which must always remain sealed to those who do not or will not understand that devotion to our Blessed Lady and the highest possible esteem of her dignity in the Economy of the Incarnation are the natural fruits and the appointed safeguards of a true faith as to that great mystery. It is very seldom that we take upon ourselves earnestly and directly to recommend a particular book to the devout reader, but at the present time there is so much need of intelligent devotion in regard to our Blessed Lady, and so few books calculated to feed it, so that we find here and there even well-informed Catholics inclined to underrate because they do not understand her dignity, her intellectual and spiritual gifts, her powers, and her intimate relation to ourselves, that we cannot help breaking through our rule, and urging all thoughtful Catholics to make a real study of this little volume. 8. A Commentary on the Song of Songs, by Richard J. Littledale (Masters, Aldersgate Street), is a carefully-selected and neatlyarranged compilation of devotional thoughts taken from the writings of leading Catholic commentators on the Canticle of Solomon. It presents a pleasing mosaic-work of selections from their most beautiful thoughts and language, and fairly brings out Catholic doctrine. The commentary is preceded by a long introduction written by the compiler, treating more especially on the Canonicity and authorship of this inspired book, on the methods of its interpretation, and on its spiritual meaning. 9. We must find space for a simple acknowledgment of some publications which we would gladly notice at greater length. Such is a translation of Lacordaire's celebrated Conferences on our Lord (Jesus Christ-Conferences. By the Rev. Père Lacordaire. Washbourne). Such are Dr. Redmond's Eight Sermon Essays, chiefly delivered in the Chapel of St. Edmund's College (Washbourne). Such are Mr. Andrew's Reasons for leaving the Church of England (Philp) and Mr. Husband's Hymns for Catholics (Palmer), a little volume published before the author's reception into the Church, with a page containing a protest against the enforced omission of a hymn on our Blessed Lady; and a very handsomely printed translation of Père Nampon's Catholic Doctrine as defined by the Council of Trent, published at Philadelphia by Mr. Cunningham. We have also to acknowledge the third volume of Mr. Finlason's excellent edition of Reeve's History of English Law (Reeves and Turner), and a new issue of Keenan's Controversial Catechism (Catholic Publishing Company). Oxford Studies and Dr. Gillow. IT is with much reluctance that we are obliged again to revert to the subject of certain mistakes which we lately had to point out as to Oxford studies and the condition of Oxford, in a letter which was addressed to the Dublin Review of last April, and afterwards republished, without alteration, as a pamphlet, by Dr. Gillow (MONTH for July, 1869, pp. 18, 19, and 100-107). These remarks have given umbrage to Dr. Gillow, who has noticed them in a letter printed at the end of the current number of the Dublin Review. Of the tone of that letter we need say nothing, nor of the insinuations which it contains. We must, however, begin by assuring Dr. Gillow that we have never, as he states, cast the slightest imputation on his honour or veracity. We have remarked that he has misquoted, and, as we think, misunderstood, Mr. Pattison, but we do not consider that this necessarily implies bad faith, nor should we allow ourselves or others to make in these pages a charge to that effect against a Catholic writer. Moreover, we were perfectly aware that Dr. Gillow quoted at second hand, and we must add that we very gravely suspected that he knew no more, either of Mr. Pattison's book or of certain articles in the MONTH attacked in his letter of April, than what he had read in the pages of the Dublin Review. But on these topics we were most anxious not to enter, and we dealt with him, in consequence, as we had a perfect right to do, as entirely responsible for the statements which he made. This, we think, he cannot complain of. We point this out only because he appears to us now to see some special animosity against himself in the fact that we disclaimed reference to any one else, having abstained from reading the article in the Dublin from which he took his quotations.* Our readers are aware that we have before this had occasion to complain of a practice quite unusual, as we believe, among literary periodicals, but often followed by the Dublin Review-almost alone among such periodicals; we mean the practice of noticing in one review articles which have appeared in others. We have of late been obliged to enter into controversy in consequence of attacks thus made on us, beginning more than a year ago, and we are determined, as far as possible, not to encourage the system by our own example. Abstinence from this practice on the part of the Dublin Review would have saved and would save Catholics a great deal of troublesome discussion. Our regard for this principle, and our love of peace, must explain to Dr. Gillow why we made him * Dr. Gillow (p. 326) says something about ignorantia affectata, and even seems to question our statement when we say that we have not read the article. We are not in the habit of making false statements, of being accused of doing so, or of accusing others of falsehood. We referred to the article in question simply because certain quotations made by Dr. Gillow from Mr. Pattison, of which we desired to see the context, could not be verified without it. He refers to the page in the Dublin, not to the page in Mr. Pattison's book. On the two or three occasions, therefore, when we had occasion to verify his quotations, we