Another work, though larger, which is peculiarly adapted for spiritual reading during the month of the Holy Souls is the Life of St. Catherine of Genoa, published by the Catholic Publication Society. This is not only a beautiful and interesting life of one of those great women who adorn the history of the Church in all ages, but contains in addition St. Catherine’s treatise on Purgatory, which together with her spiritual dialogues, as is said in the introduction, “St. Francis of Sales, that great master in spiritual life, was accustomed to read twice a year.” And “Frederick Schlegel, who was the first to translate St. Catherine’s dialogues into German, regarded them as seldom, if ever, equalled in beauty of style; and such has been the effect of the example of Christian perfection in our saint, that even the American
Tract Society could not resist its attraction, and published a short sketch of her life among its tracts, with the title of her name by marriage, Catherine Adorno.” The words of the saints are always golden. One can never repeat them too often or ponder on them too long.
Songs in the Night, and Other Poems. By the author of Christian Schools and Scholars. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.
Songs with a meaning are these, and full of sweet melody. The singer evidently feels. The feelings are deep, the thought deep also, and steeped in the purest well of religion. The versification is as varied as it is happy; and, indeed, for both thought and expression throughout this small volume we have nothing but praise. The title owes its meaning to the fact that “several of the poems were originally suggested by passages in the Spiritual Canticles of St. John of the Cross, whose use of the word night, in a mystic sense, is too well known to need explanation.” The opening poem, “The Fountain of the Night; or, the Canticle of the Soul rejoicing to know God by Faith,” gives a good idea of the tone and excellence of the volume:
There is a Fount whence endless waters flow;
There zephyrs play and fairest flowerets blow.
Full well that crystal Fountain do I know,
Though of the night.
I know the verdant hills that gird it round;
Its source I know not, for no thought can sound