dares all things for Christ, and counts nothing lost if one soul is won to him. We speak the language, no doubt, of rebuke, but we speak it in sorrow and regret, not in pride or wrath. We speak it, who should not, for there seems to be in these sad times no one else to speak. God forgive us, if we have gone out of our province, and spoken words that ill become us to speak. We love His Church, our dear mother; we love her children, our dear brethren, and our heart bleeds to see how little is done to commend her to those who know her not. We speak from the fulness of our love and our grief, and if too strongly, every generous and noble Catholic heart will easily pardon us. We do not believe that error and evil is stronger than natural truth and virtue; we believe even in fallen man there is, as to the natural order, infinitely more good than evil, and when we see the cause of the Church go down, and her enemies triumphing over her, we cannot concede the cause is in their strength or their wickedness alone, but must believe that it is in our weakness, frivolity, and moral and intellectual apathy. Let us be and do what God gives us the ability to be and to do, and the face of things will instantly change. 9. The Flowers of Heaven; or, The Examples of the Saints, proposed to the Imitation of Christians. Translated from the French of the ABBE ORSINI. A new edition. London: Catholic Publishing Company. Baltimore: Murphy & Co. 1860. 16mo. pp. 254. WE have only glanced through this book, for it is not in the power of the editor to read thoroughly every book sent him. We are no admirers of the style of the Abbé Orsini, which pertains to the Romanticist school, but as others like it, we say nothing against it. De gustibus, &c. The book itself we should judge to be an interesting and edifying book. The first chapter, in which the author defends the Cultus Sanctorum, is superficial and unsatisfactory, as it does not give the profounder principle or reason of that worship in the Mystery of the Incarnation, or in the worship of the Sacred Humanity of Christ our Lord, to which the Saints are naturally related, as by grace the are related to his Divinity. The Examples of the Saints selected and proposed for imitation, are, as far as we have read, selected with judgment, and such as ordinary Christians should strive to imitate. 10. Ulic O'Donnell: An Irish Peasant's Progress. By D. HOLLAND. London: Catholic Publishing Company. Baltimore: Murphy & Co. 1860. 16mo. pp. 186. THIS is a pleasantly told story of Irish peasant life, a little exaggerated perhaps, and in parts lacking in vraisemblance, but upon the whole a good story, which one is the better for having read. We can never tire of stories of Irish peasant life, even when the hero as in the present case is a descendant of a long line of Irish kings. We doubt if the world presents another example of a peasantry that has suffered so much as the Irish, borne their wrongs more patiently, with so little murmuring against Providence, and with so little injury to their virtues. The Irish have been told, and some few of them believe, we are their enemy; we shall leave it to time to correct the error, if error it be. Certainly we have never intended to flatter them, or to play for our own interest on their warm national sensibilities, but we have never denied the Irish peasantry, along with some faults, an interest which as far as we know attaches to the peasantry of no other country, and virtues which we hardly expect to find elsewhere. If they had more self-esteem and less love of approbation, to use the language of phrenologists, we should think it an improvement, but we do not know that would make them more poetical or loveable. The faults that may be found with them seem to us to have grown out of the condition in which they have been placed, while their virtues seem to be their own. The Irish peasant, placed where he has freedom and hope, is industrious and thrifty enough to satisfy a Yankee, and if he keeps clear of strong drink and sprees, he succeeds in life, gains wealth and an honorable position in society, where a Yankee would starve. The Irish are no doubt a gifted people, and a native American who prides himself on his Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman descent, is astonished to count up the number of distinguished men among his own countrymen who are the descendants of poor Irish emigrants. There is more Irish blood in the veins of the American people than at first blush would be supposed, and we owe in great part our departure from the English type to the Celtic element in our population. 11. Christ Our Life. The Scriptural Argument for Immortality through Christ alone. By C. F. HUDNSON. Boston: Jewett & Co. 12mo. Pp. 160. 12. A General View of the Rise, Progress, and Corruptions of Christianity. By RICHARD WHATELY, Archbishop of Dublin. New York: Gowan. 1860. 12mo. p. 288. 13. The Metropolitan Illustrated Series; First Reader, Second Reader, and Fourth Reader, for the use of Schools. By a Member of the Order of the Holy Cross. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1860.` IN the notice of Tully's series of reading books, which it was by no means our intention wholly to condemn, and which some in respects have very considerable merits, we gave our general views of what reading books for schools should be; and this series by an excellent Member of the Holy Cross, as far as we have been able to examine the numbers already published, promises to come very near to meeting our wishes. They are illustrated with fine and spirited woodcuts, are printed on handsome type and good paper, and appear to be made to be durable even in the hands of children. The Third Reader is not yet published, but the Fourth Reader is, and judging from the list of articles and the names of their writers must be superior to any now in use. We can conscientionsly recommend the series for introduction into all our schools, especially our Catholic schools, both as to style and sentiment. The methods of teaching have gone through many changes since our school days, whether in all cases for the better or not, but, according to our old world notions, the series should be preceded by a Spelling Book,though many modern teachers think it of no use. The Fourth Reader contains a long Introduction, explaining and illustrating the principles of elocution; we have not had time to examine it, but one thing we have felt in nearly all our Catholic schools and colleges is, the need of a professor of elocution. We have hardly heard a tolerable reader in one of them, and the worst reading we ever listened to was the English reading in a Catholic school in one of the British