studied, and the whole scope of his argument considered, before it is. used by those who do not understand that system, and so are certain not to understand remarks which presuppose an acquaintance with it. A great part of it is to a certain extent technical, as he is proposing a new plan which would certainly work a complete revolution in Oxford, and restore the resources of the University to purposes as analogous to those for which they were originally conferred as is possible under a different religion and social state. His main principle is undoubtedly true: the Colleges were meant to be houses of study for men who had completed their preliminary education, not simply schools for overgrown boys. He does not understand the Catholic religion and the relation of authority to reason and liberty of thought, and we can afford to smile at some of his random sayings against us on particular points. But we have found his book well worth reading through, and we believe that it contains many very true and striking reflections on matters connected with education in general. On many points, too, he is unflinchingly candid—on none more so than on that on which he has been made so much use of by Dr. Gillow. His honesty of purpose is as conspicuous as his candour; and if his plans were to succeed, he would at least make Oxford a University in the proper sense of the term, as far as such an institution can exist outside the Catholic Church.

2. A large thin quarto of rather more than a hundred pages, handsomely printed at Wiesbaden, contains M. Niedner's arrangement of our Lord's Life as set forth by the four Evangelists, in parallel columns (Vita Jesu Christi Salvatoris, sive Monotessaron Catholicon. Wiesbaden, 1869). The text is that of the Vulgate. When we speak of parallel columns, we should mention that the four columns usually adopted in Harmonies in this country as for instance, in Mr. Greswell's Harmonia Evangelica and Father Coleridge's Vita Vita Nostra-are not exclusively kept to in the volume before us, in which the text is sometimes seen right across a page or even a part of a page. We are glad to see books of this sort multiplying. The characteristics of this Monotessaron are not marked by great novelty. The main divisions are the Infancy of our Lord and the Public Life-which is broken into two parts, after the example of Ludolphus, at the Confession of St. Peter and the Transfiguration -the Passion, and the Resurrection. These are in truth the legitimate divisions into which the Gospel narrative naturally falls, and we need hardly repeat how much we prefer these to the not very certain distribution into years. We observe, however, that the author of this volume is somewhat in bondage to traditions as to arrangement which ought to be considered as exploded, such as that which places our Lord's entrance into Galilee after the "first" Pasch, so late as the autumn of the same year, and that which fixes on the Feast of Purim as the Feast at which the first great miracle on the Sabbath day was wrought, as recorded by St. John in his fifth chapter.

3. The author of Tales of Kirkbeck has published an interesting volume, The Life of Madame Louise of France (Rivingtons), the daughter of Louis XV., who became a Carmelite Nun in the Convent at St. Denis. It is strange that the writer should, apparently, not be aware of the very full and complete Life of Madame Louise by the Abbé Proyart, the English translation of which, published in 1808, now lies before us. We say, "apparently not aware," because on comparing the two works it does not seem as if the latter of them were copied from the earlier. At the same time we notice a difference between them which will not make the new volume the more acceptable of the two to our own readers. The author of the Tales of Kirkbeck is perhaps a little afraid of being too Catholic. Thus it is related of Madame Louise, who was consigned to the charge of some Nuns at Fontevrault before she was a year old, that she had a very dangerous illness when she was still an infant. The Abbé Proyart tells us how the Religieuses "had recourse to God, and in the fervour of their prayers made, under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, a vow that if the young Princess recovered, she should, in her honour, be clothed in white for a whole year. She did recover, and was accordingly dressed in white." This circumstance had a great influence upon her when she grew up, and so was worth mentioning; but the writer before us merely says, "she was given up in her early babyhood in a severe illness, and though this alarm proved groundless," &c. (p. 3.) In the same way there is an anecdote of an escape of the Princess while yet at the Court of her father, which she thought was miraculous. Her horse threw her violently while following her father in a hunt, and she fell almost under the feet of the horses of a carriage which was immediately behind her. She invoked the Blessed Virgin as she fell, and was saved-having courage enough to refuse to return home except on the horse which had proved so untractable. Facts of this kind may be omitted here and there without damage to a good memoir; but if there is anything like a systematic exclusion of such details, a life of the kind before us is not what we could wish it to be. For our part, we prefer the Abbé Proyart to the writer of the present volume. Some time ago we inserted a short article (the MONTH, vol. vii., p. 161.) which contained an account of the intended restoration of the old Carmelite Convent, in which Madame Louise lived and died, to the Religious of her own Order. This fact might have been worth mentioning.

