without ever appearing in reflex consciousness, that is, without the individual taking note that he has them. In the lowest grade of savages we find little except animal life, very few conceptions that rise above the brute; but the most degraded savages have still some traditionary intelligence, for they have a past, and they have language, often very beautiful, and even very expressive, and have relations with their race.

We see what work the philosophers, who, in the last century, sought to divest themselves of all traditional knowledge and social instruction made with philosophical science. Let those who would deny the aid of tradition in the cultivation of philosophy study the statue of Abbé Condillac and l'Homme-Plant, and l'Homme-Machine of Lemêtrie. Man is a social being: he is born in society, and developed and matured only in society. We aid one another, and no man, living in absolute solitude from infancy, ever acquires a full and perfect command of all his faculties. Full-grown. men have retired from an active, busy life, to hold communion in solitude with God and nature, and have grown in heavenly wisdom without losing their capacity for things of this world; but those who live retired from infancy, even though not in perfect solitude, are usually found to lack a full and rounded development. If, then, one must be a philosopher in order rightly to read the past and explain the course of history, one must also study the past, study history, and concentrate in himself, so to speak, his whole race in order to be a great philosopher. Our experiments must extend over nations and centuries. The philosopher can never be the mere hermit or mere solitary thinker; he must be a social man; he must be a scholar, a man of erudition, who can avail himself of the knowledge and thoughts of his race in all ages and nations, or he will never achieve a name worthy of veneration.

ART. II.-IRELAND. The Catholic Church-ArchitectureEducation-General Improvements.

WHEN Cardinal Wiseman visited Ireland and beheld the prosperity which that land had attained in comparison with its former poverty, he said, in a speech which he delivered at one of the series of ovations which were gotten up in his honor, that he had, up to that time, been of opinion that so much as any people became prosperous, they would become the less religious; but what he had seen of the people of Ireland-the fine architectural churches, convents, and schools, which they were building all over the country, so appropriate to the general prosperity, had completely disproved any such opinion. Such a belief by such a man appeared strange to many persons, yet the same opinion would seem to have been held by many priests, as it was usual for them to tell their congregations that it was "as hard for a rich man to go to heaven as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle," although they never ceased to use the said rich man when they could.

There is nothing, indeed, in which Ireland has so much. progressed as in religion. The old peasant-priest who took the first kiss of the bride after the marriage ceremony, and carved the goose and drank the punch at the feast, and trotted out the best-looking girl in the room for the dance, who, after dark, perambulated the town, horse-whipping all the lewd characters that he came across-who abused personally from the altar, on Sunday, every one slow in contributing money, or farm produce, for himself or horse-who sent old women away from the confession box "off to the devil," who smoked and snuffed, and played cards, and followed the hunt, and betted at the races-the good,

NOTE.-There are some few remarks in this article from a respectable source, the justness of which we will not vouch for, and one or two digs at England which are not precisely to our taste, but there is so much in it that is judicious, and on a general subject rarely treated in our pages, and the view it gives of Ireland is so hopeful, that we are sure our readers will thank us for laying the whole article before them precisely as it come to our hands.-Ed. Review.

withal rolicksome, old peasant-priest is now almost defunct, and instead there is another age and another class of men. The priest now is gotten principally from the trading or mercantile class, with more refined social instincts, accustomed to the amenities of city life, and governed by a more rigid discipline. The old chapters are revived in many dioceses, the clergy are compelled to conform to the regulation dress even to the cut of the whisker, and are not allowed to drink liquors before dinner. The next reforms needed are, to keep them from being demagogues of political factions, and to allow assistants or coadjutors a stated salary, as there are many of them now, that, through popularity, often receive a larger collection than the curate or pastor. Priests should exchange pulpits occasionally in order that a congregation may not tire of hearing the same style of preaching all the time, especially where a clergyman is considered dull. It was by this interchange of preachers, and by engaging a few sensation "stars" instead of the old "stock" actors, that the "revivals' and "union prayer meetings," were recently produced in the sectarian Churches. In small communities where each person knows the other, the pastor and his assistant, are intimate with all. There are often many persons who have a reputation for dignity and propriety of conduct, and who affect to be above the faults of the vulgar wicked, that are really addicted to much sin― the victims, perhaps of beastly sensualities, dissemblers of what they do, and pretenders to what they do not. Such persons are naturally reluctant to expose their sins, and when they do so, they cannot help feeling less in the eyes of the clergyman when they meet him afterwards in society, as if he still would remember their enormous offences. Priests ought occasionally, in such small places, to exchange confessionals with stranger priests.

