an account of the wonderful growth of the Catholic Church during the same period—the whole being valuable for future reference. “About the Bible” and “The Bible in the Middle Ages” contain information of interest to every Christian, and which is to be got elsewhere only by much reading; the latter article also contains an ample refutation of the old slander that the Catholic Church of the middle ages kept the Scriptures from the laity. Besides the foregoing, there is much curious and entertaining prose and verse, and several pictures of churches and other edifices (among them one of old S. Augustine’s Church, Philadelphia, destroyed in the riots of 1844, and toward the building of which, in 1796, Washington contributed $150; Stephen Girard, $40; George Meade, father of Gen. Meade, $50; and Commodore Barry, $150), a complete and authentic list of the Roman pontiffs translated from the Italian, the American hierarchy, and the usual astronomical and church calendars, postal guide, etc.

Madame Récamier and her Friends. From the French of Madame Lenormant. By the translator of Madame Récamier’s Memoirs. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1875.

This volume will doubtless be welcome to those already familiar with the Memoirs previously published. The work is largely made up of letters which are of no particular interest, except so far as they throw light on the character of the writers. Endowed by nature with extraordinary beauty, and possessing that knowledge of public events and skill in their interpretation which seems a special gift of Frenchwomen, Mme. Récamier became the centre of an admiring group of statesmen and littérateurs who sought the benefit of her intuitive wisdom.

A very strong testimony to Mme. Récamier’s many virtues is found in the warm friendship which existed between herself and other ladies holding a similar position in French society; in the loving devotion of the child of her adoption, who subsequently became her biographer; and—in the fear and jealousy of the First Napoleon, who paid her the compliment of a temporary exile. The personal attention she gave to her adopted daughter’s education is worthy of imitation.

Wayside Pencillings, with Glimpses of Sacred Shrines. By the Rev. James J. Moriarty, A.M. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing House. 1875.

Father Moriarty’s work has one merit on which editors place a high value—brevity. A book of travels is not properly a history or topography of the countries visited, and a bird’s-eye view of the most salient features is all that we can reasonably ask at the traveller’s hand. The interlarded extracts with which some authors swell their volumes are often wearisome reading. In the above work the reverend traveller narrates all the important incidents of his journey, with descriptions of the various shrines on his route, in so picturesque a manner, and in so few words, that the reader will have no difficulty in laying up in his memory many pleasant subjects for reflection.

Eight Cousins; or, The Aunt-Hill. By Louisa M. Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1875.

An entertaining volume for youthful readers, and one which conveys many useful lessons. The same charming freshness which won for Little Women its wide reputation will render this volume a favorite, notwithstanding its defects—one of which is a spirit of self-assertion in the heroine which is only too true to nature in the average American girl. However reluctant we may be to acknowledge the fact, we cannot fail to see that our so-called progress has had a tendency to weaken veneration for age and respect for authority. Miss Alcott shows her sympathy with this fault by sometimes placing age in a ludicrous light before her juvenile readers. The young people of this generation do not need any encouragement in the belief that age does not always bring wisdom, and we the more regret this mistake in a book otherwise commendable. Destroy the confidence and veneration with which childhood looks up to those placed over it, and you rob parents of that which constitutes a great charm in their offspring, and go far to break down the chief bulwark of society—the family.

Manual of the Sisters of Charity. A Collection of Prayers compiled for the use of the Society of Sisters of Charity in the Diocese of Louisville, Kentucky. Adapted to general use. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1875.

This is a new volume added to the already large devotional literature of the church. As its title imports, it was prepared especially with a view to the wants of the daughters of St. Vincent, though adapted to those of other religious, and of persons in the world. As it bears the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Baltimore, and has the approval of the Bishop of Louisville, and, in addition, has had the benefit of Mr. Murphy’s careful proofreading—a matter the importance of which can scarcely be over-estimated in devotional works—we deem further comment unnecessary. We would, however, suggest whether the use of a somewhat thinner paper would not make a better proportioned volume.

Miscellanea: Comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays on Historical, Theological, and Miscellaneous Subjects. By M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Sixth Edition, revised and greatly enlarged. 1875.

The publishers have added to the value of this edition by incorporating in it a number of papers not contained in previous editions, and which had received the author’s last corrections. Few writers of the present century in the English language have done more to popularize Catholic themes and relieve Protestants from the misconceptions which they had previously entertained regarding the history and doctrines of the church, than the late Archbishop of Baltimore. Those who have not previously possessed themselves of his admirable works have a new motive in the improvements now made.

A Full Course of Instruction in Explanation of the Catechism. By Rev. J. Perry. St. Louis: P. Fox. 1875.

The present edition of Perry’s Instructions differs from the original one in the addition of questions, thus making it a text-book for advanced classes, whereas its use was heretofore limited in a great measure to teachers. The editor (Rev. E. M. Hennessey) has also incorporated an explanation of the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From P. Donahoe, Boston: Theologia Moralis Novissimi Ecclesiæ Doctoris, S. Alphonsi, in Compendium Redacta et Usui Venerabilis Cleri Americani Accommodata, Auctore A. Konings, C.SS.R. Pars Tertia: Continens tractatus de Sacramentis, de Censuris, de Irregularitatibus, et de Indulgentiis. 8vo, paper, pp. x., 433.

From P. O’Shea, New York: Lives of the Saints, with a practical Instruction on the Life of each Saint for every day in the year. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. Part iv., 8vo, pp. 127, flexible cloth.—Life and Letters of Paul Seigneret, Seminarist of S. Sulpice, translated from the French by N. R. 12mo, pp. 311.

From the Author: The Sunday Laws: A Discussion of Church and State, etc. By S. B. McCracken. 8vo, pp. 8, paper.

From P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia: Life of S. Benedict, surnamed “The Moor.” The Son of a Slave. From the French of M. Allebert. 18mo, pp. 213.