Chapter XVII · (continued 4)

At one time there was in London a great mania for Turkish baths. A person of some note as a writer and, we believe, an M.P. took up the subject vigorously, and had a Turkish bath built adjoining his own house. Here he passed the greater part of his time, combining his reading and writing with the delights of his new hobby. But he had an old hobby as well, which was the evil agency of Russia in the politics of Europe. Like the philosopher who asked but one question on the occasion of any disturbance—“Who is she?”—this man acknowledged but one possible element of discord at the bottom of any diplomatic imbroglio—i.e., Russia. A friend of his called on him one day about midday, piquant to his acquaintances.

Among fixed ideas which may almost be called hobbies are certain preferences which blind us to the good done without the special adjuncts which we individually consider nearly indispensable. For instance, it is recorded—with how much truth we cannot tell—of the great architect, Pugin the elder, that one day, being in Rome, he went to Benediction in a church where it is customary to say prayers in the vernacular for the conversion of England. This was done after the service proper was over, and Pugin, not recognizing the extra prayers at the end of the familiar Benediction service, asked a neighbor what they meant. On being told he turned to a friend who was with him and said: “The idea of praying for the conversion of England in such a cope as that!” A clever and well-known writer for one of our leading Catholic magazines, who is confessedly somewhat eccentric, is said to have been discovered one morning by a friend in a state of violent agitation, walking up and down the breakfast-room with quick and nervous strides, and looking like a man in passionate, personal grief. On being gently asked the cause of this emotion, he answered vehemently: “I was thinking of how many souls are being eternally damned at this very moment. Is it not frightful to think of? Every minute souls are going there, to be tormented for all eternity!” Here was a fixed idea with which it was difficult to deal. It was true, and a thought which would do many good if they would realize it as he did—the innocent, large-hearted man, who did not need the idea for his own discipline—but it was decidedly an inconvenient disturbance of the domestic balance of things, and not a pleasant appetizer for the good breakfast that was before him.

Bores, pure and simple, are of a remote kindred with the riders of hobbies, and they are of as many kinds. There is the croaker, who cherishes some pet grievance and favors every one with it; the singer who is offended if he is not asked to perform, and is not applauded at the end like the leading tenor of the hour; the critic who thinks he would lose his reputation if he condescended to praise anything, or to admire and be pleased like a common mortal; the man (or woman) who sets himself up on a pedestal and assumes, subtly but unmistakably, that he is entirely above his neighbors or whatever people he may be with; the man who has quarrelled with somebody, and insists on reading you the whole correspondence; the man who is sure always to come to see you at inopportune times, and, worse still, never knows when to go away; the amateur—a terrible species—who imagines he can paint, or play the pianoforte or the flute, etc., or write poetry, or draw plans, or, in short, do anything learn—for the greatest always think themselves still at the bottom of the ladder of knowledge; the man who tells stories to satiety, and expects them to be laughed at; the man who interrupts a tête-à-tête, or who is so full of some interest of his own that he insists on you sharing it when you show no inclination to listen to him; the man who cannot take a hint, though he is as good-natured as he is obtuse—these there are, and many more, who are the human mosquitoes of the world.

Akin to hobbies, as we said at the beginning, are tastes, harmless for the most part, often æsthetic, and almost always beneficial. Indeed, many a taste, well regulated, has become an antidote or a preservative against vice; and, to put it from a very low point of view, a taste is generally far more economical than dangerous company and degrading sin. The Saturday Review, in an article on this subject last year, said with truth: “Tastes are not, as a rule, exorbitantly expensive; they are certainly very much cheaper than vices. A very moderate percentage of an income, judiciously laid out, will soon secure an excellent library. It is surprising how small a sum will suffice for the purchase of every standard work worth having. The most famous private libraries cost their owners nothing in comparison with the price of a few race-horses.” Although we have somewhat disparaged amateurs as a kind of “bores,” this was not meant to dissuade young men and women from cultivating some taste which will serve as a resource for evening hours or any otherwise unoccupied time, and be a relaxation from necessary work, as well as a gradual safeguard against coarse pleasures. As long as such pursuits are undertaken with due modesty as to one’s proficiency in them, and not as a mere social “accomplishment” to be obtruded on others on all possible occasions, they are infinitely to be commended. They grow on one, too, and soon become the chief point of attraction in our intellectual life, especially if our business happens to be, as that of most persons is, of a prosaic nature. As we grow old they may develop into hobbies; never mind, they will still make us happy and never cause us shame. On the other hand, what will tendencies to convivial “pleasures,” or to frivolous and objectless conversation, or to gadding about to theatres, balls, and races, come to in the end? Dead-Sea fruit.

