The author's treatment and discussion of Bacon's genius, and his claim to be the founder of the inductive philosophy, are unsatisfactory to our mind; but this subject involves a question into which it is impossible to enter in this notice.
We regret that we cannot take leave of this pleasant and on the whole admirable book without being obliged to say, that though it is by no means dangerous, it is often annoying to the Catholic reader. Mr. Whipple seems to be imbued with that prejudice and unfairness which is so common in English and American literature when alluding to the church, and in several places by slight words and phrases expresses that sneering contempt in which authors of his "liberal and tolerant" views are so apt to indulge toward those who differ from them in belief. We think, too, that in his introductory chapter he gives altogether too much prominence to the "Reformation" as a means of intellectual awakening. The so-called Reformation may indeed have been partially, and in a peculiar sense, a result of the intellectual ferment of the time—an unhappy and deplorable result—but it was not one of its causes, as the author seems to think. Those lie further back, in those other great events which Mr. Whipple names—the revival of classical learning, the invention of printing, and the discovery of America; events which he and his class of writers would do well often to remind themselves were brought about by loyal and devout Catholics.
The writings of Madame Swetchine. Edited by Count de Falloux of the French Academy. Translated by H. W. Preston. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 1869.
The Life and Letters of Madame Swetchine, published some eighteen months since, might dispense us from any more special mention of her Writings than to say that she is in both works well and eloquently portrayed as a character "destined to hold a front place among the most powerful, original, pure, and fascinating revealed in all history."
Madame Swetchine was of aristocratic birth, very wealthy, accomplished, and even learned. Better than all these, she was liberal in ideas, the friend of the poor and lowly, modest, humble, and pious. The greatest minds of the age—De Maistre, De Bonald, Cuvier, Frayssinous, De Falloux, De Broglie, Lacordaire, and Montalembert—sought her friendship and hung upon her words. And yet even such homage as this never inspired her with the slightest literary vanity or worldly ambition. She wrote much, but never for publication. She never specially preserved what she wrote, never desired to. The material of the book before us, collected after her death by her executor, Count de Falloux, of the French Academy, was written without any fixed plan, at various periods, upon loose leaves in a rapid, illegible hand, most of it in pencil. The manuscript was distributed among several of her literary friends, with whom it was a labor of love to arrange and prepare it for the press.
Rarely has unpublished writing had so bright a constellation of posthumous interpreters. The "Thoughts" are arranged by the Abbé de Cazalès and Count Jules de Berton; "Old Age," by Count Paul Resseguier; "Resignation," by Count Albert De Resseguier and Prince A. Galitzin.
The general title "Writings" is eminently proper here, as Madame Swetchine never entertained the premeditation implied by the term "works." They are marked by a knowledge of the world, a philosophical range of thought, a purity of soul, and an elevation of piety rarely united in one person. Here are a few of her scattered "Thoughts," which we take almost at random:
"Loyalty is patriotism simplified."
"I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first, and superlatively, honest men."
"The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume."
"We forgive too little—forget too much."
"Good is slow; it climbs. Evil is swift; it descends. Why should we marvel that it makes great progress in a short time?"
"We must labor unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious."
"Years do not make sages; they only make old men."
"Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms."
"The choicest of the public are not always the public choice."
"The inventory of my faith for this lower world is soon made out. I believe in Him who made it."
"I allow the Catholic only one right; that, namely, of being a better man than others."
"Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others."
"A vast number of attachments subsist on the common hatred of a third person."
The treatise on old age is a classic Christian De Senectute, with an elevation and morality impossible to Cicero.