Congregational service has been introduced in the Chapel of the Catholic University, in Dublin, by an English priest, a convert to the Church. It is performed at halfpast seven o'clock on Sunday evening, and is attended by crowds of the most respectable and pious people of the city,

and has created quite a "revival" among a class of people who before had seldom experienced religion. The service is opened with one or two hymns (not psalms) in English, sung by choir and congregation; these hymns were arranged and compiled by the pastor himself, and every member of the congregation had a book and appeared to be well up to singing in concert ;-next was a rosary and union prayer, again hymns, in which the pastor joined, occasionally sitting down in the pulpit,-prayer, public and private, for every thing and every body-the sermonfinally, a litany and the doxology were chanted, and a most solemn Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was conferred upon the pious people before dismissal. In all the churches. of Dublin and Liverpool that I attended, the antiphonial service, the doxology, and hymns, were sung in English. St. Augustine says, that sacred song elevates the soul to God. more than any other form of prayer or praise, and congregational singing has the additional advantage of allowing all a share in it, besides it tends to form and refine the musical taste of a community? The Mass being said in a foreign tongue and the congregation taking comparatively no active part in it, is calculated to awake devotion more by its dramatic effect upon the eye, than by its appeal to our natural intelligence through the ear, or than by inspiration of the heart in a more direct manner, which is felt by a person taking an active and sympathetic part in the worship. A congregational service in the language of the people added to the two standard services of the Church on Sunday (the Mass and Vespers,) would do away with many objections that are made to the Catholic Church by Protestants, and even some Catholics who confound the doctrine with the discipline of the Church. In America especially, where the spirit of the people is inclined to Congregationalism, it would serve to make converts to Catholicity more at home in their new religion, acting as a kind of compromise to their feelings for their alienation from their native doctrine and discipline. The Protestant reformers succeeded in drawing off Catholics to their religions princi

pally by changing the discipline, and liturgy, and to this day Catholics are enticed away more by the novelty and simplicity of the religious forms of Protestantism, by being allowed to take a more active part in that worship instead of being comparatively as mere passive spectators and tacit listeners in their own Church, than by any conviction of error of doctrine. Mass is now offered up in Rome, in certain churches, according to Oriental rites, in the different languages of the several countries, according to a liturgy differing from the Roman Church; and yet the Pope tolerates these differences of discipline as not at variance with the doctrine of the Church. Why should not English-speaking Catholics be permitted at least an additional Congregational service in their own language on Sunday, to suit the feelings of many people who could not otherwise be so interested in religion?

The discipline of the Catholic Church has been said to be as dictatorial as an emperor; while the Anglican or Episcopal is like its original, the English government, a kind of representative despotism; and the Congregational Churches are compared to a republic, a kind of "free and easy." Representation is chiefly necessary in political government, where taxation is levied; but as the Catholic Church depends upon the voluntary support of its members, there is not so much need of representation, and we gain many advantages by the imperial system, because the executive has power to enforce obedience promptly, and preserve harmony; he is a bond of unity, and responsibility is concentrated in him. There is considerable deference to the popular will in the Catholic Church, however; priests are ap pointed where they may be most useful, and often in response to the petition of a parish; bishops are in Ireland recommend. ed by the priests of the diocese, and even the Pope himself is elected by the College of Cardinals; all public charities, cemeteries, &c., are conducted by committees of laymen, and the accounts of every parish are audited by laymen. We do not want the Presbyterian or Congregational system of government in our Church, but we do want a Congrega