embodiment or representation, or it will be tyranny. A catholic authority built up by man, as the Fourierists propose, even were it possible, would be the most oppressive tyranny imaginable. All who, outside of the Church, aspire to unity or catholicity doom themselves to endless contradictions and perpetual defeats. So far as they aspire to unity and catholicity we rejoice, because the aspiration may lead them one day to the Church; so far as they so aspire out of the Church, and to a unity or catholicity which is to rival hers—we remember our own madness and folly a short time since, and check the utterance of the words which press upon our lips. Yet we must tell

them, and we do it in no spirit of exultation, that they labor in vain. Nothing they can do will prosper. They will not believe us now. When we spoke to them from the weakness and ignorance of our own heart, they listened, they believed. Now, when we speak to them, not our own feeble words, not our own darkened wisdom, but the words which have come to us from above, words as true as that God exists, they will not believe us, and we speak but to the winds. O, would to God that they could but know the experience of a Catholic for one hour! O, would they could but for one moment behold the immaculate Spouse of the Lamb, that dear Mother of the faithful, as she looks in her maternal affection on her children! The hardest heart would melt, the most skeptical would believe. O God, must so many souls, for whom thou hast died, be lost? Must that terrible agony thou didst suffer in the garden be constantly renewed each day to the end of the world? O, are we men with hearts, and yet indifferent? Hast thou done all, suffered all, given thyself, to win our love, and we will not give thee our hearts? But let it be as thou wilt. We tell our Transcendental friends that what they crave and seek they may find in the Church, and can find nowhere else. May God give them grace to seek and find. They will do it, many of them, we hope, and the ravages of sin, of heresy, and schism finally be checked, and, in some degree, repaired. For such a result we can all pray, if we can do nothing else; and the faithful need not to be informed that prayer does more for the conversion of the world than argument.

ART. V.-LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1.- Poverty and the Baronet's Family: a Catholic Novel. By the late HENRY DIGBY BESTE, Esq. Philadelphia: Wm. J. Cunningham. 1846. 12mo. pp. 287.

Of the author of this book we know nothing except what we learn from the book itself. From a short biographical notice prefixed to the story, it would seem that he was an Englishman, educated at Oxford, and, for a time, a minister of the English Church; that he subsequently became a Catholic, devoted the remainder of his life to the cause of Catholicity, and finally died in 1836, hoping in the mercy of God as "the reward of an honest life." The book itself bears very strong evidence of having been, in part, at least, written by one born on the other side of St. George's Channel, and some eight or nine years after the death of its reputed author. Whether Mr. Beste is a real or fictitious person we know not; and whether the work was really written by him, or by some one in his name, or whether it has been simply compiled by some nameless editor from papers left by him, is more than we know; but if this last, we hope the editor will be more explicit in his next edition, and give us some means of distinguishing what belongs to him and what to the author. It is just as easy to make a straight-forward statement as a circuitous one, and we demand clear and honest statements in a Catholic work. The novel itself we have read with much interest. It is written with life and earnestness, with great truth to nature, and many of its scenes are marked by a high order of genius. Most of the characters are admirably drawn and well sustained, the various incidents of the narrative fall in naturally, and the general grouping, if we may so express ourselves, betokens very respectable artistic skill. The moral intended to be inculcated by the novel is excellent. The author has wished to do justice to the virtues of the humbler classes of society, and to show us that all which is really valuable in human character, all that is really desirable in human life, may be found in the hovel of poverty as well as in the palace of wealth. Lady Foxglove may well envy Albert O'Meara's poor widow. He also aims to enlist our sympathies, and to confirm our respect, for the Irish peasantry, by describing their labors, their trials, their privations, their generous sentiments, their self-denial, and, above all, their simple, unaffected piety, and to teach us that the best service we can render them is voluntarily to share with them their lot in life. All this is excellent, and in the very spirit of our holy religion. We raise the poor, not by making them rich, not by changing their external condition, but by becoming poor, and willingly sharing their labors and privations. The cultivated and noble Bryan O'Meara, living the life of the poor cotter, and mingling on equal terms with his poor countrymen, and seeking, by his intelligence, his refinement, his virtues, his piety, to honor the peasant's calling, is a lesson of immense value. It is, in our degree, imitating the sublime example of Him "who for our sakes became poor.