Among the minor arts which tend to occupy one’s leisure pleasantly and usefully are wood-carving, turning, ivory-carving, and leather-work. Even commoner things may be taken up. We have known young men who, during a long convalescence, took to mending cane chairs as a mode of making their fingers useful when their brains were still too weak to be taxed. Basket-making, decalcomania of the higher order—i.e., a sort of easy glass-painting akin to decalcomania, are all useful and possible methods of employing one’s self and cultivating a pleasant domestic taste. Mechanics, too, and household carpentry we have often seen fostered in young people and become their pride, while illumination—a really high style of art, though a rare gift—is not so uncommon as some may think. Of such tastes as gardening, reading, embroidering, Saturday Review says, it really needs but a comparatively small outlay to secure a very fair collection of any kind. This in its turn helps to study by giving us the means of reference or comparison. And if in any family the members were seriously to look up the money really wasted—that is, the money spent in transitory, unhealthy pleasures, the value of which dies in the mere excitement of the moment, leaving no pleasant memory or useful impression behind, and often, on the contrary, leading to a remorseful, or at least an uncomfortable, remembrance—they would find that every year there goes forth imperceptibly from the collective treasury of the home enough to beautify their lives and increase their happiness if only they would lead it into the right channels. The money would not be missed, while their pleasures would be tenfold and lasting. Even the very poorest of the poor spends uselessly—and alas! often wickedly—what would make him a happy, self-respecting man; and, strictly speaking, no one can say that he cannot afford good and healthy pleasures, for, as a matter of fact, he does afford bad and unhealthy, or, to say the least, unsatisfactory, ones. Let every one ask this question of his own experience: Which costs most in the long run, a healthy pleasure, say even an innocent hobby, or a vicious and lowering pursuit?

A PLEA FOR OUR GRANDMOTHERS.

That there are many flaws and deficiencies in the social structure of our bustling republic, from its foundation in the single family to the collection of families forming general society, cannot be denied. Among these none are more palpable than the failure to provide comfortable space, suitable appointments, and a well-defined position therein for our grandmothers.

Their claims to consideration as a class, existing—albeit by mere sufferance—in every city, village, and rural corner throughout the length and breadth of our wide domain, seem to have been crowded out and lost in the confusion and dust upwhirled by our great social vehicle in its onward sweep toward an imaginary and unattainable El Dorado. No one seems to comprehend the binding obligation of those claims. The force of a playful remark made by the great and good Father Burke to his mother—when she complained that she failed to hear his lecture because the hall was so crowded that she could not get in—“Ah! mother dear, wasn’t that too bad? Just think of it! Why, if it hadn’t been for you, dear, I wouldn’t have been there myself!” has not come home to Americans in connection with this subject. They do not pause to reflect that, but for our grandmothers, this great multitude now rushing so furiously toward every promising avenue to wealth and influence, elbowing and jostling each other in their mad career, would not have been in existence.

Nor are the annoyances to which this class is exposed in consequence of such neglect—itself the result

Yet these evils are real and constantly increasing. The most serious of them are the outgrowth of modern civilization and the progressive doctrines of the last quarter of a century. In this enlightened age it is not to be supposed that people must grow old, and it is highly improper for our grandmother to insist upon submitting to conditions proper enough to humanity before it flourished in the light of “advanced ideas,” but wholly out of place now. As recently as twenty-five years ago she was, perforce of that very submission, an important element in the domestic and social circle. She occupied a position quite independent of such prescribed rules and customs as govern other classes in society. She was not expected to conform to every caprice of fashion. She was permitted to dress in a manner consistent with her age, and no one respected her the less, or thought of indulging in sharp criticism of her style, if it was of an obsolete date. She could employ her time in suitable occupations, and render the useful and acceptable services to the family and neighborhood for which the skill acquired by her long acquaintance with the world and its exigencies eminently fitted her; or repose in the calm twilight of life’s evening hour, in such habiliments as best comported with her own comfort and the requirements of her gradual descent into the valley of years.

Not so now. The milliners provide her with no bonnets or caps befitting her age; nay, they utterly refuse to attempt, at any price, the construction for her of suitable head-gear. Such manufacture has taken its place among the “lost arts,” and they do not wish to revive it. The mantua-makers insist upon “the demi-train, at least,” and she must submit in the matter of the overskirt, with its puffed abominations and puckered deformities. She is allowed no ease or comfort in her costume, but is required to assume all the grotesque discomforts invented by modern modistes for the summer-day butterflies of fashion, at the risk, if she refuses, of being followed, every time she ventures to appear among them, with such remarks as, “A nice old lady? Oh! yes; but it is a pity that she will persist in making such a guy of herself, with those old-fashioned sleeves and skirts, and her plain white muslin caps.”

It is curious to remark how different is the relative position of the grandfather, at home and abroad, from that of his female contemporary. How independent he is of conventional forms in his dress and intercourse with society; how free to go and come when he pleases, without giving occasion for wry faces or unkind criticisms if the fashion of his coat has not been changed for half a century! Is he not rather regarded with increased respect on that account?

