We are not competent to answer thoroughly either of these questions, which for many years have exercised the politician as well as the philanthropist; we can only express our opinion. We have no such place in this country as St. Lazare, but we have the abandoned women and their needs. Ah! that word abandoned expresses the state of the public mind toward those who have thus fallen; but the Catholic Christian cannot suffer any soul for whom Christ died to be abandoned, and the Catholic Church answers the first of these questions by opening her arms to the penitent, and offering her the refuge of “Houses of the Good Shepherd,” established in most of our large cities. By the support and multiplication of this order, whose lifework is to receive and help these poor children of sin, is the most effectual way in which Catholic women can reach the class in whose interest this book was written. We do not believe that women discharged from a prison like St. Lazare
could be preserved from future danger in an institution like the one proposed in the appendix to this volume. No place but a strictly religious house, in our opinion, could be a house of moral convalescence to these poor creatures. There is one way in which American Catholic women can lessen the number of these miserable outcasts. Watch over your servants, know where they spend their evenings, take them by the hand and give them loving, maternal advice as to their company, and endeavor to bring them often to confession and communion. The providence of God has committed these young girls to your care, and who knows but their souls may be required of you, negligent mistresses, in that day when we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ? With regard to the employments of women, should not women be allowed to do any honest business that they can do well? Many new openings have been made for her of late years in telegraphic and photographic offices and stores. But, after all, to touch the root of this matter, why should not woman be so trained that she could, in any emergency, have a resource and support herself? A great deal would be gained if children were brought up to feel that “it is working, and not having money, that makes people happy.” “It is a noteworthy fact,” says the author of The Prisoners of St. Lazare, “that three-quarters of the inmates are without knowledge of a trade or of any means of making a livelihood for themselves. The support of husband or father failing, then destitution followed, and then vice.”
Prophetic Imperialism; or, The Prophetic Entail of Imperial Power. By Joseph L. Lord, of the Boston Bar. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1871.
Mr. Lord writes like a thorough gentleman, a point which we notice in this distinct and emphatic manner
because it is a somewhat rare phenomenon in literature of this class. He writes, also, like a well-trained and cultivated scholar and thinker. It is, therefore, a pleasant task to read what he has written, more pleasant from the fact that his essay is a short one, and his thoughts are briefly as well as lucidly and elegantly set forth. Moreover, although a Boston lawyer, Mr. Lord really reverences the Holy Scriptures and believes the prophets. His spirit is pious and fervent, though sober, and he is alike free from cant and from unbelieving flippancy. The peculiar theory of Mr. Lord regarding the fulfilment of what we may call the imperial prophecies is not contrary to orthodox doctrine, and is in fact held by him in common with some Catholic writers, although diverse from the one held by the generality of sound interpreters. So far as all the empires preceding that of Christ are concerned, he agrees with the common interpretation. In respect to this last, he holds to a personal descent and earthly empire of our Lord. This is an hypothesis which, in our eyes, has no probability whatever. It is not wonderful, however, that a person who does not see the earthly empire of Christ in the reign and triumph of his Vicar and the Roman Church, should be driven to look for a personal descent and reign of the Lord in the latter times. In this respect, Mr. Lord agrees with a number of eminent Protestant writers, who, being disgusted with the fruits of the Reformation, and not so happy as to see the glories of the Catholic Church, fly for consolation to this brilliant but, as we think, baseless hypothesis.
Mr. Lord differs from most American Protestants in the very disrespectful esteem in which he holds democracy. It is curious to observe the very enthusiastic and adulatory language in which a number of divines express their conviction of the truth of his theory, imperialistic
as it is from top to bottom. They withhold their names, however, from a motive of prudence. Mr. Lord’s arguments have not convinced us that his theory is correct, but they prove their author to be worthy of esteem.
East and West Poems. By Bret Harte. Boston: James R. Osgood & Company (late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood & Co.). 1871.
Many of those who have enjoyed Bret Harte’s fugitive pieces have felt a vague suspicion that the word poetry was scarcely adequate to express their character. The sketches from nature have been unquestionably graphic, and, in some cases, not devoid of real humor or pathos—all which has led to their being considered by many as evidences of genius capable by its touch of ennobling humble and insignificant subjects. The volumes, however, which have succeeded one another since Mr. Harte has left California, persuade us that he not only calls his rhymes poetry, but sincerely believes them to be such, and takes for granted that everybody who knows anything at all agrees perfectly with him. We fear that there has been a mistake somewhere. Either the public have been betrayed into an incautious endorsement of the author’s opinion of his own work, or the author has mistaken the character of the sensation which he has created.
He seems to be just as eager as ever in his efforts to astonish the world; and we know not how many more volumes of “poems” we may expect before the public and he come to an understanding. For our own part, the present is just one more than we are prepared to welcome. In spite of kindly dispositions, we are painfully impressed with the fact that the mistake we have alluded to lies with the author. We are also unpleasantly relieved from a doubt as to whether the