Dur Library Table.

1. OUR French neighbours are more in the habit than we are of republishing in volumes articles of general or special interest which have from time to time appeared in the pages of periodicals. With ourselves this useful process is almost limited to the serial novel, or to the miscellaneous articles of some writer who has made himself a great name in literature. With these exceptions, the essays which have often cost great labour, or which have, at all events, been the bye-work of men of very great ability and industry, are left to the oblivion which naturally settles on large collections of miscellaneous writings the object of which has been chiefly ephemeral. It would be well if we could either follow more generally the foreign plan, according to which many works of great importance appear in the first instance as a series of articles, and are then issued in a collected form, or, at all events, if we could adopt more frequently the system of republishing from time to time selections of the best essays on various subjects which have appeared in this or that periodical.

The work which has suggested to us these remarks is the republication of certain very able and learned essays, chiefly on biblical subjects, from the pen of the late much-lamented Abbé Le Hir (Etudes Bibliques. Par M. l'Abbé Le Hir. 2 tom. Paris: Albanel, 1869). These essays were originally published in the Etudes of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus in France. The Abbé Le Hir was Professor of Scripture and Hebrew at St. Sulpice, and his knowledge of Oriental languages and other matters belonging to the sphere of labour to which he devoted himself was quite unrivalled. There are but few very learned men in this department of knowledge, and the Abbé Le Hir might be almost said to have stood at the head of those very few. He was a student rather of the grand old monastic stamp than of our own degenerate era, and the slight and short memoir concerning him which has been prefixed by the editor to the volumes now before us gives us a glimpse of higher and more valuable qualities in him than those of a mere student. We are glad to see that his life is to be published, and we shall look with great interest to the opportunity which it will furnish us of becoming personally acquainted with so admirable a specimen of the Christian man of learning.

The two volumes now before us by no means exhaust what remains of M. Le Hir's labours, but as his time was mainly devoted to teaching and to other practical duties in the Community of which he was so great an ornament, we fear that those who are to know this most

learned man only by his printed works will reap far less fruit from his immense industry and power of clear arrangement of his materials than might have been wished and expected. However, what we have is of the highest value. The first essay is on the Prophets of Israel, occasioned by some pretentious and shallow articles of M. Reville in the Revue des Deux Mondes, the only merit of which is to have called forth, by way of confutation, so much of true learning and admirable argument from M. Le Hir. As it is, the form of the essay suffers somewhat from its controversial character, and it would have been well if it could have been recast, as Dr. Newman's Apologia was to some extent recast, with the omission of all reference to the impertinences which gave occasion to its publication. We may call especial attention to the masterly vindication (vol. i., pp. 85-138) of the unity and integrity of the prophecies of Isaias. The next essay, containing five articles, is a perfect and exhaustive monograph on the curious Apocryphal book, the "Fourth Book of Esdras." The essays then pass to the New Testament. M. Le Hir has left behind him a critical estimate of the Syriac Version of the Gospel, published in 1858 by Dr. Cureton. He thinks very highly of the value of this extremely old version-much older than the Peschito, of which he considers it to have been the earliest form. He even traces its influence in the old "Itala," the Latin version in circulation before the Vulgate. We have next a very important paper on the famous text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, unfortunately not quite complete, but which may perhaps be supplemented from other notes of M. Le Hir which still exist. Articles follow on the Apocryphal "Apocalypses," and on the Apocryphal writings relating to the Assumption of our Blessed Lady. These essays exhaust M. Le Hir's contributions to subjects strictly biblical. The next department of his "remains" relates to the "origins" of Christianity. The first essay was occasioned by a now forgotten book by Mr. Ernest Bunsen, The Hidden Wisdom of Christ and the Key of Knowledge, published in 1865, the object of which was to derive Christianity from Zoroaster, and which was introduced to the French public by M. Emile Burnouf in the Revue des Deux Mondes. M. Rénan's Les Apôtres forms the subject of another essay. dealing with M. Rénan, M. l'Abbé Le Hir had to deal with a former pupil, who owed to him, we believe, most of his information on subjects connected with Oriental literature. M. Le Hir seems to have thought it hardly worth his while to finish his confutation of M. Rénan's frothy imaginings. The third work in this department is an Etude sur les temps Apostoliques, occasioned by an article in the Révue Germanique of 1858, written by M. Michel Nicolas, a professor at the Protestant College of Montauban. The article was a repro

In

duction of the fancies of certain modern Germans about the Petrine and Pauline parties in their conflict with Judaism and the Judaizers. There is yet a fourth series of essays in the volumes of which we are giving an account, relating to early Christian history and tradition. It contains articles on the Philosophumena, St. Callixtus and St.