But the prevailing modern rule Fashion rule, though the heavens fall,” say they.

So completely have all correct ideas pertaining to true taste in the discriminating consistency of different costumes adapted to the different periods of life been swallowed up in the all-prevailing fashion-worship, that there is now scarcely any distinction, save in length of skirt, between the dress of the little girl of five and that of her grandmother, mother, or the young lady, her elder sister. Pitiable indeed is this loss of all sense of the fitness of things for the two extremes of human life, which should be exempted from subjection to discomforts for fashion’s sake!

What spectacle can be more mournfully absurd than that of a pale, wrinkled old face set in a ghastly silvered frame of the hairdresser’s curls and crimps, and surmounted, to complete its repulsiveness, with a bedizened hat, the form of which can only be made barely tolerable by a beautiful young face beneath it; or that of a form bending under the weight of years, carrying with trembling steps a load of jewelry and such remarkable excrescences, frills, flounces, and fur-belows, as the dressmaker insists upon cumbering it withal? These pitiful sights are constantly displayed in our palace-cars, at our hotels, boarding-houses and watering-places, even by the aged invalids who frequent the latter for their healing influences.

This is all wrong! There is no good sense or propriety in it. The free-born American woman should claim immunity from such bondage, and the right to accept with cheerful grace that rest from the petty strifes and ambitions which agitate life’s noon-day to which she is entitled at its twilight-hour. If she has—either by inheritance or the successful, if not altogether honest, speculations of her male kin—come into possession of more money than she well knows how to use, she should set that inherent Yankee wit, which is her inalienable national dower, to devise some less ridiculous, at least, if not more useful, mode of disbursing it.

When we consider the multitudes of starving poor that throng our cities; the necessities of widows and orphans; the notable rarity of well-selected and amply-filled libraries among our wealthy classes, and their very meagre patronage of the fine arts, we discover that there is no lack of proper and elevating objects for expenditure. Above all, when we reflect that the possessors of wealth must inevitably be called to a rigid account of their stewardship at last, the thought is appalling, and the subject, in all its phases, for this world and the next, is a sad one to contemplate.

In pleasing contrast with the picture presented by the domestic and social attitude of the average American grandmothers of to-day is that which we have frequently been so favored as to witness among the most wealthy, as well as the poorest, classes of our faithful foreign populations; where the grandmother, in her comfortable though antiquated

She indulged no worldly ambitions; gave no thought to dress, save to restrict it to the severest simplicity and neatness. She filled no brilliant rôle at home or in society, nor cared for anything but to do good to all as she had opportunity. She was not learned in the philosophy of books and literature; her deficiency in such knowledge may have been so great as to excite a sneer in her American neighbor, who had enjoyed the great “advantages” of the public-school system; but even the youngest of her numerous grandchildren—who gathered around her chair in the most cosey corner, of an evening, to listen reverently to her explanations of “Christian Doctrine,” to join with her in recitations of the beads, and to give rapt attention to her tales and legends of the “dear old land”—knew that her venerable head was stored with treasures of learning more precious than all earthly lore in the sight of Him before whom the “wisdom of this world is foolishness,” and who has chosen the “weak things thereof to confound the wise.”

How will they miss her when she is gone! For how many long years will “grandmother’s” virtues and her pious instructions form the theme, and her advice and prayers the sustaining resource, of her children’s children, while they carefully transmit to theirs her unwritten memoirs as an invaluable legacy of precept and example!

FROM LAMARTINE.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Catholic Church and Christian State. A Series of Essays on the Relation of the Church to the Civil Power. Translated, with the permission of the author, from the German of Dr. Joseph Hergenröther, Professor of Canon Law and Church History at the University of Würzburg. In two volumes. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.

It is to be regretted that the price of this excellent work has been placed so high, although its paper covers and generally cheap style of execution give it the appearance of a German rather than an English publication. The price in England is one pound sterling, which makes it necessary to sell it for eight dollars in this country, and with a decent binding it must cost ten dollars. This great cost must impede the general circulation which such a work merits and ought to obtain. In respect to the value of its contents, it is well worth the price it costs, and ought to have a place in every public library and on the bookshelves of every Catholic of intelligence and culture—indeed, of every educated man who wishes to understand the questions mooted and discussed so generally at the present time in respect to the nature and mutual relations of the church and the state. It is a masterly scientific treatise, constructed with that solid learning and thoroughness of exposition which characterize the works of genuine German scholarship. The author is one of the most eminent of the Catholic professors of Germany, at home in canon law, history and jurisprudence, well versed in theology, and enjoying an established reputation for sound orthodoxy in doctrine. The division of his topics into separate essays, each with its distinct sections, makes it easier to follow his course of exposition and reasoning than it would be if they were arranged under a more strictly methodical form, and his abundant references, frequently accompanied by citations, give evidence of the sources he has referred to, as well as the means of referring, in Expostulation have awakened controversy are treated comprehensively and in their principles, furnishing a general defence of the Catholic Church, and a refutation of the accusations of her enemies in respect to her polity, administration, and relations to the natural and temporal order. In short, it is a text-book or manual for instruction, fitted to be used as a guide to those who have to teach, as an arsenal from which those who have to write or lecture may draw their weapons of argument, and as a standard of reference for the correct decision of the matters within its scope. The private student will find it all that is requisite for his complete and accurate information on the important topics of which it treats. We understand that the translation has been made by Miss Allies, assisted by two other ladies, and, we doubt not, under her father’s supervision. We have not seen the original, but the translation seems to have been thoroughly well executed. The work will undoubtedly take its place at once as a classic.