Provinces. The rules with regard to the inflections of the voice in English reading are very nearly the reverse of those observed in French, Italian, and Irish reading. The English reader is required to pitch his voice in a conversational tone, and to read only in a more subdued manner, as a well-bred gentleman or lady talks. To read well is a great accomplishment, and requires as much cultivation as the art of oratory. Great attention is paid to reading in the public schools in Boston, and, indeed, in Boston society, where it is rare to find, amongst educated people, a poor reader. In general, Episcopalian ministers are fine readers, especially of the service of their church. Our priests, educated for the most part in a foreign tongue, are not generally, as far as our experience goes, good readers. Too much attention can hardly be paid in school to the art of reading, and in most of our American society there is a great need of cultivating the art of easy and graceful conversation, for conversation, both as to manner and matter, is an art which does not come by nature. Our Catholic schools, as far as we are acquainted with them, are behindhand in the management of the voice, whether for reading or speaking, or conversation, and we hope the teachers employed hereafter will pay more especial attention to that important branch of education. 14. Vie du R. P. Xavier de Ravignan, de la Compagnie de Jésus. Par LE P. A. DE PONTEVAY, de Même Compagnie. 2d Edition. Paris: Duniol. 1860. 2 tomes, 8vo. WE have received these volumes only a moment before going to press, and we have hardly been able as yet to read a single page. But from the illustrious subject of the work, and the well-known character of the author, and his long intimacy with, and great affection for, Père Ravignan, we are sure it must be a work of great and absorbing interest, as well as rare instruction and edification. Father de Ravignan was no ordinary man, and the effect he produced as a preacher, in Paris, has not yet passed and will not soon pass away. He was a holy man, a man in earnest, a living man, and not only an eloquent man, but a man of deep and original thought, who constantly reminds us of the great Bourdaloue. In him the Jesuits lost one of their most solid men, and one of their brightest ornaments, and the Church Triumphant, we trust, has received a soul of rich endowments and rare virtues. We shall call attention more at length to the work at our earliest convenience. Correction. In our number for July, we by mistake placed the excellent story of Father Laval, or the Missionary, among the publications of Messrs. Kelly, Hedian & Piet. It is published by Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore. * A considerable number of subscribers to the Review, who had received their numbers through Messrs. Dunigan & Brother, before our removal to New York, have not received the work during this year, and some of them have complained of us as if it were our fault. Their names were on Messrs. Dunigan & Brother's private list, who refused to furnish the present publishers with a copy either for love or money, and we have had no means of ascertaining them. They are, many of them, among the oldest and firmest friends of the Review, and we have much regretted the seeming neglect that has been shown them. If they will write directly to our office they will be supplied. As far as we can judge, the Review closes its seventeenth year in as flourishing a condition as ever, and its friends do not seem to have grown weary of it. A quarterly onslaught upon it is expected, for that onslaught has become one of our Catholic institutions, but we do not find that it does much damage to the Review itself. Every thing in this world has its ups and downs. The Review has never sought popularity; it has never sought to please everybody; it has aimed simply to be true and just, and as far as in its power to advance the cause of sound Catholic literature. The assurances we are constantly receiving, especially from abroad, encourage us in the hope that our humble efforts have not been in vain. It is requisite in conducting a periodical of this kind, that it should be kept up with the times, and that it should vary the aspects under which it treats contemporary questions as they vary in the actual world. Thus, in 1848, we had to war against radicalism, and energetically assert authority in spirituals and temporals; but since 1851, it has been equally necessary to guard against despotism, and to defend true liberty. To-day, we have to carry on a war on the one hand against absolutism, and on the other against license, and while we assert the just prerogatives of power, to recognize and vindicate the rights of the people. We can thus hardly fail, on the one side or the other, to offend mere one-sided men. There will be readers who will take what we say in defence of the Pope's temporal principality, as a denial of the just rights and true interests of the Italian people; what we say in sympathy with this noble and much-abused people will, by others, be taken as an attack on the Pope's temporal sovereignty. The reader must take all the articles on the subject together, and interpret what in one seems to him to go too far on one side, by what in another may seem to some to go too far on the other side. The later article presupposes the earlier, unless the contrary is expressly stated. A little attention to this rule will enable us and our readers to jog along harmoniously together. We hope we shall be pardoned if we remind our readers that, in a periodical like ours, where the greater part is written by one author, it will seldom do to take any one article as complete in itself, or to read what follows, without taking it in connection with what had preceded on the same subject. The several articles, on any given subject, mutually complete and explain one another. It must be so, or else the writer must repeat, in the subsequent article, what he had said in the preceding, which would be a great inconvenience. The Review is a continuous work, and is never completed on any one subject as long as that subject is before the public for discussion; and to properly understand what we write to-day on any one point, the reader must take it in connection with what we had previously said, as what we had previously said must be taken in connection with what we say to-day. Thus, those who thought in our Essays on the supremacy of the spiritual we denied the rights of the temporal, will find in the article on the subject in the present number the qualifications always given in our own mind to the statements regarded as too sweeping, and even expressed, though not developed at the |