the conversion of our neighbors; but if so, we may read our rebuke in the Congregation of the Paulists, a noble band of priests, all converts from Protestantism. We may read it also in the book before us, by a man whom we should hardly have expected to be brought in. But in he has come, and has brought with him a heart and an intelligence that has preached one of the very best arguments for our religion that has proceeded from an American pen. It is a learned, an able, a well-reasoned, and most seasonable book. These instances, to mention no others, are a terrible rebuke both to our hopelessness and to our apathy. Are we not on the point of waking up to a sense of our duty?

We have wandered away from the book before us, and instead of reviewing it we have been giving speculations of Our own. We cannot help being struck with the fact that this book is produced by a man born and brought up in the West, and that it has been written in California, by, we believe, its first civil Governor after its cession to the United States. It proves that we, on the Atlantic border, are very far from monopolizing all the thought, the intelligence, or the literature of the Union. It is a fact, we believe, that the great market for books is the South and West; more particularly, for American publications, at the West. We fancy we have here more literary polish, more classical knowledge; but whoever has travelled much in the new States, has been struck with their superior mental activity, and their greater freedom from prejudice and routine. Say what we will of the Atlantic States, northern and southern, the real American character-what is to be the future character of the nation— will be determined by the States drained by the Mississippi and washed by the Pacific. They are living now who will find our Asiatic and Australian trade more important than our European. The strength, the energy, and the governing force of our Empire will be West of the territory occupied by the men who won our independence and made us a nation, and the Colonies will give the law to the Mother Country. But we see no harm in it. These

great States, formed since the Federal Union, are, and will be, chiefly agricultural States, and ultimately will be conservative States, serving as a check on the purely commercial States, and to preserve the institutions founded by our fathers.

The Pacific States,-and there will ultimately be four or five more, will prove to be one of the most important sections of the Union. They bring us into contact with Asia, as the Atlantic States enable us to touch Europe. A few years will, in spite of all that may be said or done, add to the Union Mexico and the Central American States. We see no help for it, however much we may oppose it. The result will be the division into free States, and union under one Federal government of the whole territory of this vast Continent, from the British possessions on the North to the Isthmus of Darien on the South, from the Atlantic on the East to the Pacific on the West, placed between Europe and Asia, and closely connected,-for oceans unite, not separate,-with both. A more magnificent empire never existed, and cannot be found on the globe,--an empire capable of sustaining, with ease, four hundred millions of souls, and, when come to maturity, able to hold Europe with one hand and Asia with the other, to exercise the hegemony of the globe. Will this Union be preserved and freedom sustained? Both are destined to receive many rude shocks and severe trials, from within, not from without; but yet we firmly believe both will come out from the trial unscathed. The bonds of a common blood, language, laws, manners and customs, will go far to prevent a dissolution of the Union; but there is forming with very great rapidity another bond, which, as yet, nobody, to our knowledge, has taken any notice of,the bond of a common religion,-the bond of the one Catholic Church. Protestantism is divided into sects, and the sects subdivide geographically. They cannot stand against the force of social or domestic institutions, but are obliged to succumb to it. They originate with the people, and live or die as the people will. They form, and can

form no bond of union. The Methodist of the North cannot tolerate slavery, the Methodist of the South dare not oppose it; so the great Methodist sect divides sectionally, and each division follows the peculiar popular opinion of its section. So of the Baptist; so it will soon be, if not already, with the Presbyterian; and ultimately with the Episcopalians, if they ever have earnestness enough to care for any thing but their "admirable Liturgy," with all that is really admirable in it pilfered from us. But the Catholic Church is one, holds the same doctrine, teaches the same morals, and enforces the same discipline in the North and the South, in the East and the West. Here, before us, is a work written on the borders of the Pacific, which is to us the same as if it had been written. as well as published in this city. The author defends the one Catholic doctrine, the one Catholic Church. He believes as we believe, and we believe as he believes. We worship at one and the same altar, assist at one and the same "clean sacrifice," and partake of one and the same Bread of Life. Moreover, the hierarchy is one, united under the one American primacy of order, and the one Primacy of jurisdiction as well as of order at Rome. It must be united, and through its union under one head, all the Catholics of the whole United States are united in one body. Here is the bond that is to hold this Union together, and keep it one nation. No Catholic nation, that has retained its Catholicity, has ever lost its nationality and become extinct. In every Catholic people there is a vitality that no earthly power can extinguish, and every one has a recuperative energy that will enable it ultimately to recover from all its calamities and disasters. To the Catholic Church, now hierarchically organized over the whole Union, under one head, with one faith, one Lord, and one tongue, we look for the preservation of this Union. She, as yet, includes but a small minority of the American people, but that minority is destined to increase; and, before the sects and parties will be enabled to destroy the work of our fathers, we believe it will have become the ma