Histoire de Madame Barat, Fondatrice de la Societe du Sacre-Cœur de Jesus. Par M. l’Abbé Baunard. Paris: Poussielque Frères, Rue Cassette 27. 1876.

We have had the honor of receiving one of the first copies of this long-expected biography of one of the great women of this century, and take the earliest opportunity of making the due acknowledgment. This is not a book to be dismissed by a brief notice, and we hope to make it the subject of an article in one of our future numbers, after having given it the careful perusal which it merits. It is published in two goodly volumes of fair, large type, averaging each six hundred octavo pages. The Abbé Baunard is already celebrated as the author of the Life of St. John. Those who read French easily and with pleasure will prefer, we suppose, to obtain the original work, which no doubt will soon be for sale in our foreign bookstores. Nevertheless, as a translation from the graceful pen of Lady Georgiana Fullerton is advertised as nearly or quite ready, we are confident that the charm of the Abbé Baunard’s style will be preserved, in so far as that is possible, in the Life of Madame Barat which is soon to appear in English. It is already evident that this biography, which is at the same time a history of the institute founded by the venerable lady who is its subject, will have a worldwide circulation. In our own country there are great numbers who are eagerly desiring the opportunity of perusing it. We have as yet only commenced the pleasing task, but we have gone far enough to warrant the assurance that those who are looking forward to the reading of it as a source of great benefit and pure enjoyment will not be disappointed.

Are You My Wife? By the author of A Salon in Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, Pius VI., etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 292.

The startling question that gives a title to this story has been before the readers of The Catholic World for many months. Those who have followed out the puzzle presented to them through its monthly instalments will have found for themselves the solution of the problem, and formed their own opinion regarding its merits or demerits. The story is now published in book-form, and adds one more to the number of admirable original works of fiction given to the Catholic public through the pages of The Catholic World.

Are You My Wife? is remarkable, and welcome, at least in this: that it shakes itself loose from the mouldy traditions which seem to form the stock-in-trade of most of our Catholic writers of English fiction. It is a bold effort and well sustained. The story is full of interest from beginning to end; the characters clean-cut and distinct; the incidents varying and rapid; and the secret carefully concealed to the very last. It is not, perhaps, of the first, but certainly of a very good, order of art, and possesses this exceptional merit over its fellows, that while the facts on which it

It is needless here to sketch the plot, which, though woven out of natural materials, is ingeniously intricate. Many of the characters are such as may be met with any day in England. The nominal heroine is a wild, weird creation; the real heroine is Franceline, as charming a girl as ever met us in the pages of a novel or stole our hearts away in real life. No wonder all the young men go wild over her; no wonder that the old men do the same. She grows up and develops under our sight the dreamy, happy child, until she, and we with her, suddenly start to find she is a woman.

The graceful yet powerful pen that gave us such sketches as A Salon in Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, and others equally good, has not mistaken its powers—indeed, has not, we are convinced, yet tried them to the full of their bent—in the present more finished and more ambitious work. There is little or nothing in Are You My Wife? to betray the hand of an unpractised novelist. Only here and there occurs a fulsomeness of detail on minor matters that were better condensed. In one or two places, though very rarely, the conversation flags. Conversation is, as a rule, slow enough in society itself; in a book, when slow at all, it becomes intolerable. These are the only blemishes we find in an unusually interesting book. Sir Simon Harness, Ponce Anwyll, Miss Merrywig, Miss Bulpit, Angélique, and Raymond are characters with whom we regret to part, as also Franceline and Clide, were they not so well provided for. Humor, wit, and imagination are plentiful throughout the book, while the pictures of natural scenery are often unsurpassed. Here, for instance, is a picture of still life that the best of pencils or pens might be proud to own:

