NEW PUBLICATIONS.
New Ireland. By A. M. Sullivan, Member of Parliament for Louth. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1878.
Mr. Sullivan has invented for his country a new name that is pregnant with meaning and significance. At least, the name is new to us, and it represents a great fact. The old Ireland, the land of confiscation and bitter penury, of enforced ignorance and compulsory poverty, of chronic revolution and periodical famine, the exercise-ground of political proscription and religious persecution, is passing away under our eyes. A new Ireland is indeed springing up in its place—by no means a land as yet flowing with milk and honey, and stripped of all that cumbered it and darkened its life before, but a land full of hopeful possibilities for all good in itself and for good to its neighbors and the world at large.
It was less to describe this hopeful and bright land, whose day has not yet come, but whose morning we see dawning in the east, than to set forth in a clear light the stages that led up to it, that, we take it, induced Mr. Sullivan to write his brilliant, most interesting, and valuable book, which, perhaps, no pen but his could have written, or at least written so well, with its series of graphic pictures, its passionate reasoning, flecked with the gayest humor and most mournful pathos. It is in itself an epitome of the Irish character, with a notable improvement. The despairing courage of a “forlorn hope” that marked such writings in the past has yielded here to a resolute and practical purpose, which of all things is the most striking and hopeful sign of a really new Ireland.
Ireland as it stands to-day presents a problem of the deepest interest not only to a thinking Christian man, but also to the student of political history. It, of all nations and peoples, has resolutely refused to follow after the ignis fatuus of the revolutionary spirit of the age. This it has done in the face of the most pressing incentives to join hands with the agents of social and political disorder. From the first day of English rule in Ireland that country has been, perhaps, the worst-governed country in the world; and this ill-government is only beginning at last to cease. No better soil could have been offered as a battle-ground for the agents of evil. Yet, owing chiefly to the essentially conservative and Christian character of the Irish race, informed and strengthened by a true conception and grasp of the religion of Jesus Christ, the Irish people, as a people, has steadfastly refused to achieve right by doing wrong. For this the English government has to thank that religion which it was its avowed and persistent purpose to root out of the Irish heart, in which most wicked and revolting purpose it would certainly have succeeded long ago, were not God more powerful than all the force and machinations of man, inspired and guided by the spirit of evil. Ireland has at last shaken off some of the strongest chains that bound her, a bleeding nation, to her own earth; and she has succeeded in doing this by a persistent adherence to the right. She would not die, because Heaven made her immortal, and because the principle of immortality was grafted deep in her soul by an Almighty hand. She would not live at a gift; she would not accept a false life at a sacrifice of principle. She waited and suffered on. Her patience and her constancy, her virtue and her faith, have overcome all things. A new era opens before her. The question of questions is: What will she do with it?
Mr. Sullivan goes back in his narrative fifty years, and gives us the salient measures and movements that have affected the Irish people during that period. The state of education in Ireland fifty years ago, “O’Connell and Repeal,” “The Ribbon Confederacy,” Father Mathew and the temperance movement, the famine in “the black forty-seven,” the “Young Ireland” movement, agrarian crime and its causes, the land question, the “Tenant League” party, the “Phœnix” conspiracy, the Fenian movement, the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, and the “Home-Rule” movement—these form the chief headings of Mr. Sullivan’s chapters. They are all worthy of study, and must be studied in order to get a right view of the actual state of Ireland—not under the Tudors or the Stuarts or Cromwell, but here and now, within the knowledge of most of us. Much of what Mr. Sullivan has written was already sufficiently well known. It was well, however, to link all of these together, to weave them into a continuous narrative, and show how singularly one played into the other, how necessarily one was a sequel of the other, until the story is laid down at our own doors. We are thus enabled to see how this series of catastrophes, acting, apparently, independently of each other, wrought up secretly to the whole that is before us. The awful shocks that moved the nation, now this way and now that; that tossed it up as by a volcanic eruption; that shattered it and cast it to the ground as though by the convulsion of an earthquake, senseless and bleeding, and bereft of life; the storms that devastated it; the famine that decimated it—all were instruments of Heaven rudely, to all seeming, but surely working to a great end. Or, if the political philosophers prefer it, they were mighty and gigantic social and political forces working through the dark up and into freedom and light. They made Ireland a spectacle to the nations; they scattered her children over the world, bearing their crying wrongs to all lands; they welded together those who were left at home into a hard and compact mass; they shocked and shamed the power that was chiefly answerable for them into a sense of dawning justice. It was in such throes as these that the new Ireland had its birth.
