When Kate

nocent interest or an innocent amusement. leaps Moll Pitcher over a six foot wall, flanked by ditches, and does it without any necessity, I may admire her courage and horsemanship, but still hold that it is a rash act, and one not to be applauded. We may admire the cunning, the dexterity, and skill of Lanty in his various tricks, and yet think some of them such as no honest man can play. We do not ask that every essay should be a homily, that every story should have a moral tacked to the end, like one of Æsop's Fables, or that every song should be a sacred hymn or a divine psalm. We are willing to give nature fair play, but we are not willing to commend nature when it opposes faith or morals. We admire Swift, but we would not commend his Tale of a Tub, or recommend writers to copy his smut, although his genius was great, his patriotism praiseworthy, and he, for the most part, one of the most elegant writers in the language.

With regard to another point made against Dr. Henshaw, that he is harsh and bitter in his personal address to Protestants, we acknowledge that any one behaving as the doctor is said to have behaved is rude, ill-bred, and savage, and that we know nothing that can excuse him. There is nothing in our religion that forbids one to be a gentleman, or to observe the usual courtesies of civilized life. But there is a difference between laying down for the public at large the doctrines of the Church as she teaches them, or refuting the errors against them, and speaking face to face with one who, though not yet a Catholic, is not indisposed to be convinced of the truth of our religion. In the latter case, as in the former, one must be firm and uncompromising, but should consider the state or temper of mind of the particular individual he is addressing, and speak accordingly. There is no harm in having a little savoir-faire, but never should we hesitate to impress, as far as in our power, on any one we converse with on the subject, that salvation is attainable in our Church, and not elsewhere.

ART. VII.-LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1. Letters to an Episcopalian on the Origin, History, and Doctrine of the Book of Common Prayer. By AUGUSTINE BEDE. Baltimore: Kelly, Hedian & Piet. 12mo. pp. 306.

We cannot say that, personally, we take much interest in the questions discussed in this solid volume; but that is no reason for supposing that others may not. The Anglican controversy has been well nigh exhausted, and is beginning to be a bore. In England the Anglican Church is a State establishment, interwoven with the English constitution, and placed under the civil administration; in this country the Protestant Episcopal Church affords a sort of wayside inn for those who believe too much to be no-churchmen, and too little to accept the Church of God. The Episcopalians are, socially considered, a very respectable class of the American people, but theologically they are decidedly the least consistent of all Protestant sects. They are always too much or too little. Nevertheless, the sect has existed and played a considerable part in its day, and will continue to be highly esteemed by that class of our people who are unwilling to pass for heretics, and who lack the courage to be orthodox. Theirs is the religion of compromise, and seeks a reconciliation between extremes, by observing the via media between Rome and Geneva, that is to say, between truth and falsehood.

The Book of Common Prayer is a curious book, and a fair exponent of the English mind, which clings to tradition and old usages, and yet favors innovation, and what it calls progress. The elements of the English Constitution belong to Catholic times. Since the revolution the English people have only developed them, and made some improvements in their practical working. In like manner, the Book of Common Prayer is principally retained from the services of the Catholic Church rejected by the Reformers. The sources whence it has been derived, the alterations introduced into the Service of the Church, and the changes it has undergone, are doctrinally and historically treated in the volume before us with competent knowledge, even candor, and excellent temper. We commend the work to all who feel any curiosity on the subject, and to all for whom the controversy with Anglicanism is a living

controversy. The English mind is one of compromise, an excellent mind in politics, where we are often obliged to stop short in carrying out abstract principles, to balance one principle by another, and to be contented with the expedient; but a bad sort of mind in religion, where no departure from principle, or stopping short in principle, is allowed. In Catholic countries there may have been a greater or less tendency to transfer the unity which it is necessary to assert in faith and Church authority to the political order. In constitutional governments, like the English, there is always a tendency to transfer the ideas proper in the political to the spiritual order, and to model the Church after the State, which destroys unity and dogmatic consistency. This is the fault of the English people. The truth is, religion and politics belong to different orders, and the State, as to organization, should not be modelled after the Church, nor the Church after the State, simply because the Church is assisted and protected in its own order by the Holy Ghost, and the State is never infallible or impeccable, but always partakes more or less of human infirmity.

2. Pie IX. et La France en 1849 et en 1859. Par le COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT. Paris: Jacques Le Coffre & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 74.