“On emerging from the damp darkness after an hour with Miss Merrywig, Franceline found that the sun had climbed up to the zenith, and was pouring down a sultry glow that made the earth smoke again. There was a stile at the end of the wood, and she sat down to rest herself under the thick shade of a sycamore. The stillness of the noon was on everything. A few lively linnets tried to sing; but, the effort being prompted solely by duty, after a while they gave it up, and withdrew to the coolest nooks, and enjoyed their siesta like the lazy ones. Nobody stirred, except the insects that were chirping in the grass, and some bees that sailed from flower to flower, buzzing and doing field-labor when everybody else was asleep or idle. To the right the fields were brimful of ripening grain of every shade of gold; the deep-orange corn was overflowing into the pale amber of the rye, and the bearded barley was washing the hedge that walled it off from the lemon-colored wheat. To the left the rich grass lands were dotted with flocks and herds. In the nearest meadow some cattle were herding. It was too hot to eat, so they stood surveying the fulness of the earth with mild, bovine gaze. They might have been sphinxes, they were so still; not a muscle in their sleek bodies moved, except that a tail lashed out against the flies now and then. Some were in the open field, holding up their white horns to the sunlight; others were grouped in twos and threes under a shady tree; but the noontide hush was on them all. Presently a number of horses came trooping leisurely up to the pond near the stile; the mild-eyed kine moved their slow heads after the procession, and then, one by one, trooped on with it. The noise of the hoofs plashing into the water, and the loud lapping of the thirsty tongues, were like a drink to the hot silence. Franceline watched them lifting their wet mouths, all dripping, from the pool, and felt as if she had been drinking too. There was a long, solemn pause, and then a sound like the blast of an organ rose up from the pond, swelling and sweeping over the fields; before it died away a calf in a distant paddock answered it.”

The Life of Rev. Mother St. Joseph, Foundress of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Bordeaux. By l’Abbé P. F. Lebeurier. Translated from the French. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1876.

When, in the early part of the seventeenth century, St. Francis de Sales founded the Order of the Visitation, he placed the corporal works of mercy, such as visiting the sick and relieving the poor, among the duties of its members, but he was afterwards induced to modify St. Francis that of the Sisters of St. Joseph holds an important rank. This order came into existence under the fostering care of Father Medaille, a priest of the Company of Jesus, in the year 1650, in the diocese of Puy, and was soon established in many other parts of France. After an existence of a hundred and forty years, it was broken up and the sisters dispersed by the French Revolution; but upon the conclusion of the Concordat between Napoleon and Pius VII. the religious who still survived reassembled and opened a house in Lyons, in 1807, under the protection of Cardinal Fesch.

One of the most exemplary and useful members of the order since its restoration, Mother St. Joseph—in the world, Jane Chanay—is made known to us in the biography whose title we have given. There are few lives of which a judicious and faithful account would not be useful, and no kind of writing is more attractive to most readers than biography. It is seldom, however, that we meet with a religious biography with which we are altogether pleased, and this now before us is not at all to our taste. There is certainly no reason why the life of a nun should not be as full of interest as that of a woman engaged in the frivolities and vanities of the world, and we cannot but think it is the fault of the author that Mother St. Joseph’s has not been made both instructive and entertaining. The narrative is slow and interrupted, the style heavy, and the facts often trivial without being either amusing or edifying. We have the authority of Cardinal Donnet for the assertion that the book is commendable for the beauty of its diction; but this is certainly not true of the English translation, which is often neither correct nor elegant. Take, for instance, the following examples: “Other saints … are restored to their Creator with not a maze to dim their lustrous brightness” (p. 22). “When once the fire of jealousy is kindled in the soul, nothing can satiate its ravages” (p. 26).

We close with the following sentence, which we commend to the attention of grammar-schools: “This good father having, in the course of his missions, met with several widows and pious young women who were desirous to retire from the world and devote themselves to the service of the salvation of their neighbor, but were deterred for want of means to enter convents, he formed the intention to propose to some bishop the establishment of a congregation into which those devoted women could enter and devote themselves to labor for their salvation, and fulfil all the good works of which they were capable in the service of their neighbor” (p. 66).

Principia or Basis of Social Science. By R. J. Wright. Second Edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1876.

The eight or ten pages of letters from various persons with which this volume is prefaced, and in which the author receives thanks for copies of his book, forcibly remind us of Sheridan’s formula for acknowledging the publications that were constantly sent him: “Dear Sir: I have received your exquisite work, and I have no doubt I shall be highly delighted after I have read it.” The persons, known and unknown, whose names are paraded here all anticipate a time when they shall be able to congratulate themselves upon having put the Basis of Social Science beneath their feet.