But, unhappily, the author does not continue true to his first thought. The Christian soon loses himself in the man of the world. His hero soon sinks from the Christian hero into the revolutionist. While we thought he was voluntarily placing himself on a level with his countrymen, and

seeking to alleviate their labors and sufferings by sharing them with them, we find he was organizing them for a political movement against the existing government, and placing himself at the head of the conjurati. Here is a fall from heaven to earth, and a complete abandonment of the sublime morality with which the work commences.

Having once fallen to the earth, the author cannot rise again to heaven. His peasant must no longer be a peasant. He must be a nobleman, the heir of a princely estate, and marry a baronet's daughter. Bah! Bryan O'Meara, as the peasant, placed by his superior education and refinement, and the munificence of the friends he had won, above his order, and yet voluntarily consenting to remain a peasant, and to limit his ambition to what he can do without going out of his order, content to labor and suffer here, looking only to the reward hereafter, is a character we love to contemplate, for it recalls the heroic virtues of the saints. But Bryan become the O'Meara, the possessor of a princely estate, the husband of Sir Cecil Foxglove's daughter, sinks into the class of ordinary mortals, and we have henceforth no more interest in him than we have in My Lord This or My Lord That. If we were to hazard a conjecture, we should say the first part of the story was written by one hand, with one design, and the last part by another hand, with quite another design; -the first part by a Catholic, the last part by some one who thinks true wisdom is to make sure of this world, and leave to Providence the care of that which is to

come.

The true Catholic Christian is indifferent to the vain distinctions of this world. Sin reduces and grace elevates all to the same level. All are to be judged by the same law, the prince and the peasant, the lord and his serf, the master and his slave. Where distinctions of rank exist, the Catholic leaves them to exist, for he is too indifferent to them to seek to remove them; and where they do not exist, he does not seek to introduce them, for he knows they are worthless. Before God he knows the master has no preeminence over his slave, and he has learned that heaven lies as near to the lowly cottage as to the lordly mansion. Rank and wealth are of no avail, if the possessor is not elevated by grace to the heirship of heaven; and poverty and want of rank are no evil to him who, through grace, is made a joint heir of all things with the Son of God. He thus is contented with his state in life, whatever it be, and seeks to elevate the condition of all, not by obliterating distinctions, not by clanging the external order of things, but by doing his best to bring all to the love and practice of the true religion, and by inducing all, as far as in him lies, to look beyond this short pilgrimage, beyond this vale of tears, to the Holy City, to the eternal heavens, our true home, where alone are to be found treasures worth the seeking.

2.-Zenosius; or the Pilgrim Convert. By REV. C. C. PISE, D. D. New York: Edward Dunigan. 1845. 18mo. pp. 279.

MR. DUNIGAN is one of our most liberal, enterprising, and meritorious publishers. His publications are all sent out in a neat and chaste style, and some of them are fine specimens of the typographic art. The work before us is the first number of a series of publications he is issuing from