jority in numbers, in intelligence, in virtue, in patriotism, and in influence. Then the danger will be past. The various legitimate interests of the country will coalesce with the religious interests of the majority, and the clashing of sectional parties will be able to affect neither our peace nor our security. The question of Slavery will then produce no disturbance, for slavery will then either have ceased to exist, or the condition and relations of the slaves will have been so modified as to give offence to no Christian conscience. In writing his book, Judge Burnett has rendered a noble homage to his new faith: he has, too, performed a patriotic act which will compare favorable with the most glorious deeds of our greatest patriots. Through him, California has made a more glorious contribution to the Union than all the gold of her mines, for truth is more precious than gold, yea, than fine gold.

ART. V. Alla Santità di N. S. Pio IX. in Occasione della Visita da Lui fatta al Nuovo Collegio Americano. Romæ, 1860.

WE have received from Rome a copy of the Addresses to the Holy Father, presented on the occasion of his recent visit to the new American College opened under his aus pices in that city. This college has been founded by Pius IX.; the building in which it is located has been presented by him, and the Catholics of this country have as yet contributed hardly enough to meet the expense of furnishing it. Yet it is for Catholics in the United States that it is founded, and it is they who are to receive all its benefits. A tithe of the sum contributed for useless, if not mischievous agitation, in a kingdom of a foreign sovereign, if given to this college,—or if we contributed to it the sum we contributed, and very properly contributed, for the Catholic University of Dublin, it would be well endowed, and placed on a sure footing.

We are afraid that, as yet, our Catholic community do

not duly appreciate the advantage of having a college at Rome for the education of priests for the American Church. Rome is, in one sense, neutral ground. Catholics from every race and nation under heaven are at home in the Eternal City. It is, as we have said elsewhere, their Father's house, and there is no place so well fitted to enable men to rise above the narrow and narrowing prejudices of race or nation, or to acquire a full conviction of the unity of the race, and 'the unity and Catholicity of the Church. There is no place where our young Levites can be so well prepared to become missionary priests in a country like ours, where the Catholic population is made up of divers nationalities, and are very far yet from being moulded into one uniform national character. We would, for the present, much rather our clergy should be educated in Rome than in American seminaries, because in Rome their education will be more cosmopolitan-more free from all national peculiarities, and therefore, in the better sense, more truly American. It is idle, and will be for years to come, to look for any thing American in American seminaries, unless the professors have been educated at Rome, or are thoroughly Romanized. In your seminaries, for the present, you will have the Irish, the German or the French nationality always special and exclusive, because the American element. in the American Church counts for nothing, and is crushed out by foreign nationalities. What we want is no particular nationality. We do not want the Church in this country Irish, Spanish, French, English, or German; we want it Catholic and Roman,-and the way to have it so is to have a very considerable portion of our clergy, and the majority of our theological professors, educated at Rome. All the various nationalities among us naturally struggle each for the mastery, and hence rivalries and bitter feelings are generated; but they will all agree to unite on one which is equally near to and equally distant from them all--that is, the Roman. All yield willingly to Rome; and in yielding to Rome, no one triumphs over another, and no one is humiliated. The Irishman and the Englishman may be at