Mr. Wright is doubtless a well-meaning man; and if good intentions could pacify a critic’s irritable soul, between him and ourselves there would be no quarrel. His aim has been, he informs us in his preface, to write a work which, without offending the religious, political, or scientific susceptibilities of any one, would commend itself especially to “pious young men” and “students for the ministry, who really desire to be useful and to be abreast of their age on this subject”; and we are therefore prepared to find him ready to embrace with equal tenderness a Mormon prophet, an Oneida free lover, a French communist, and a Catholic monk. Mr. Wright’s sweetness and piety are as offensive to us as the caress of a Yahoo was to Dean Swift. These attempts to reconcile the antagonisms, incompatibilities, and contradictions of the age, by besmearing them all with honey, are worse than absurd; they add to the confusion and weaken the power to apprehend truth. The self-imposed task of the author of this volume is one Cyclopædia, and with their aid and the help of a certain “Theory of the Six Units” he has sought to develop an ideal of human society not more impossible than Plato’s Republic or more visionary than More’s Utopia.

The keynote to his system is the “Theory of the Six Units.” The six units are the Individual, the Family, the Social Circle, the Precinct, the Nation, and Mankind. It seems to have been his acquaintance with certain other “singular sixes” that led him to a belief in six, and but six, social units. In the first place, “the figure which gives the maximum amount of internal content with the minimum amount of external surface of similar bodies joined together is a HEXAGON.” Again: “In developed civilization there are six great classes of society”; but it is only in some future work that the author will tell us about these six great classes. And just here we wish to find fault with Mr. Wright for a habit he has of adroitly arousing our curiosity, and then, as we are beginning to imagine we are about to learn something, coolly dropping us with the remark that the matter “will be portrayed in another book.” He sometimes, too, seems to take a wicked delight in puzzling his readers, as in the following sentence: “All affairs, when they become ordinary, are apt to become matters of business; and business matters are—well, we need not say what.” But to return to the “sixes.” There are six fundamental motors of human passions. There are six infinities—namely, deific spirit, soul spirit, matter, space, duration, diversity. There are six organs of sense (the old notion that there were but five is exploded)—sensation, temperature, taste, smell, hearing, sight. There are six crystallizations—monometric, dimetric, trimetric, monoclinic, triclinic, and hexagonal. There are six religious societies—Adam, Adam and Eve, Patriarchy, Israel in Egypt, Israel in Palestine, the Christian Church. It follows as a matter of course that there must be six social units; and in fact, if it were worth while, we could prove that there must be ten or twenty.

There is no unit in which Mr. Wright so much delights as the Precinct. The real cause of the American civil war he has discovered to have been a neglect of Precinct by both the North and the South; and it is quite probable, we think, there is no social or political problem which may not ultimately be solved in the same felicitous and satisfactory manner.

Genius is manifested—at least this is, we believe, the opinion of Mr. Emerson—quite as strikingly in quotation as in original composition, and we respectfully call the attention of the philosopher of Concord to Mr. Wright as a confirmatory example of this law of mind. Many a household will find food for thought in the following citation: “Family miffs are a grand institution for giving needful repose and after-exhilaration to overtasked affection.” And this other will be interesting to politicians: “It is to the criminal propensities of man that we owe civilization.” “Alas!” sighs our pious philosopher, “that the Radicals cannot make a better basis for civilization than the foregoing crime-begetting one.”

From Wells, the phrenologist, Mr. Wright gets the following quotation, which almost makes us repent of what we have written: “As a class the theologians have the best heads in the world.”

Cantata Catholica. B. H. F. Hellebusch. Benziger Bros.

This is a collection of music for the “Asperges,” “Vidi Aquam,” several Gregorian Masses, the Gregorian Requiem, the Preface, the Pater Noster, Responses, Vespers, the Antiphons of the Blessed Virgin, “O Salutaris,” and “Tantum Ergo,” besides a large number of pieces intended to be used at Benediction and at various other times. The Gregorian chants for the “Asperges,” “Vidi Aquam,” and the Masses are harmonized by Dr. F. Witt. We cannot say that we admire the peculiar “drone bass” which Dr. Witt uses so extensively, and the harmonies are, to our ears, crude, and sometimes even barbarous, and as a general rule are not in accordance with the mode. We also noticed some ear-splitting fifths, used without any excuse whatever. The Requiem is very incomplete; five verses only of the “Dies Iræ” are given, and the Gradual and Tract are entirely omitted. Mr. Hellebusch remarks in his preface that “the Preface and Pater Noster should only be accompanied when required by the officiating clergyman and after rehearsal.” In looking in the book for the reason for this remark, we find that to accompany the simple melody of the “Preface of Trinity” one hundred and ninety sharps, flats, and naturals are required; and in the accompaniment of the words “socia exultatione concelebrant,” in the “Common Preface,” we find twenty. The melody of the “Preface” has also been altered by sharpening “do” all through. Over eight pages are devoted to Responses, exclusive of the Responses for the Preface and Pater Noster. In that portion of the book devoted to Vespers are some grave errors. On page 103 is a note which informs us that “the Psalms can be chanted to any of the following authentic or simplified Vesper tones.” We have yet to learn which are the eight authentic tones, and we were not aware that authentic and simplified meant one and the same thing. The eight Psalm-tunes are given with their various endings, and with the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth, or “Final by words of one syllable.” We suppose “mediation” is meant; but then the Sixth tone has no different mediation for words of one syllable, and the rule for Hebrew proper names is not given at all. In the Fifth tone the “si” is improperly marked flat. The pointing of the Psalms is very bad; we have “spirítui, spiritúi, vidít, sicút, motá,” etc. In the latter part of the book, however, the pieces are selected with good taste, and musically, although not practically, well arranged. The book has been made up in too great a hurry.