Ephrem, and Syriac poetry. A paper on Phænician Inscriptions—in which M. Rénan suffers considerable exposure-and another on North American languages, conclude the collection. There is really nothing in these two volumes which is not precious, and we can but wish that the example and memory of M. Le Hir may raise up in the French Church a generation of learned men as judicious, as modest, as industrious, and as thoroughly Christian as himself.

2. Immortality is the striking title prefixed by Mr. Perowne to the Hulsean Lectures delivered by him in 1868. His object in these discourses is to show that a craving for immortality is implanted in the breast of every man, but that the certainty of a future life can only be deduced from the Revelation of Christ, and cannot be proved from reason. Erroneous, as we hope to show in the sequel, as is the belief that certainty of the soul's immortality is only given by Revelation, we are glad to be able to say much, nevertheless, in general praise of these lectures. In the first, on a " Future Life,” Mr. Perowne reviews briefly the arguments advanced by Materialists, Pantheists, and Spiritualists, in support of their respective theories. He is singularly happy in his treatment of Materialism. He takes it on its own ground, and in a few trenchant sentences shows up the sophistry of a system which unfortunately is spreading widely amongst educated men in England and on the Continent. What special attraction Materialism can possess, we are at a loss to discover. True, it can claim a kind of daring novelty, for it destroys the distinction between mind and matter, limits the sphere of knowledge to sensible things, says that beyond the grave there is nothing, and that, life over, the same destiny awaits man and beast. Mr. Perowne examines the proofs on which these strange assertions rest. He finds that Materialists hold that there is an invariable relation between the brain and thought, and therefore they conclude that the brain is the cause of thought! Even supposing the truth of the antecedent, it is not easy to see how the consequent flows from it, unless indeed condition, circumstance, and cause be identical. Facts correspond to one another, therefore they are not two facts but one; certain phenomena are linked together, therefore they are of the same nature! Mr. Perowne admirably concludes (p. 11), that arguing after this fashion, we should be justified in affirming that because the magnetic force is always found in the loadstone, therefore the magnetic force is the product of the loadstone. Such are the arguments of the Materialist, and pointing to these he bids us lay aside Revelation and silence the voices of reason and of conscience which speak of another life beyond the tomb. Mr. Perowne is not less happy in his treatment of Pantheism. The particular feature of the hydra-headed monster which he undertakes to represent is (if we remember right) what we find delineated in the philosophy of Schelling. Our author shows that Pantheism in reality robs man of immortality by depriving him of personality after death. If the soul returns to, and becomes merged in, the "great

informing, self-evolving spirit," it is no longer the being that "thought and suffered, and toiled on earth." Between its past and future state there is no connecting link. The individual has no stimulus to duty in the prospect of future reward, for after death man loses his individuality, and has no separate existence. Mr. Perowne, in some telling sentences, next points out what he conceives to be the "likeness and unlikeness” of Pantheism to Christianity.

