The Catholic World.
The attention of readers will be directed to the advertisement of complete sets of The Catholic World and The Young Catholic as suitable and valuable Christmas presents. Bound volumes of The Young Catholic make the very best present that could be offered to children. The reading matter is interesting, the illustrations are really excellent, and the puzzles and charades afford unfailing amusement for the long winter evenings.
The Catholic World is now in its twenty-sixth volume. It constitutes a library, and a most valuable and varied library, in itself. In it is everything that could be desired. Theology and philosophy have their departments, filled by men of known and recognized competence, master minds indeed in those higher sciences. The literary articles and reviews are acknowledged by the secular press to be unsurpassed in power, grace, and strength. The polemics of the day find their true solution in The Catholic World, which has told upon the non-Catholic mind in this country as no other magazine or publication has been able to tell. There is an abundance of fiction and light literature in its pages, a fiction that has known how to be interesting without being dangerous, and good without being dull. Many stories that have already made their mark in the literary world and won deserved fame for their authors began by passing through the columns of this magazine. All the leading and absorbing questions of the day are taken up and discussed in it by men thoroughly equipped and fitted for so important a task. Indeed The Catholic World may fairly claim to be a channel through which the very best Catholic literature of the day, in all its forms, passes, a guide to and in all the questions of the day, and a compendium from year to year of all that is best and most worthy of attention in the higher sciences, in physical science, in politics, in literature, and in art. His Eminence the Cardinal has recently kindly taken occasion to “congratulate the Catholics in America on possessing a magazine of which they may be justly proud,” and trusts “that they will contribute their share to make The Catholic World still more useful to themselves and to the Church at large.” No words could add strength to this commendation and appeal; and it is to be hoped that Catholics will take both to heart. No intelligent Catholic in this country should be without a magazine that is peculiarly and designedly his own. Yet are there thousands of intelligent persons who are without it, who probably do not know of its existence. It is for those who do know it and appreciate it to make it known among their friends. Taken in the very lowest sense, no man has yet complained that in The Catholic World he did not receive the full, and more than the full, value of his money.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.