were obliged to look for the reference in the article. That is the whole history of the matter. alone responsible, as far as our remarks were concerned, for statements as to which he undoubtedly assumed full responsibility. When we saw that the Dublin Review had an article on Oxford, we knew that we might not be able to accept its version of facts, and as we might have to write on the subject ourselves, we deliberately abstained from reading the article. Dr. Gillow is too much of an Englishman not to stand up for assertions he has made his own, and if the Dublin Review has misled him, it is for that periodical, in all justice, to acknowledge it. We shall now confine ourselves almost entirely to a simple justification and explanation of the charges which we were obliged to make against Dr. Gillow-charges which would not have been made had not the matter of which we were treating required that misrepresentations should not be left on the public mind. We might have said much more than we did, for Dr. Gillow's letter in April was in great measure an attack on us. He charged us with misleading the Dublin Review into a certain statement about the want of all higher education for Catholics. A more preposterous charge was never made. It has since been confessed in the Dublin Review itself that the writer of the article to which Dr. Gillow referred had never heard of the connection of the Catholic Colleges with the London University. We had drawn the attention of the editor to Dr. Gillow's statement as to us, and it might in fairness have been added by him that, if his writer had read the article in the MONTH from which he quoted the passage which displeased Dr. Gillow, he could not possibly have remained in his ignorance, that article, as well as another, having reference to that very connection. Moreover, Dr. Gillow's letter, with its description of the life of residents at Oxford, appeared to us not only to have been written under a false impression that we had advocated residence at Oxford for Catholic students, but also to be likely to propagate that false impression. Both these points must have been brought to Dr. Gillow's notice in the correspondence which preceded the publication of his letter as a pamphlet, and yet on neither of them did he make the slightest acknowledgment. We shall now state the impression produced on us by Dr. Gillow's letter as to his state of mind. We supposed, and there is nothing in Dr. Gillow's letter (in April) to contradict the supposition, that he was not aware of the existence of any other schools for Honours at Oxford except those of Litera Humaniores, and perhaps that of Mathematics.* Not only is there nothing in his letter to contradict this supposition, but there is much to confirm it, for he applies to them the general term "Honours Schools." Mr. Pattison having said that certain results follow from a passage through the schools of this department, Dr. Gillow applies his words to a passage through the Honours Schools in general. It was our own purpose to point out the fact that * Such ignorance, we may add, is not uncommon, even among Catholics formerly acquainted with Oxford, and it is not so surprising in Dr. Gillow as the ignorance of the Dublin Reviewer about London. The new schools to which we refer have been added since the date of most of the earlier conversions. We believe we are not wrong in supposing that the writer in the Dublin, who, a year ago charged us with having proposed something that was equivalent to the sending Catholics to be examined in theology in a Calvinist University by Calvinist examiners, was as ignorant of the existence of these new schools as we supposed Dr. Gillow to be. This charge against us was at the best, reckless and premature, because we had only suggested the possibility of Oxford examinations for (non-resident) Catholics in a few lines in the course of articles devoted this school alone was supposed to be fraught with danger, on account of the philosophy required for it. Mr. Pattison had distinctly said that danger was not supposed to lurk in the curriculum of the other Honours Schools, and Dr. Gillow, in quoting the passage, deliberately omitted the words in which this exclusion was conveyed. Nay more, he also added other words which confirmed the false impression produced by his omission. Mr. Pattison had said, "This" school "the party must either conquer, or be content to see" certain bad results; and Dr. Gillow had quoted him, "This party must either conquer (by excluding this philosophy from the course of teaching)." These words certainly seem to us to confirm the impression that no part of the course of teaching in any school open as a means of obtaining the degree was free from the danger which Mr. Pattison expressly confined to one school. Dr. Gillow now answers by acknowledging the omission; but he says that we ought not to have misunderstood him, "seeing," to use his own words, "that I nowhere allude to any other than the School of Arts, that my argument in all that part of the letter is exclusively engaged with the honour curriculum of that school, that I had specified that school a few lines above, and that I had done the same explicitly in two places on the previous page" (Dublin Review, p. 320). Again he says that he had made a “limitation" of his statement by inserting the words Litera Humaniores where Mr. Pattison had not put them. Now it is precisely because Dr. Gillow nowhere mentions the existence of the other schools in an article on the general subject of the Oxford curriculum; it is precisely because he nowhere even "alludes to them," that his omission is a grave misrepresentation of Mr. Pattison's account of the Oxford schools in general, and of the facts