4. Mr. Helps is publishing a series of lives taken from his great work, The Spanish Conquest of America. We have already received his Lives of Columbus and Las Casas, and now we have that of Pizarro (Bell and Daldy). The plan of these republications is excellent, and if the series is continued, and Mr. Helps gives us a detached Life of Cortes and a few more, we shall have the greater part of the history in the attractive form of biography. Pizarro's character is well conceived by Mr. Helps, and the exceptions to his

general fairness as to Catholic matters are only occasional.

When

will some one give us a few good lives of the Missionaries whose work was meant to go hand in hand with that of the conquerors, and who were so continually and so cruelly thwarted by them?

5. The Ritualists know well enough how to get up pretty books of devotion. Mr. Orby Shipley's little volume, The Invocation of Saints and Angels (Rivingtons), is quite a specimen of nice printing on beautiful paper. It is, as might be supposed, a compilation almost exclusively from Catholic sources. It takes for granted the view about the condemnation of the Catholic practice in the Thirty-nine Articles, which has lately been put forward by Dr. Forbes of Brechin, and of which we shall only say, that its most significant confutation is the acknowledged fact that every trace of invocation has been most carefully eliminated from all Anglican formularies from the beginning, and that the practice in question has been entirely banished, as far as can be ascertained, even from private teaching among Anglicans by means of the same influence which caused the condemnation of which we speak to be exacted as a solemn pledge from all ministers of the Establishment. If with all this, it be really true that the intention of that Establishment has been to encourage the Catholic practice and to approve of the Catholic doctrine as to Invocation of Saints, all that can be said is, that a very singular way has been adopted of carrying that intention into execution, and that the interpretation put upon the matter by Dr. Forbes, Mr. Shipley, and others of the same school, is a far severer condemnation of their own religious communion than any which its enemies are in the habit of passing upon it. The little volume before us consists of four parts"Conferences," taken from the Paradisus Animæ, Litanies, other prose Devotions, and Hymns; the last, where they are not translations, being, we think, exclusively taken from the works of Father Faber and Father Caswall. A Catholic who turns over the pages will be struck by the absolute omission of all reference to St. Joseph, as well as to the later Saints, and will be somewhat startled at finding our Blessed Lady addressed by a altogether that of "Philanthropic Virgin" (p. 165).

new title

6. Although the English language is spoken over so large a part of the inhabited and civilised world, and although the Catholics who speak that language will be represented by a very considerable proportion out of the whole number of Bishops who will assemble in a few months around the throne of Pius IX. for the Vatican Council, it is unfortunately true, as all who have to labour in the cause of Catholic literature can testify, that the time has not yet come for great undertakings and works of colossal magnitude as parts of that literature. For Theological Dictionaries, Histories of the Church, Commentaries on the whole of Scripture, and the like, we must be content either with standard Latin books, with French translations from the German, or other compilations. A generation

or two hence it will not be so, for American Catholicism, to say nothing of Ireland, England, and the Colonies, is making great progress even in the path of literature. For the present, however, we must be content with translations, and certainly our friends on the other side of the Channel are active enough in supplying their own needs and ours. We have just received the three first volumes of a third French edition (Gaume) of the famous Dictionary of Catholic Theology, published many years ago at Friburg. The London agents are Messrs. Burns and Oates. This is the best dictionary of its kind existing. M. Adrien Le Clerc is engaged in issuing a translation of Hefele's admirable work, The History of Councils. The first volume is ready. Father Kleutgen's work in explanation and defence of the Scholastic Theology is being translated, with the sanction of the author, by P. Sierp. We may mention, as a kindred work, though confined to a single biography, Father Schmoeger's Life of Anne Catherine Emmerich, so well known in this country, by the translator of The Dolorous Passion of our Lord. The first volume of the Life is now ready in French, having been translated by M. de Cazales.

