tion has damaged him, he has prostrated the administration. Our views of the Republican party may be gathered from what we have already said. As far as it has Whig antecedents we are not hostile to it; as far as it is the Free-Soil party under a new name, we have no sympathy with it. In its opposition to the farther extension of slavery we believe it right and just, and go with it heart and soul, but in the respect that it proposes to prevent its further extension by Wilmot provisos, or Congressional action, we dissent from its policy, for we regard such legislation and such provisos as unconstitutional. Inasmuch as it is a sectional party, though in reality no more so than the Democratle party, we are not pleased with it. Its position on the question of slavery is too far one way, while the position of the South is too far the other way. On the question of slavery, like the Democratic party, it is partly right and partly wrong, and is preferable to the Democratic party only in the respect that it is not proslavery, and if we must violate the Constitution, or usurp for Congress powers not conceded it, it is better to do so in favor than against human liberty. Aside from the slavery question the Republican platform strikes us as in the main. not objectionable, and free from the filibuster element that we detect in the platform of the Democratic party, and by no means necessarily commits the party to the ultra-democracy we so earnestly oppose. Yet the elevation of the party to power with Horace Greeley as one of its most influential leaders, without a Southern State or the hope of attaining the vote of a single slaveholding State, unless the little State of Delaware, is a serious matter, and one must think twice before he makes up his mind to support it. It is not the secession of the Southern States or the dissolution of the Union we fear, but the want of a proper conservative element. We do not like to have power as now wholly in the hands of the South; we should dislike equally to see it exclusively in the hands of the North. We should regret the defeat of the Republican party, for that would involve the triumph of the slave interest, and subject to it

the policy of the government; and we should regret its success, for that would open the door for the reappearance of political abolitionism. The candidates of the party are not such as we prefer, but perhaps they are better than the Democratic party will support. Turn the question which way we will, which side in or out, up or down, it has an ugly look, and whichever of the two parties accedes to power, we must expect trouble, confusion, and not much good to compensate for it.

However, the end of the Republic is not yet, nor will the coming election, however it terminates, decide its fate. We may trust something to the "chapter of accidents," that is, to Providence, and in the meantime instead of staking all on the success or defeat of this or that party, we shall do well to labor to clear up the questions now agitated, and present the true issue before the people for a future election. Let the South abandon all filibustering tendencies, all disposition to reopen the slave trade, cease to ask the North to favor slavery, and leave the question of slavery in the Territories to be decided by the courts, and all dispute on the slavery question, so far as we are concerned, would cease, that is, as a question to be carried into politics; or, let the Republican party agree to the same, or cease to claim for Congress the power to legislate on slavery anywhere, and the North and the South may once more act together. Slavery would gain nothing but what it is entitled to, and the welfare of the whole people, the cause of republican government would gain much. Neither the North nor South is a complete or whole people without the other. It is, no doubt, too late for the voice of reason to be heard in the present canvass; but let those who really love their country hold themselves ready, when the contest is over, so place American politics on a new and better footing, and to organize parties that an honest man may find a party he can support without violence to his conscience.

ART. VI.-LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1. The Columbian Educational Series, viz.: 1. The Primary Spelling-Book; 2. Columbian Spelling-Book; 3. The Primary Reader; 4. The Second Book of Reading Lessons; 5. The Third Book of Reading Lessons. For the use of Schools and Academies. By Joseph B. Tully. New York: P. O'Shea. 1860. THIS is a new series of spelling and reading books just published by our friend Mr. O'Shea, and intended to supply a want said to be felt in our Catholic schools. They are, with a few omissions and additions, substantially the books prepared for and used in the National Schools of Ireland, and therefore, we presume, called the Columbian series, either from St. Columba or St. Columbanus. We have but hastily examined these books, and it is possible that the judgment we have formed of them may need reforming. We see, that they are compiled as to spelling, in accordance with a system not in use in our school-days, and which we are not prepared either to accept or to reject. We have little faith in any of the new methods of teaching, whether invented by Fellenberg or Pestalozzi, Jacotot, Hamilton, or Lancaster, for we believe success in teaching depends far less on the particular method adopted, than on the individual genius and character of the teacher.

As Reading-Books, we have discovered in the Columbian Series, no peculiar merits or demerits, nothing for which we should specially recommend or specially condemn them; they seem to us about as good and about as bad as the general run of the school-books recently got up and sent out to tax parents and guardians, and to put money in the pockets of their compilers and publishers. When we taught school, we used Murray's Reading-Books, and we have never met any series of Readers superior, or, in our judgment, equal to "The Introduction to the English Reader," "The English Reader," and "The Sequel to the English Reader," by Lindley Murray, the Yorkshire Schoolmaster, and no objection to them need be raised on the score of nationality, for Mr. Murray's name is Celtic, and he himself was born in Pennsylvania, was educated in this city when New York was a colony of Great Britain. Instead of getting up a new series for our Catholic schools, we should recommend the republication and use of Murray's series. It is some years since we have examined them, but we recollect nothing in them objectionable on the score of religion, and their contents, as we recollect them, are admirably fitted to educate the moral and religious affections, and to form a pure, classical English taste.