And now we pass to his views on Spiritualism—that is, "the system which admits a belief in God and the immortality of the soul apart from Revelation." Our author states with great fairness, in a popular way, some of the arguments by which reason establishes the soul's immortality. They are drawn from the consideration of the heart, intellect, and conscience of man; he also mentions the well-known moral argument from the constitution of the world. In page 31, our author says that these arguments confirm the instinctive hope of immortality, but cannot make a future life certain. Apart from Revelation, according to him, arguments from reason have no weight. This is Mr. Perowne's thesis with which we are at issue. And we give the reason of our dissent by offering for his consideration one of the arguments which the schools, following St. Thomas (p. i., q. 75, a. 6), adduce to prove the soul's immortality. A desire that springs from the essence of a rational being cannot be frustrate (inane). To deny this is to impugn the justice of God. For were God to create a being in whom such a desire was innate, and yet impede its fulfilment without the creature's fault, He would make the guiltless miserable. Now all naturally desire, as is evident, their own proper mode of existence. As desire follows knowledge, sense will naturally desire what is sensible, intellect what is intelligible. But the sensible is contingent and in time, the intelligible necessary and eternal; therefore the rational soul, apprehending the necessary and eternal, will naturally desire what is necessary and eternal. And as this desire is essential to the soul, it imports its existence throughout eternity. We fearlessly offer this proof, taken from the very essence of things, as sufficient to remove all doubt regarding the soul's immortality. We are of course ready to admit, with all Catholic philosophers, that the certainty of the soul's immortality, of the existence of God, and the like, is greater because of the testimony of Revelation than it would be relying on reason alone. In the former case certainty depends on a supernatural, in the latter on a natural, motive. Furthermore, we willingly grant that the revealing of many truths which do not exceed the scope of reason falls within the ordinary economy of Divine Providence. Through defect of intellect or of education, many would be unable to attain, without the aid of Revelation, to the knowledge of what is necessary for salvation. But we cannot agree with our author when he asserts that arguments from reason still leave us in doubt as to the life of the soul after death. It is gratifying to see a Protestant writer come forward as a staunch upholder of Revelation; but experience shows that Revelation has no worse enemies than those who

exalt it by unduly depressing reason. To our mind, the depreciation of reason is the great defect that pervades these lectures, otherwise exceedingly interesting. On a question so vital as immortality, Mr. Perowne must not be astonished if we dwell on an error which seems to us worthy of animadversion. And we do this the more readily because we feel convinced that our author, in limiting the power of reason, is unconsciously favouring that very Materialism which he refutes with such singular ability. Once grant the Materialists that reason cannot impart the certainty of life beyond the grave, and he will on his own principles deny a fortiori that Revelation can.

In the lectures on the "Hope of the Gentile," the "Hope of the Jew," and the "Hope of the Christian," will be found much to repay perusal. They abound with eloquent passages, which breathe a spirit of piety and deep trust in God. They are, as we might have expected, unfortunately marred by that same erroneous view which we have just noticed in his lecture on a Future Life." Thus, in the fourth lecture he says (p. 92): "We have seen how deep-rooted the conviction of another life is, and, at the same time, how unable reason is to attain to certainty respecting it. On the one hand, man craves and yearns. for immortality; on the other hand, a future life seems to slip away from him in proportion as he strives to satisfy himself of its reality. Reason and conscience are alike witnesses to the truth, but they can neither create the truth, nor discover the truth, nor prove the truth." The italics are ours. Apart from this opinion, with much that Mr. Perowne says we can agree and sympathise.

3. A new volume from the pen of the author of Le Récit d'une Sour and Anne Séverin is sure to arouse attention, not only in France but in England, where both the works just named have become known by excellent translations. Mrs. Craven's present publication is almost too slight and graceful to bear the same transformation. It is a little volume consecrated to the memory of a single friend, whose life might have been thought hardly sufficiently striking to attract public interest. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful life, beautifully sketched. Adelaide Capece Minutolo was of a very noble Neapolitan family; her mother was a Spanish lady of quite illustrious birth, who lost her husband while her three daughters were extremely young, and who struggled gallantly, and at last successfully, to retrieve the fortune of which certain reverses had deprived her. They lost their mother just as they attained womanhood. The eldest married; Adelaide, the second, and her younger sister, tenderly attached to one another, resolved to spend their lives together, and persevered in their determination never to marry. They lived in a beautiful villa at Posilippo, looking out on Naples, Vesuvius, the matchless Bay, with Castellamare and Sorrento, with their background of mountains, right opposite. Literature, music, and painting were their occupations, and though they did not go into society, their own villa was open on certain days to the