Asperges Me. Mass in F. Missa de Angelis. C. P. Morrison, Worcester, Mass.

The “Asperges” is chiefly remarkable for some very clumsy and incorrect modulations and the utter absence of any kind of melody and design. The “Mass in F” is an easy setting of the Ordinary of the Mass combined with a nauseating adaptation of English words for the use, we suppose, of the “separated brethren” who like this kind of music. We looked for and found the close on the words “Filius Patris,” with a new movement for the “Qui tollis,” and the inevitable Resurrectionem mor … tu … o … rum. The C clef is placed at the beginning of the tenor part, and the notes are incorrectly written, as if in the G clef, an octave higher. The composer ought to know that the C clef is of as much importance as either the G or F clef, and not a purely fanciful character to be used or not at the option of the writer. The harmony of the “Missa de Angelis” is entirely modern, full of chromatic passages, dissonances, etc., which Mr. Morrison again ought to know are not allowed in harmonies for Gregorian chant.

All around the Moon. From the French of Jules Verne. Freely translated by Edw. Roth. With a Map of the Moon constructed and engraved for this edition, and also with an Appendix containing the famous Moon Hoax, by R. Adams Locke. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, No. 9 Warren Street. 1876.

It is not often the case that translations are, like the present one, an improvement on the original, especially when the original work is such an admirable one as that from which this translation is made. We noticed the first part, published under the title of The Baltimore Gun Club, some time ago, favorably, and have been even more pleased with this sequel.

Mr. Roth calls the book a free translation,

Besides having made the book really an American one, he has added to its scientific merit by a fuller explanation of the problem which is the nucleus of the story.

The “Moon Hoax,” which is appended, was probably the most successful and the best contrived of all the scientific canards which have ever appeared. It was written more than forty years ago, but its memory has not yet died out, and it was so cleverly done as to be well worthy of this reprint.

The book is illustrated by twenty-four cuts, besides the map of the moon mentioned in the title. It would really have been better without the rather clap-trap additional about the Centennial at its close, but this makes it all the more American, and may be excusable under the circumstances.

The Wyndham Family: A Story of Modern Life. By the author of Mount St. Lawrence. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The best of motives and any quantity of the most pious reflections have combined to make of these two volumes a remarkably dull story. This is to be regretted; for those who can overcome the repugnance of wading through page after page of what, with the best will in the world we can only call dreary writing, will find much sound sense on the conduct of the family and what are called “the exigencies” of modern society. The author has attempted a bold feat—to paint the “heroics” of the kitchen, or, as they are called in the story, “the glory of service.” That there may be, that there is often, glory in service there can be no doubt. This is the power of Christianity. That a cook may be, and indeed often is, a model of self-sacrifice, or at least a source of great self-sacrifice in others, he would be a rash man who should undertake to deny. The author of The Wyndham Family would reverse the old saying that “God sends the food, but the devil sends the cook.” To be sure, the particular cook here held up to view turns out to be quite a superior character, and this makes one of the surprises of the story. The experiment, however, can scarcely be considered a happy one. Were the two volumes condensed into one; were the atmosphere of the kitchen a little less obtrusive; were the girls in the story made to talk like girls, and not like what on this side would be called by some “school marms”; were there only a little more of the relief afforded by such a character as “Uncle Sanders,” The Wyndham Family might have been not only what it now is, a vehicle for highly moral reflections, but a popular and interesting story.

It is strange that England, which has done so much in reviving Catholic English letters within the last century, and which is so high in the higher walks of literature, should, with a very few exceptions, continue to furnish about the poorest specimens of Catholic stories that the world has ever seen. Indeed, a kind of “goody-goody” school has grown up there which holds its own with exasperating persistency. The sooner that school is broken up the better. There surely might be found a happy medium between the “penny dreadful,” or the fleshly school of fiction, and that which reads like a very weak dilution of the penny catechism.

Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Board of Education of the City and County of New York for the Year ending December 31, 1875.

Apart from the mass of interesting statistics contained in this report, the comprehensive style adopted by the compiler of presenting facts and figures deserves special mention.

We have been interested in the development of the law compelling children to attend school, but fail to find satisfactory information regarding its workings in the report of the Superintendent of pp. 12 and 213, and in addition the attendance of 1874 shows an increase of 15,094 over 1873.