of the case. We must object to the word "limitation." Unless other schools were mentioned, unless Dr. Gillow's readers were allowed to know that others existed not fraught with the same dangers as to philosophy, through which those who seek University Honours may pass without touching "philosophy" at all in their examinations, Dr. Gillow's mention of the Litera Humaniores was a specification of the character of the school, but not quite a "limitation." Α limitation implies a distinction, and Dr. Gillow never hinted at anything at Oxford distinct from the Litera Humaniores. He was either aware of the existence of the other schools, or he was not. If he was not, he might very well have passed Mr. Pattison's words over as speaking of what he did not understand, and what was not to his purpose. It is always a dangerous, and it is a very unusual course, to alter a quotation, and Dr. Gillow's readers would certainly not expect it of him. He might have done it, as we thought, in perfect good faith-but he misrepresented Mr. Pattison all the same. Moreover, he did something more than this. His letter was partly to other subjects, and it might have been supposed that if we had developed our plan we should not propose to take Catholics from the examinations at London only to subject them at Oxford to those same dangers of which we had spoken so strongly. The charge was afterwards withdrawn only to be renewed that is, it was acknowledged that we did not mean what was imputed to us, but it was asserted that our words signified it. Now, we should be glad to know from the writer of whom we are speaking, whether or not, when he made that second charge, he was aware that Oxford honours, unlike those of London, can be gained in three schools without philosophy? If he was not, his own ignorance, and not our language, was the ground of his charge, and it would only be fair to say so. We hope to see him acknowledge this. an attack on us for having incidentally suggested, in articles on the evils resulting from the connection of Catholic Colleges with the London University-though as to this object of ours he was silent-that it might be possible, under altered circumstances, to obtain degrees for Catholics at Oxford or Cambridge on better terms than at London. Dr. Gillow's letter speaks generally of the education of Oxford, of the studies necessary for a degree there, and so on, and compares them unfavourably with the London course and the London degrees. If he was aware that there were three schools at Oxford where B.A. honours might be obtained without the slightest danger of the great evil, which he deplores almost as much as ourselves, of the examination of Catholics in philosophy by Protestant examiners, why did he not let his readers know of this signal and undeniable advantage of Oxford over London? Why did he, by the omission of Mr. Pattison's words about the three other schools in which danger was not supposed to lurk, deprive his readers of that one passage in all his letter which would have put it in their power to understand the preference which the MONTH had incidentally expressed for the connection of Catholics with the elder Universities? We must confess that we are still unwilling to think that Dr. Gillow can consciously have been guilty of so unfair a reticence. We observe that he does not, in his present article, anywhere, as far as we know, say in plain terms that he knew of the existence of these new schools referred to by Mr. Pattison. If he did, he certainly took good care that his readers should not.* The remaining charges with which Dr. Gillow finds fault will be found by any one who takes the trouble to consult Mr. Pattison's book to be true to the letter and to the spirit also. When Mr. Pattison speaks of those who pass through the school of Litera Humaniores being hopelessly lost to a certain party, Dr. Gillow erroneously represents him as speaking of the Honour Schools in general, and not of one only, and of Catholics as well as of Tractarians. This is exactly what we said, and what we now repeat. Dr. Gillow tries to answer this by producing another passage in which Mr. Pattison represents Catholics as justly uneasy at the state of the schools of Oxford; but our correction applies to the particular passage misrepresented by Dr. Gillow. We here, however, plead guilty to overgreat brevity. It would have required some sentences to explain why Mr. Pattison ought not to be received as a sound authority as to the dangers to Catholics of the Oxford philosophical schools-if. of course, such Catholics are fortified by a true system of philosophy, as Dr. Gillow's own pupils are who go to the London examinations. Mr. Pattison, in short, does not think there can be any Catholic philosophy-as Dr. Gillow will see if he reads his book. Dr. Gillow does not believe that Catholics (well prepared) who undergo an examination in philosophy before Protestant examiners are to be "hopelessly lost" to the Church. The case of Tractarians sure * We are quite unable to understand what Dr. Gillow means in p. 520, where, referring to some words of ours, he says he is represented as imagining "that honours could be gained in three other schools, provided the candidate first sought honours in the School of Arts." We said in the plainest words that he did not seem to be aware that it is possible and necessary to pass in Arts and to take the B. A. honours in three other schools." We said he did not seem to know what he understands us as saying that he imagined! More over, to pass in Arts is not to take honours. We have since learnt that it is not even necessary to pass in Arts (if certain honours have been obtained at Moderations), in order to gain honours in the other schools. |