It seems to us that never before was Ireland so well fitted to play a large part in history as it is to-day. It is now, to a great extent, certainly it is in the right way of being, its own master, its own law-giver, its own educator, its own priest. It has grasped the realities of political life and political power. These it has in its hands, and we do not well see how they can be taken from it. This fact ought to smother any smouldering fires of revolution that may be left, and it will smother them effectually, if the English legislature, as seems to us likely, can only rise to the fact that the best cure for discontent is to remove the discontent by removing its cause. We do not say that Ireland will leap at once into full national life, prosperity, and social happiness. That, even in a far from complete state, must be a work of time, and care, and struggle, not alone to the Irish but to all peoples. The Irish, however, have now in their own hands the adequate means of national representation; and this, it seems to us, is the great first step towards a true national life. Whether in after-years that life will have its centre in London or in Dublin seems to us a question hardly worth discussing just now. We like to take hold of actual facts and shape the future out of them. At present Ireland is represented in the English Parliament by a strong, resolute, and able body of Irishmen. These men may not be collectively or individually the ideals of political wisdom and sagacity. They may not have any great leader among them. They may be a little new in their harness yet. But their power, as a united body, is very great and undeniable, and it can be constantly exercised and increased. To expect that in a session or two they are going to wring from the English government repeal of the Union, or total separation, or even one-tenth part of the measures that Ireland needs in order to secure such prosperity as she has, or to advance it, or to do away with crying and cruel evils now existing, is to expect altogether too much. It is like expecting a city to be built in a day because some of the chief artisans and implements and material for the building are already on the ground.
Great and grave and manifold grievances still exist in Ireland. Steadfastness and patience and right political representation must succeed in removing these in time. Great dangers also threaten the country, not the least of which is the very freedom to which it is at last rising. The hardest problem in regard to freedom is to use it wisely and well. It would be a sad thing for the Irish people if on the altar of a new-found freedom they sacrificed their grand old conservative spirit, their deep sense of the supernatural, their reverence for the church and the things of God. For them to drift into the liberalism of the age would be to destroy them. They have gained what they now possess by having been steadfast Catholics and steadfast Irishmen. Let them so continue. We rejoice at the growing sympathy in political and social life between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. There is no harm in that; on the contrary, it is a great good. But to pass beyond that in matters vital to the faith would be wrong. To renounce, for instance, the right principles of education would be wrong. Let the Protestants go their way in all freedom, security, and peace, but let the Catholics also hold to their way, and insist on it.
Mr. Sullivan is least satisfactory in a point on which we are most deeply interested—the actual position of Ireland to-day, in its industries, its mode of life, its social condition, its educational status, its income, its outlay, how money circulates in the country, how the people are housed, fed, and clothed, compared with former years. These are matters on which, of all things, we desire as full and accurate information as could be obtained, for they are the outward and most visible signs of a people’s progress. Indeed, they are practically the only gauge by which to measure the actuality of that progress. But on this subject Mr. Sullivan gives us only a few rather hesitating words in his last chapter, with the consoling assurance that, “despite all disaster and difficulty, Ireland is marching on.” This is a very serious defect in a work dealing with “New Ireland,” and to remedy it we have applied to another quarter, as seen in the preliminary article on “Ireland in 1878” (The Catholic World, March, 1878). This will be followed by others on the same subject, taking up just the matters which Mr. Sullivan has allowed to escape him.
With this exception, we heartily congratulate the author on his latest volume. He is himself one of the political chieftains who has nobly helped to make a new Ireland. He is a very able and ready man, whose value was at once recognized in the English Parliament, and whose services to his country and to the party which he materially helped to form have been of the most marked and important character. His life has been an honorable one, and he has well earned the fame that now attends him. No man who looks hopefully to the new Ireland can help following with sympathy and interest the future career of A. M. Sullivan.