After a year’s trial the superintendent comes to the conclusion that the law, as it now stands, is a failure, and recommends the enactment of other laws, and the erection of new institutions to enforce the present law, of which he says: “Instances of opposition on the part of the parents to the law, or the efforts of the agents, are extremely rare; but rather do they regard them as welcome visitors and valuable auxiliaries, their authority and suasion being earnestly solicited for the reformation of the child” (p. 424).

Flaminia, and other stories; Lucas Garcia, and other stories; Perico the Sad, and other stories; Robert, or The Influence of a Good Mother; The Crucifix of Baden, and other stories; The Story of Marcel, and other tales. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876.

These are all excellent stories, choice flowers of fiction culled from French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English gardens, while those of native growth are not forgotten. They are reprints from The Catholic World; and how admirably fitted they are to meet a general want the reader may judge for himself by glancing at this month’s Bulletin, which presents the verdict of the Catholic press on them. Nothing is more needed nowadays than good popular Catholic literature, stories, perhaps, more than anything else. We accordingly welcome the republication in book form of stories which were universally well received as they appeared in the columns of The Catholic World, and only hope that the series may be continued.

Episodes of the Paris Commune in 1871. Translated from the French by the Lady Blanche Murphy. Benziger Brothers, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 1876.

This is a little volume of very readable sketches, relating the persecutions and sufferings of the various brotherhoods of Paris during the brief reign of the Commune in 1871. Their schools were closed, their houses invaded, and the brothers who had not succeeded in escaping to some safe hiding-place were arrested and thrown into prison. The services of the Christian Brothers as ambulance nurses during the war were known to the whole country; but the Commune ruthlessly drove them from the bedsides of the wounded and dying soldiers. “Down with the Black-gowns!” was the cry. “Death to the Brothers! Let them go join Darboy.”

“The watchword of the Revolution,” said Raoul Rigault to M. Cotte, the writer of one of these sketches, and late director of the press ambulances of Longchamps—“the watchword of the Revolution is death to religion, to ritual, to priests!” And he added: “As long as there is left in the land one man who dares pronounce the name of God all our labor will have been in vain, and we shall not be able to lay down the sword and the rifle.”

The style of the translation is easy and simple, and these Episodes will very fittingly occupy a place in “The Catholic Premium-Book Library.”

The Story of a Vocation: How it came about, and what became of it. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876.

This is really the story of two vocations—of one in the world, and of another in, but not of, the world. It is one of those pure, graceful, yet interesting tales which are only too few. The translation, from the French, is well done. Parents and those who have charge of children will find this book not only highly entertaining but of real utility.

The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland, and Ireland, a.d. 1400 to 1875. With appointments to monasteries and extracts from consistorial acts taken from MSS. in public and private libraries in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Ravenna, and Paris. By W. Mazière Brady. Vol. I. Rome: Tipografia della Pace. 1876.

This collection of curious documents relates to the Catholic succession. It is of great utility to the searcher into ecclesiastical antiquities. The author has consulted archives and searched out old records with much diligence, and gathered together a number of curious items of information of great value and interest to the antiquarian student. The most interesting of these is the account of Dr. Goldwell, St. Asaph, the last of the old line of Catholic succession in England, a prelate whose learning and sanctity make him worthy to close the series which St. Augustine began.

Boston to Washington. A Pocket Guide to the Great Eastern Cities and the Centennial Exhibition, with Maps. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1876.

The title of this work will give the reader but a poor idea of its value compared with other guides, which are mere advertising sheets. This book is neat in every way—in its paper, in its printing, in its illustrations, and in its binding—and contains a great amount of interesting and correct information about the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and will prove a valuable guide to the traveller, whether native or foreign.

Voyages dans l’Amerique Septentrionale. Par L. R. Père P. J. De Smet, S. J. Bruxelles: Benziger Bros.; New York.

This is a French edition of Father De Smet’s travels as an Indian missionary in the Rocky Mountains and in Oregon. This celebrated Jesuit, besides being a zealous apostle, was also a keen observer of men and customs, and his descriptions of Indian life, with which no man was more familiar, are both entertaining and instructive. A biography of Father De Smet has been recently published in Belgium, an English translation of which would, we think, be welcomed by American Catholics.

NOTE TO THE ARTICLE ON “THOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.”

Those who read carefully the philosophical articles which appear from time to time in our pages will notice that different, and even contradictory, opinions on some points are to be met with occasionally. It seems proper to explain, therefore, that the editor, and those who assist him in supervising the conduct of the magazine, while professing a general adhesion to the doctrine of St. Thomas, allow a considerable latitude in the expression of individual opinion by the different writers who contribute articles; and do not necessarily imply, in their approbation of pieces for publication, that they concur in every respect with the statements and arguments contained in them.

THE