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time to time, under the general title of "Dunigan's Home Library." It needs no recommendation from us. Its author is an accomplished scholar, a graceful and classical writer, with a rich and fervid imagination, and an earnest and unostentatious piety. Few men among us labor more diligently or successfully to furnish the Catholic public with pleasant and profitable reading, or to create and extend a pure and elevated literary taste. The general plan of Zenosius is excellent, and, if the author had allowed himself sufficient space to fill it up, it would have been a work of great and permanent value. It is well adapted to its purpose as it is, but it might have been made to answer a much higher purpose. Yet it may be wrong to say so. In the present state of the public taste, perhaps there is no greater service that we can render our Catholic community than to furnish works adapted to general reading, especially to the capacities and wants of the mass, who will not read elaborate treatises, or works which treat their subjects in any other than a light, graceful, and popular manWe have no alternative, but either to furnish them with a class of works of our own, adapted to their actual wants, or to leave them to be corrupted by the light, superficial, mischievous literature which is constantly issuing from the Protestant press. What at first, then, we might be disposed to censure in Dr. Pise as a defect, we may, perhaps, upon second thought, find reason to commend as a merit.

ner.

3.- The Bible against Protestantism. By the RT. REV. Dr. Shiel. Boston Thomas Swaney. 1846. 12mo. pp. 296.

THIS is an American reprint of a work by an Irish prelate, if we have been rightly informed, and of a work which has been highly esteemed. Its design is to show that the Bible is against Protestantism and in strict accordance with Catholicity. It is written in the form of a conference between three brothers, one a Catholic, one an Episcopalian, and the other a Presbyterian. It is a work of much solid merit, and is a good reply to those Protestants who are so strongly addicted to Bibliolatry. It is very handsomely printed, and is sold at a reasonable price. We trust it finds a ready and extensive sale.

4. Father Felix: a Tale. By the Author of " Mora Carmody," &c. &c. Tears on the Diadem; or the Crown and Cloister. A Tale of the White and Red Roses. By MRS. ANNA H. DORSEY.

THESE two little volumes make Nos. 2 and 3 of Dunigan's Home Library, but may be purchased separately. They perhaps are all we could ask them to be. The fault we find with them is, that, though they have a Catholic costume and inculcate some Catholic doctrines, they have too many affinities with the spirit of Protestant novels and romances, and tend rather to feed a sickly sentimentalism than to nourish a robust piety. If we are to have romances, we must be on our guard against copying Prot

estant models. The formal Catholic teaching they may contain will avail little, if the tone and temper be Anticatholic. Romance deals with the passions and tends directly to strengthen them, and therefore to defeat the aims of our holy religion. Romance and novel readers are a helpless race of mortals, always discontented, imagining themselves in a false position, that nobody understands them, and that all things are against them. They are thrown open to every temptation, and unfitted for resistance. We must be exceedingly cautious, then, if we write works of fiction, that their temper, their inner soul, be sound and healthy, that they breathe the spirit of enlightened and solid piety, of heaven, not of earth. The best models to be studied we are acquainted with are the exquisite tales of Canon Schmidt. We never read one of these but we feel armed for the spiritual combat, and strengthened to fight manfully against our spiritual enemies.

5.-St. Augustine's Confessions or Praises of God.

In Ten Books.

Newly translated into English from the Original Latin. New York and Boston: D. & J. Sadlier. 1846. 18mo. pp. 381.

THIS work is too well known to require any farther notice than the simple announcement, that a new edition of it is published, and may be obtained of Messrs. Sadlier, at their bookstores in New York and in this city, where, we are pleased to learn, they have recently opened a branch of their establishment.

6. A Short Treatise on Prayer, adapted to all Classes of Christians. From the Italian of ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI. Baltimore: F. Lucas, Jr. 1846. 32mo. pp. 205.

LET every one who desires to advance in Christian perfection buy, read, and study this invaluable little treatise on prayer, which its sainted author preferred to all his other works.

7.- The Way of Salvation; or Meditations for every Day in the Year, From the Italian of ST. ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, by REV. JAMES JONES, Baltimore: F. Lucas, Jr. 1846. 32mo.

pp. 409.

A PIOUS book, and admirably adapted to aid the growth of piety in those who use it.

8. The Ursuline Manual. New York: Edward Dunigan. The Flowers of Piety. New York: by the same.

1845.

THESE two prayer-books are too well known and too highly appreciated to stand in need of any notice. We mention them for the beautiful man