De Ecclesia et Cathedra; or, The Empire-Church of Jesus Christ. An epistle by the Hon. Colin Lindsay. Vols. i. and ii. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)
Mr. Lindsay, who is a Scottish convert of some ten years’ standing, and was formerly one of the principal lay-leaders in the ritualistic party, has already won a high reputation by a valuable work on St. Peter’s Primacy. The present one is original in its conception and different from any other on the same subject in its method of treating the topics indicated by the title. The grand principles and laws of the church and the Papacy are considered in their universal character as forming the ground-plan of the government of divine Providence over the human race from the beginning. It has a wide historical sweep, and embodies a great mass of solid learning and sound reasoning. The author is sometimes fanciful in his theories and occasionally deficient in theological accuracy of expression, as well as in his style and construction of sentences. These are but faults of minor importance, however, not seriously detracting from the great merits of his most interesting and instructive work. It is quite in the same line of argument with the articles on Historical Christianity we have lately published, and those who are interested in that important and very attractive aspect of religion will find the greatest profit and pleasure in perusing it. One most valuable and quite novel portion of the author’s exposition of the apostolic and divine institution of the Papal Supremacy, is his application of the principle of reserve contained in the discipline of the secret to the particular doctrine in question, as explaining the guarded and reticent manner in which the sacred writers and the early Fathers speak of those high prerogatives of the Christian hierarchy and its chief, which would give umbrage to the Jewish priesthood and the Roman emperors. Full justice could not be done to Mr. Lindsay’s comprehensive and elaborate production without making a long and careful analysis and review of his positions and his manner of supporting them. We trust many of our readers will gain a much better knowledge of its contents than we could possibly give them in this way, by making a careful study of the work itself. It contains a complete historical demonstration of that which we think will soon be as universally admitted as any other great fact of undisputed history—that Catholicity and Christianity are identical and convertible terms, and that ancient and modern Catholicity are one and the same identity in respect to all which pertains to their essence and integrity as the one, universal religion, whose continuity has remained unbroken since the creation, and is destined to be coeval with the world.
The Nabob. From the French of Alphonse Daudet, author of Sidonie, Jack, etc. By Lucy H. Hooper. Author’s edition. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1878.
Sidonie and Jack have been briefly noticed in these columns. The Nabob is a large advance upon either. Possessing all the characteristics that individualized those stories, it is larger in scope, firmer in touch, fuller in character, more vigorous and finished in execution. As far as writing, plot, and development go, it is a very remarkable book. We must say of it, however, as we said of its predecessors, it is not a pleasant story. There is a kind of hot-house effect about it, a forced process, so to say, that, while fascinating for the moment, is not natural and healthy. We breathe in an overcharged atmosphere. There is any quantity of intoxicating odors, of lights and flowers, and soft music and rich costumes and beautiful faces. But the light is not the blessed sunlight; the odors and flowers oppress us with their heaviness like those around a bier; the beautiful faces are painted, and we sigh for something fresh and free, even if it be not half so elegant or well “made up.” There is from the beginning a brooding sense of a storm coming, and the storm comes with awful and repulsive vehemence.
Doubtless the author meant to produce just such an effect and to achieve just such a result. If this were his chief intention he is to be congratulated on his success. He has given a highly dramatic story—melodramatic, in fact. There is wit enough and humor enough throughout; but even the wit is biting and the humor sour. The laughter has the sardonic tone of Mephistopheles, and an honest man shivers a little even while he joins in it. Every scene fits with niceness; the curtain always falls on a strong situation; there is not a dull incident throughout; and if nearly everybody in whom you have been interested gets murdered, or destroyed, or run away with, or debauched at the end, what will you have? A melodrama is a melodrama, and Paris is its paradise.
The Nabob is a story of Parisian life, as Parisian life is popularly supposed to have been when Napoleon III. was the arbiter of Europe and Paris Europe’s capital—a capital, if the novelists are to be believed, of political, social, literary, scientific, and moral charlatanism. Doubtless this is true to a great extent; for the leader of it all had, unfortunately for France and himself, much of the charlatan in his disposition. There is everything there but honesty and purity; or if honesty and purity there be, they are kept severely in the background. Their garb is too homely, their faces are too fresh, for this garish light and exotic atmosphere. They are out of place in this fashionable dance of death, as we say here the scholar and the gentleman are out of politics. There is a wonderful duke and statesman—De Mora—whose habit is to give a bored half-glance to the affairs of France, and the rest of his time to dilettanteism and amours, looking all the while to a quack doctor’s globules to keep his eyes bright, his step elastic, and his nerves steady enough for an evening party. There is a sculptor—Felicia Ruys—full of the noblest aspirations, but whose bringing up has been bad. She has been among Bohemians from her infancy, and she is left alone among them, under the care of an old aunt, a famous dancer in her day, whose wonderful toes had turned the crowned heads of Europe. Felicia’s noble nature finds itself bound in by an iron barrier of wickedness. She is surrounded always by a vicious circle from which she sees no outlet or escape. Is it so wonderful that she mistakes her narrow circle for the universe, and sees nothing but wickedness in all the world? How many do this in real life!