Our venerable Bishops and Priests complain of the District Schools that they neglect religion, are godless schools; and yet we but poorly remedy the evil, when we exclude the English Reader, and introduce in its stead Tully's Third Book of Reading Lessons, or indeed the corresponding Reader prepared and used by the Christian Brothers. Instructions in natural history or natural science, as chemistry, mineralogy, geology, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, or bugs, may be very interesting, but they form no part of education, and tend far more to materialize the mind than to elevate it to God and to store it with moral and religious principles, which may one day fructify, and form a character of true moral and religious worth. Tully's Third Book contains much useful instruction on nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, participles, and other parts of speech, very proper in a grammar-book, but quite out of place in a reading-book; it contains also interesting lessons on the natural history of animals, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, insects, a sort of abridgment of Goldsmith's Animated Nature, enlivened with pleasing anecdotes of dogs, elephants, wolves, foxes, and bugs, but all these lessons belong to the department of special instruction, and either have no bearing on education proper, or tend to give to education, a dry, utilitarian, and materialistic character. No doubt we find in it some lessons in religion and morals, but they are neutralized by the predominance of lessons of a purely worldly and materialistic tendency.

What we want in a reading-book is not the Catechism, sermons, natural history, or natural science, but lessons which, while they teach to read, and tend to form a correct English taste, are fitted to educate the moral and religious affections of childhood and youth. The aim of the reading-book is not instruction, save in the single art of reading, but education, the development or cultivation in the mind and the heart of these great principles which are the basis of all religion and morality. This aim is not accomplished by instructions on the Catechism, or by the fag ends of sermons placed in juxtaposition with lessons on natural science and history filled with an unbelieving or a worldly spirit. Let the Catechism be taught, and the sermons be preached by all means, but under the head of special instruction. But, as in Catholic life nature and grace coalesce and produce a unity of effect, so in the reading lessons in education proper, the religious and secular should be interiorly blended, and set forth under the relations in which they mutually touch and coalesce one with the other. Our venerable and illustrious Hierarchy object to all divorce between instruction and religious education; but we should bear in mind that this divorce may be effected in one and the same school, as well as in different schools. The two are not married, united, made" one flesh," because they are placed in juxtaposition. We have not seen a single series of books

prepared by Catholics for the use of Catholic schools, in which there is not as complete a separation between the religious and secular as there would be in case they were confined to separate schools. Their compilers do not seem to have united them in their own minds, but to have followed the practice of Victor Hugo, who having adopted the aesthetic theory, that the beautiful and the grotesque are always blended in every true work of art, gives us the beautiful in one chapter and the grotesque in another. They give us the Catechism or a pious meditation in one lesson, and materialism in another. They thus train children and youth to a fatal dualism, which results usually in enabling the material to carry it over the spiritual. They forget that the spiritual should inform the material, grace should be infused into nature, and the moral and religious truth should pervade all the lessons as a living and breathing spirit. The consequence is that our Catholic schools are nearly as un-Catholic in their practical tendency as the District Schools themselves, more so in fact, than our District Schools were forty years ago.

What we want Catholic schools for is not Catholic instruction, for that can be imparted in the Sunday-school, but Catholic education, that is, a training or disciplining of the mind and the heart under the influence of, and in accordance with, Catholic principles. We know no other sufficient reason for going to the trouble and expense of organizing and sustaining separate schools for Catholic children. Now, we submit, that this education is not imparted by cramming the memory of children with mere isolated facts of natural history, by descriptions of the eagle, condor, giraffe, elephant, dog, lion, tiger, or fox, or expositions of chemistry, geology, mineralogy, or any other of the natural sciences. These things have nothing to do with education, however much they may have to do with instruction. We educate only by means of principles, and only by religious, moral, and political principles. Catholics, as well as non-Catholics, are losing sight of this great fact, and are confounding encyclopedic instruction with liberal education. What I ask of the college is not that it should send me home my son crammed with the whole encyclopedia, but an educated, cultivated man, and a Christian, prepared to do a man's and a Christian's work. His special or professional education, or the instruction to fit him for his special vocation must commence and be prosecuted after his general education as a man has been completed. The old Catholic system, of keeping classical education and professional education distinct, was the true one, and the attempt of our modern colleges to become encyclopedic in their range of studies serves only to render education defective and instruction superficial. The excellent Abbé Gaume would exclude the Greek and Roman classics from our schools and colleges, but we are aware of no Greek or Roman classic