That valuable materials exist in the country for all of these important works, we feel quite sure. We hope care will be taken of them and that they will be freely placed at the service of our Catholic historians and authors. Their publication would be the best means of preserving them, while rendering them useful to the present generation. We will give an incident in the experience of Mr. Clarke, in preparing his Lives of the Bishops, related by him to us, as an evidence of the danger to which valuable historical matter is constantly exposed of being lost and destroyed. He applied, in one instance, to the custodians of the papers relating to the Catholic history of an important diocese and state, and was informed that the diocesan papers and documents had been for many years locked up in a strong chest or safe, before and for some time after the death of the first bishop, and, on being opened and examined, they were found to be in a state of complete decay from the damp, fell to pieces when handled, and that scarcely a line of the writing was legible. Other cases are related of valuable materials for American Catholic history lost or sent out of the country. We observe, in the first volume before us, a new and appropriate feature—a distinct and separate return of thanks by the author to a long list of prelates, priests, and laymen who have supplied him with materials or aided him in his labors. The appeal he makes, in his preface, for the assistance of such as possess materials, has our cordial sympathy; and we

hope the appeal will not be made in vain.

The book of prelates, whose appearance we now hail with so much pleasure, is the most important and valuable contribution yet made to our American Catholic biographical literature. It covers the ground of our entire church history to the most recent times, possesses the peculiar interest which attaches to personal and individual narrative, and is free, as we have said, from the dryness of the general history. Its pages teem with an ardent love of country and of our American institutions, and with a devotion to true liberty, which well accord with the traditions and education of one of the descendants of the Catholic pilgrims of Maryland, who constitute the theme of an honored chapter in our history, illustrating the magnanimity of a dominant Catholic majority in times when toleration was not the fashion, the harmony between Catholicity and liberty, and an unflinching faith through generations of Protestant persecution. Praise is freely bestowed, where praise was due, to our country and to our countrymen; and reproof is administered in the spirit of true affection, whenever there are errors or abuses to be corrected, or where there is conflict, in the civil or political order, with the sacred rights of religion and of conscience.

The antiquity of the Catholic Church in America, her struggles and triumphs, are well worthy of the study of all. Her struggles have ever been against vice and error, and in favor of liberty and virtue. Her triumphs have been the conquest of souls for heaven. No impartial mind can study the career of the Catholic Church in the United States without being convinced of the purity of her motives, and the sacredness of her aims. Her conservatism, her

sacraments, her defence of Christian marriage, her labors for religious education, her chastening influence over the consciences of her children, of which every day’s record affords examples, her maintenance of law and order, have made her in the past, what they will prove in the future, the mainstay of society, of liberty, and of the republic. Her growth in our midst has been the work of Providence, not of man; a growth which, as our author shows, has proportionately far outstripped that of the republic. While the country has increased from thirteen states to thirty-seven states and eleven territories in ninety-five years, the church has increased from one bishopric to sixty-four bishoprics, six vicariates apostolic, and four mitred abbots in eighty-one years. The population of the country has increased from 2,803,000 to about 40,000,000, while the children of the Catholic Church have increased from 25,000 to 5,500,000. The increase of the general population of the country has been 1,433 per centum in ninety-five years, and that of the church has been 22,000 per centum in eighty-one years. The Catholic clergy have increased from twenty-one priests in 1790 to about four thousand eight hundred priests in 1871; they dispense the blessings of religion in 4,250 churches and 1,700 chapels.

After giving these statistics, the preface proceeds thus:

“To Rome, the capital of the Christian world, Eternal City, destined in our hopes and prayers and faith to be restored to us again as the free and undesecrated Mistress and Ruler of Churches, and to the Sovereign Pontiffs therein, Vicars of Christ on earth, we turn with love and gratitude for the care, solicitude, and support bestowed upon our churches, and for the exemplary prelates bestowed upon them by the Chief Bishop of the church. To our venerable hierarchy,

bishops and priests, and to the religious orders, both male and female, we render thanks for their labors, their sacrifices, their sufferings, and their suffrages.

“To our prelates, especially, is due under God the splendid result we have but faintly mentioned. They were the founders of our churches, the pioneers of the faith, and the chief pastors of our flocks. In poverty and suffering they commenced the work, and spent themselves for others. A diocese just erected upon the frontiers, in the midst of a new and swarming population, to anticipate and save the coming faithful, the hope of a future flock, an outpost upon the borders of Christianity and civilization—such was the frequent work and vigilant foresight of the Propaganda and of the Councils of Baltimore—such the charge confided to a newly consecrated bishop. To the religious enterprise and untiring providence of the Catholic Church, in her prompt and vigorous measures for the extension of the faith in this country, may well be applied the striking lines of Milton:

‘Zeal and duty are not slow;
But on occasion’s forelock watchful wait.’
—Paradise Regained.