There is the wonderful Nabob himself, risen from nowhere, to whom one of the strange turns of Fortune’s wheel sent a fabulous fortune gathered by his own hard and not too scrupulous hands in Algeria. He is ignorant, vulgar, low, without any very strong moral sense, but with a really kind and good heart: he goes to Paris with his millions, and his millions conquer Paris—as long as they last. All the charlatans circle around him. He is a rich man; he wants now to be a great and a distinguished man; and it is truly wonderful to see how many kind friends spring up to make this rich man great and distinguished in a day. Even the Duke de Mora condescends to sell him his cast-off pictures at ducal prices; the illustrious and philanthropic Dr. Jenkins—Jenkins the great—feeds him on his globules at fees that are fortunes; Felicia Ruys makes a bust of him, and would have married him only that he is stupid enough to have been burdened with a wife; Moessard, one of the vampires of the press, writes the Nabob up, and, when the Nabob at last closes his pocket, writes the Nabob down. And so they go on all of them, in a whirl of gold-dust and pearl-powder and moral filth that is their world until they are swept out, each in his or her way, on the strong eddy that is for ever noiselessly, silently, relentlessly sweeping off human lives into the vast and eternal hereafter.
Alphonse Daudet has all the gifts that a powerful novelist needs, and has cultivated them to the highest degree. He writes with that passionless tone of an intense but calm observer who sees things as they are, and sees deeper and farther than other men, and paints his picture with pitiless truth. He misses nothing that can add even incidental effect to the firm yet delicate stroke of his pencil. He writes with that apparent effortless ease which is really the result of the strongest effort in a man who is perfectly master of his work. He has even, we believe, that highest quality—a moral purpose in what he writes. But though he sees virtue and the possibilities of virtue even in his Paris, vice seems too strong for it and always to get the best of the bargain, even if in the end it goes out in darkness, disaster, and despair. This undertone of despair of the good is principally what imparts so unhealthy and morbid an air to his stories. Thackeray pictured bad enough people, and with an awful accuracy. But the devil never had it all his own way in Thackeray’s stories, as he has not in real life. He invariably came out of the fight with his tail between his legs, very limp and woe-begone, and in a disgraceful condition generally. There was rude health and pure blood in all Thackeray’s stories strongly set off against the other side. If M. Daudet could only muster moral pluck enough to make his virtuous people a little more robust and aggressive—and there are plenty of such virtuous people in Paris—his stories would gain rather than lose in tone and make much more pleasant reading than they do at present. After all, we tire of a crowd of “awfully wicked” people, going through all their wickedness for our special edification and instruction.
Miss Hooper’s translation is excellent.
The Church and the Gentile World at the First Promulgation of the Gospel. Considerations on the Catholicity of the Church soon after her Birth. By the Rev. Aug. J. Thébaud, S.J. Vol. I. New York: Peter F. Collier. 1878.
We can do no more now than acknowledge the receipt of advance sheets of this first volume of a work that promises to be one of great value and importance. Father Thébaud needs no introduction to our readers. He is known to them as a man of wide and accurate knowledge, keen observation, and deep thought. These qualities are not conceded to him idly and for the sake of saying something graceful. They are too rare in these days, and are still more rarely found united in one person. Nothing, then, that comes from the pen of this learned Jesuit can be thought unworthy of careful attention by an intelligent Catholic reader. The title of the present volume gives some indication of the scope and aim of the work. These are still further set forth in the following words, which we quote from the preface:
“Her (the church’s) expansion took place instantaneously, as soon as the apostles began to preach. Thenceforth her universal sway on earth began, never to end until the last day, when she will be transferred to heaven. The whole world at the time was comprised in the three old continents. It is doubtful if there were already on this western hemisphere any of the nations which were found in it when it was discovered by Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century.... The church, therefore, became at once universal if she filled the greatest part of the old world, and subdued the chief nations that inhabited it. It can be proved at this time that her conquests in Asia went much further than was for a long time believed, and that she was rapidly spreading toward the Eastern ocean when Moslem fanaticism arrested her in her career. A like result follows an attentive study of her early progress in the interior of Africa. Of Europe all concede that she rapidly attained the leadership, and that she was afterwards mainly instrumental in giving birth to European civilization.