7. The movement among Anglicans which has produced so many Sisterhoods of various kinds is one of the most interesting features in the religious advance throughout the country which has accompanied and fed the movement which has landed so many on the shores of Catholicism. It has its bad and imperfect side, as well as its aspect of good, and no one can be surprised if many of the Sisterhoods to which it has given birth should be badly managed, if the rules have been framed by persons of no experience or competence, and if the delicate system of Religious life, which requires so much wisdom and discretion on all sides, and is fenced in by so many safeguards in the Catholic Church, should lose its beauty and its consoling and elevating power in a foreign soil, and under the manipulation of superiors who have never been trained to obey. Still, we confess that we have little sympathy with exposures of its shortcomings from the Catholic side. We have no right to question the facts stated in the book called Five Years in a Protestant Sisterhood and Ten Years in a Catholic Convent (Longmans), and we have no doubt that the writer has been actuated by a far higher motive than personal hostility in making her statements. Still, they are eminently personal. No one can doubt who are meant by the Miss Jones and the Dr. Smithson of the book, and these widely-respected persons may fairly complain that they have not been attacked more openly still, so as to have an opportunity of self-defence. Surely the writer must see that, after mentioning some "horrible" remarks heard in a railway carriage about two persons very eminent among the best Anglicans, to add "I do not wish to say anything about such matters, and therefore I shall refrain from mentioning details known to myself and to others" (p. 77), is to do almost more harm than if the details had been mentioned.

8. Professor Pepper, in his Cyclopædic Science (Warne), has succeeded in giving to our youth a simple and concise description of the most important discoveries of modern science. His aim has clearly been to foster in the young mind a love for observation, and, by giving it a knowledge of facts, to lead it to inquire into the causes of the wonderful phenomena which nature exhibits. It was by reading Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry that the illustrious Faraday gained his taste for scientific investigation, and we do not doubt that many will be led into the same path by reading this admirable book. It is rendered doubly interesting by the number of brilliant experiments it details. In this Professor Pepper sustains his reputation as a master of experimental science.

9. The Tauchnitz editions of English and American authors are familiar treasures to our countrymen who live or who travel abroad, though obvious reasons prevent their large circulation at home. Baron Tauchnitz has just published the thousandth volume of the series, and he has taken the opportunity of giving the public a real boon. He has published, with the aid of Dr. Tischendorf, a volume containing the New Testament in English, with the various readings of the three great uncial manuscripts, the Vatican, the Sinaitic, and the Alexandrine.

10. We must content ourselves with little more than the bare announcement of several very interesting works, over which we would gladly linger. Mr. Finlason has published the two first volumes of a new edition of Reeve's History of English Law (Reeves and Turner). The merit of the original work is well known, and Mr. Finlason's ample notes will greatly enhance its value. Lady Herbert, whose pen seems never to wear out, has given us a translation of a French life of one of the Priests lately martyred in Corea, Henry Dorié (Burns and Oates). The same publishers have issued a very useful Manual of the Third Order of St. Francis, with a Preface by Father Emidius. Monsignor Woodlock, of the Catholic University, has published a striking lecture, read before a literary society connected with that institution Religion in Education as an instrument of Mental Culture. Father Lockhart is republishing in monthly parts some articles which have appeared in Catholic Opinion, called The Old Religion. We must also mention Mr. O'Mahoney's translation of a short work of Cardinal Gerdil, Brief Exposition of the Origin, Progress, and Marks of the True Religion (Longmans). We have also received a little volume called The Hidden Life (Masters). It is a selection of short passages from Nepveu's Pensées Chrétiennes.