THIS pamphlet originally appeared as an article in Le Correspondant of October 25, 1859. It obtained for that periodical the honor of a first warning, and the edition of the pamphlet has been seized by the government, and a prosecution of the author commenced. One year ago, it will be recollected, the noble author was prosecuted and condemned for writing an article in the same periodical, in which he was accused of having praised the English Constitution at the expense of the political régime of his own country; now he is to be prosecuted, among other things, for applying to the foreign policy of England, especially with regard to Italy, the epithet "ignoble." We hope those of our Catholic friends who found so much fault with the severity of our censure of the former prosecution will now see that we were not so far wrong as they imagined. It is not very wise to take Louis Napoleon for a Catholic leader. The article is a reply to the Imperial pamphlet published some months ago, entitled Napoleon III. and

Italy. Count de Montalembert responds to that pamphlet with Pius IX. and France, and though he cannot back his response with an army of six hundred thousand of the best armed and disciplined troops in the world, he has made a response which cannot fail to fetch an echo from every genuine Catholic heart throughout the world, and which we fear the Imperial government will not profit by. Pius IX. and France is one of the best things we have ever seen from the pen of its illustrious author, and is worthy of the lay-leader of the Catholic party in France.

A certain number of Catholic Bishops in France, hoping, no doubt, to find in Louis Napoleon a protector of the Church and a defender of Catholic interests, went, in 1852 and 1853, beyond all reasonable bounds in their adulation of the Prince, their praise of his noble intentions, and their commendation of the new régime he introduced. In so doing, they forgot the reserve which they should have maintained, and compromised the whole French Episcopacy, since no correction of their extravagance, no protest against their indiscreet zeal, could be made by their more sober and judicious brethren. The freedom of the press had been annihilated, and even if it had not been, any protest would have been taken as placing the Church in opposition to the Emperor, and given him a pretext for oppressing her, and abridging religious liberty. They only could safely speak who approved and eulogized the Emperor and the Imperial régime, all others were obliged to be silent. This is now beginning to be understood, and a Catholic in this country is much freer to tell the truth about Louis Napoleon in January, 1860, than he was in January, 1859. The Emperor has lost much of the confidence reposed in him by Catholics in the United States, and the Catholic publicist may now represent him in his true light, without being accused of treachery to his religion. The noble Pastorals of the French prelates ordering prayers for the Holy Father, have opened the eyes of many who one year ago could see in the Nephew of his Uncle only a worthy successor of Charlemagne.

For ourselves, our view of the Emperor and his policy have undergone no change from the first. We have always given him credit for rare ability, and we have always supported him as the chief of the State in France, and preferred him to a Bourbon; but at the same time we have never regarded him as likely to make any sacrifice for the interests of religion. His policy has been,

from the first, to use all parties, and to yield himself up to the exclusive views of none. Within certain limits he would support the Catholic party, and within certain limits he would also support tho Socialist party. A Catholic party seeking the interests of religion, and a political party organized for purely political ends, he regards as standing on the same footing, and he seeks his strength in encouraging by turns the hopes of all parties, and in playing off one party against another. He will show sufficient respect for the Church to secure the support of Catholics, through fear that if they lose him a worse will come, and sufficient countenance to the Voltairians to induce them to acquiesce in his government. His grand aim, we take it, is the consolidation of the French empire under his dynasty, and the creation, under the protectorate of France, a league or alliance of all the Latin nations of Europe, as a counterpoise to the Teutonic. In carrying out his policy, he is obliged to respect the Catholic sentiment of these nations, and also to keep terms with the anti-Catholic party powerful in their bosom. He must, then, secure the Pope, and induce him to use his spiritual authority in his favor, while he fights Russia and Austria to win the support of the revolutionists. Unhappily, he has, as his uncle had, to count with England, who will not consent that the Head of the Church shall be a vassal of France, or that France shall wield the whole power of Latin Europe; and he has also to satisfy the Italians who demand the deposition of the Pope as temporal sovereign, and who will on no other condition concur with him. Here is his aim, and here is his difficulty. He can surmount this difficulty with England and the Italians only by suf fering the Pope to be stripped of his temporal dominions, and he cannot suffer that to be done without deeply wounding the Catholic sentiment, and rousing up the whole Catholic world against him. What shall he do? We see what he is disposed to do, namely, to frighten Catholics into acquiescence in the attack on the temporal Estates of the Pope, by threatening them with the Revolution and the extension of the power of Victor Emmanuel, their worst enemy. Just now he is playing off the Revolution against the Church, and when he has gained all he can by so doing, he hopes to play off the Church against the Revolution. He joined with England and disposed of Russia. He roused up the Italians, and by their aid drove Austria out of Lombardy, without doing her much damage; now he seeks to collect his forces to crush Great