“But what renders more attractive the detail of all these considerations is the enumeration of the obstacles she had to surmount in so arduous a task as this. The main one was not only the natural opposition between the leanings of corrupt human nature and the doctrines of the Gospel, but in particular the extreme dissimilarities existing between the various races of man—dissimilarities in aptitudes, in thoughts and ideas, in language and manners, but especially in religion and worship. For the Gospel of Christ was preached not only at a time of a high civilization, but also of great corruption and religious disintegration. The primitive traditions of mankind were then nearly all forgotten; the pure religion and morality which existed at first had given place to the most degrading polytheism; and, worse yet, this polytheism had lost all the homogeneity it may have possessed formerly in many countries, and had become a mere jumble of absurd superstitions.
“This is, in a few words, the portraiture of humanity which met the apostles at every step, and which must be examined in detail to understand the difficulty of their task.”
We defer to a later number the criticism which a work of this kind demands.
The Vatican Library. New York: Hickey & Co. 1878.
The “Vatican Library” has been started by Mr. P. V. Hickey, the active and enterprising editor of the Catholic Review, with the aim of supplying the general Catholic public with the best Catholic works in the cheapest possible form. Such an object is on the face of it its own best recommendation. Two volumes from the “Library” have already reached us: a twenty-five-cent edition of Cardinal Wiseman’s beautiful story of Fabiola, one of those stories that is destined never to grow old, and an original story (price ten cents) entitled The Australian Duke. The latter we have not yet had an opportunity of examining. Both volumes are handsomely produced—very much more so, indeed, than many far more costly books. Quite a series is promised of “cheap, amusing, entertaining, and instructive Catholic literature.”
An attempt of this kind, seriously undertaken, and not in a haphazard fashion, cannot be too highly commended. Whatever tends to cheapen Catholic books—books, that is, that are really Catholic—and spread them abroad among the people is a good and noble work. More harm is probably done by cheap literature in these days than by any other means. The readiest and most effectual antidote to this universal literary poison is undoubtedly a literature such as the projectors of the “Vatican Library” aim at supplying. But they cannot work alone. Generous and earnest Catholics must help them generously and earnestly. It goes without saying that the attempt must prove a failure unless it is seconded on all sides. The purchase of a single copy of a ten cent book will not help the publishers very materially. The books are chiefly intended for those who have the will to read but not the means to purchase. In such a case it is for those who have the means to come forward and help their poorer brethren all they can by placing in their hands books that cost next to nothing, yet are in themselves a long delight and unceasing source of sound instruction.
Leo XIII. and His Probable Policy. By Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, D. D. New York: Peter F. Collier. 1878.
This little biographical sketch of ninety-six pages has for title on the cover, “Who is the new Pope? and What is He Likely to Do?” As to who the new Pope is, Dr. O’Reilly gives a pleasing and picturesque sketch of him whom it has pleased Providence to call to the highest dignity in the church and on earth. The personal familiarity of the author with the scenes where the present Pontiff passed his early youth and strong and vigorous manhood add value to the charm of a brisk and stirring narrative. Those who wish to know the character of Leo XIII., what manner of man he is, and how he passed his life previous to being summoned to sit in the chair of Peter, will find Dr. O’Reilly’s sketch by far the best of any that we have thus far seen. Speculations as to the future policy of the Pontiff can hardly prove very satisfactory just yet. It may be as well for impatient men to wait a little, and not attempt to forestall the Holy Father. What his future policy may be can only be made plain by his own words and acts. He has thus far spoken very little and done very little. Indeed, he has scarcely had time to do either one or the other. His position is one where the most extreme caution and circumspection are needed, and it augurs well for his future “policy” that he is so very slow to declare any policy at all. The present state of Europe hardly admits of a hard-and-fast line of “policy” to be drawn by any one. It is enough for us to know that the church is safe in whatever hands it falls, so far as regards the deposit of faith. For the rest, the march of circumstance must greatly influence the actions of the supreme head of the church. Prayer is rather needed at this crisis than advice. These observations are not at all intended disparagingly of Dr. O’Reilly’s interesting brochure, but of a well-meant tendency manifesting itself, among our non-Catholic friends chiefly, to map out beforehand a convenient little policy for Leo XIII. which shall make everybody happy here and hereafter.
