NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SIXTEEN REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE, made to a devout servant of our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an anchorite of Norwich, who lived in the days of King Edward the Third. 12mo., pp. 214. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
We Catholics of the United States have good reason to congratulate ourselves upon the appearance of this work. The selection of such a work for republication is proof of good judgment in the Boston publishers, while certainly nothing can be more elegant and tasteful than the "getting up."
Mother Juliana lived in the city of Norwich, England; and, as we are notified by the famous Father Cressy, who first published and edited her "Revelations," she wrote during the reign of Edward the Third, and about three years before his death. She was an anchoret or recluse, a religious woman who, like St. Bees and many others in England and elsewhere, lived alone, shut up by herself, in contemplation and prayer. It is to us a great mystery that these "Revelations," so excellent in themselves, and edited once by such a man, should be so little known in our day, and should owe their reproduction once more in English literature to Protestant curiosity and not to Catholic piety. We know of nothing of the same kind which can compare with them. There is an odor of supernatural sweetness about them, and a depth of contemplative thought, a freshness moreover and originality, which has never impressed us before when reading books of revelations. Critical authors have sometimes complained of works of this nature that much in them of what seems elevated or profound is evidently derived, at second hand, from the speculations of theologians, and especially of the philosophical schoolmen; while other things, supposed to have been seen in vision, are the reproduction of early histories, once popular, but proved to be apocryphal and destitute of all authority. Nothing of the kind can be said of these revelations of Mother Juliana. They sometimes touch upon questions most profound and difficult, but in the simplest and most inartificial manner, and there is not the slightest appearance of reproducing what she had read elsewhere. Every thought bears the stamp of originality and freshness. All is drawn from the same deep well of contemplation. All comes from her own mind, whether that mind be divinely illuminated or not. There is not the least semblance of searching after what is wonderful, or calculate to strike an undisciplined and curious imagination. For our own part, we cannot resist the impression that the beautiful and holy light which beams upon these pages is a divine illumination, is something supernatural. When we say supernatural, this does not necessarily infer anything strictly miraculous, or revelation in the highest sense of the word (supernaturally attested, as well as supernaturally given). We mean simply to say that there is apparent a certain unction and power of spiritual vision which betokens an extraordinary gift of divine love and light, to which her natural power, unaided, could never reach. In reading this book one is impressed in the same way as when reading the Holy Scriptures or Thomas à Kempis. There is a natural beauty of style and thought, but that is not all. There is inspiration, too. It is like a far-reaching landscape in a fair day, where the distant hills are not fairly distinguishable from the sky, and the beauty of earth is mingled with the beauty of heaven.
We have room to give just one example, which we select as showing, in a few lines, the general characteristics of piety, sweetness, simplicity, and beauty which everywhere pervade this little book:
"He is our clothing, that for love wrappeth us, and windeth us, halseth us, and all becloseth us, hangeth about us for tender love, that he maie never leave us. And so in this sight I saw that he is all thing that is good, as to my understanding.
"And in this he shewed a little thing, the quantitie of a hasel-nutt, lying in the palme of my hand, as me seemed; and it was as found as a ball. I looked thereon [{282}] with the eie of my understanding, and thought, What may this be?' and it was answered generallie thus.
"'It is all that is made. ' I marvelled how it might last: for methought it might sodenlie have fallen to naught for litleness.
"And I was answered in my understanding, 'It lasteth and ever shall: for God loveth it, And so hath all thing being by the love of God.'"
COMPLETE WORKS OF THE MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK. Comprising his Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc. Carefully compiled from the best sources, and edited by Lawrence Kehoe. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 608 and 810. New York: Lawrence Kehoe, No. 7 Beekman street.
In opening these two capacious volumes, one of the first things that strikes us is the great number of excellent pieces from the pen of the late Archbishop of New York which are now entirely forgotten by the general public. There never was an author more careless of his fame than Dr. Hughes. He cast his writings upon the world, and gave no thought to them afterward He was not even at the pains of keeping single copies of his own publications. So it has happened that many of his best productions have not only been long out of print, but have never even been heard of except by a few of the writer's special friends, or some of our oldest and best read Catholic citizens. We make no doubt that the collection for which the Catholic public is so much indebted to the zeal and industry of Mr. Kehoe, will cause considerable surprise among those who supposed themselves to be well acquainted with Archbishop Hughes's literary labors. How many persons, for instance, have ever heard or remember anything of a tract of some thirty or forty pages called "An Answer to Nine Objections," which Father Hughes published when he was first a priest? Or of his controversies with Dr. Delancey, the late Protestant Episcopal bishop of western New York, and Dr. Onderdonk, P. E. bishop of Pennsylvania? Or of his letters on "Infallibility," written while he was in Philadelphia? Or his once famous series of letters on the "Importance of being in Communion with the Catholic Church?" And yet some of these deserve to rank among the most important and valuable productions of his pen. Our readers will find them all in Mr. Kehoe's volumes, and many other pieces with them which possess a more than ordinary interest. There is a long letter here to the Leopoldine Society of Vienna, in which Dr. Hughes exposes in a very graphic and masterly manner the condition of the Irish emigrants in this country: to the best of our belief it has never been published before. There is a touching and beautiful narrative, extracted from the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith for 1840 of the conversion of the Dodge Family in western New York. There is a description of a storm at sea, written during the bishop's voyage to Europe in 1839. And the second volume closes with a "Christmas Vesper Hymn," which has often been printed before, and even set to music, but will doubtless be new to many people.
We have mentioned these portions of Mr. Kehoe's collection, not only because they are less known than the archbishop's great controversies; but because every true friend of the lamented prelate's fame ought to desire them to be far better known than they are. Archbishop Hughes was one of the kindest, tenderest-hearted men that ever lived; and any one who should judge him by the severe, caustic tone of his letters to Breckinridge, for example, or his speeches on the school question, would gravely mistake his character. Most of the pieces that we have named, and some others as well, show him in his true and most amiable light.