A Few of the Sayings and Prayers of the Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy. Edited by a member of the order, authoress of Catherine McAuley, Venerable Hofoauer, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1878.
A beautiful little book made up of beautiful maxims and prayers. Such a gem will, we are sure, meet with a welcome reception by religious of all orders. Its reading will also benefit those who are not religious.
“Ghosts.” Father Walworth’s Reply to Robert G. Ingersoll. A Lecture delivered at St. Mary’s Church, Albany, Jan. 20, 1878. Albany: Times Company Print.
The History of John Toby’s Conversion. With his Views on Temperance, the Liquor Trade, and the Excise Law. A Lecture by the Rev. C. A. Walworth. Albany News Company. 1878.
These are two excellent lectures, deserving of a wide circulation. The first is a plain, common-sense yet effectual and eloquent reply to a lecture by Mr. Ingersoll, who has recently gained some notoriety as a preacher of a very “cheap” and very “nasty” form of infidelity. Father Walworth’s is just the kind of argument to apply to men of average intelligence who are as open to the teachings of truth, when plainly presented to them, as they are apt to be carried away by a bold assault of scoffing infidelity. The lecture is a straightforward, manly, matter-of-fact defence of religion as against no-religion, none the less effective and thorough because the lecturer has contrived to conceal under the guise of a popular form of address the wide knowledge and learning which give its inherent force to what he says. Mr. Ingersoll ought to feel peculiarly flattered at being answered by a gentleman and a man of real power and culture.
The second lecture is the story, very tenderly and charmingly told, of a drunkard’s conversion. It brims over with real humor and flashes with “palpable hits”; while there is a touch here and there of pathos that brings tears to the eyes, and that could only be the outcome of a tender heart that loves its fellows and sorrows over the woes for which their vice and folly are chiefly answerable.
St. Joseph’s Manual: Containing a selection of Prayers for Public and Private Devotion. With Epistles and Gospels for Sundays and Holydays. Compiled from approved sources. By Rev. James Fitton. Boston: Thomas B. Noonan & Co. 1877.
This is an old friend with a new and very pleasing face. The St. Joseph’s Manual, compiled by the skilful hand of Father Fitton, has long been, and is likely to continue long to be, a favorite prayer-book with Catholics. It is formed on an intelligent plan. It is a book of wise instruction as well as devotion. The first seventy pages are devoted to a clear and sound exposition of Catholic doctrine and practice. With regard to this valuable portion of the book we would offer two suggestions for future editions: 1. The English here and there would be better for a little trimming; 2. A special chapter on the dogma of Papal Infallibility, which might be made brief and concise as the rest, would do no harm. For the rest, the volume is everything that could be desired. It contains over eight hundred pages, printed in a large, clear type very grateful to the eye. The illustrations are, without exception, excellent. Indeed, the whole work reflects real credit on the publishers.
Cantus Ecclesiasticus Passionis D. N. Jesu Christi, secundum Matthæum, Marcum, Lucam et Joannem, editus sub auspiciis Sanctissimi Domini nostri Pii Papæ IX., curante Sacrorum Rituum Congregatione. Fasciculi III. Chronista, Christus, Synagoga. MDCCCLXXVII. Ratisbonæ, Neo Eboraci et Cincinnatii sumptibus, chartis et typis Frederici Pustet, S. Sedis Apost. et Sacr. Rit. Cong. Typographi.
These three superb volumes exhibit the same elegance and taste in composition that mark all the ritual and choral works edited by Mr. Pustet, and for which his house has earned a so deservedly high reputation. Besides the chant of the Passion as appointed for Palm Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Good Friday of the Holy Week, the second volume contains a form of chant for the Lamentations, and the third volume the chant of the Exultet.
The Way of the Cross. Drawn by N. H. J. Westlake, F.S.A. With a letter of approbation by His Eminence Cardinal Manning. Devotions by St. Alphonsus Liguori. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1878.
A very beautiful little volume, whose title explains itself. It is brought out in a tasteful and convenient form, and is admirably adapted for the Lenten season. The name of Mr. Westlake is sufficient guarantee for the superiority of the drawings.