NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Lectures and Sermons. By the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty, 5 Barclay Street. 1872. pp. 644.
Mr. Haverty has brought out this eagerly expected volume in splendid style, and, what is better still, in a style which is tasteful and appropriate. The title-page, adorned with the Dominican coat-of-arms, is especially beautiful, and the portrait of F. Burke is both an excellent engraving and a good likeness. We are also pleased to notice that there are but few typographical errors, and, in general, that the care and pains which were due from courtesy and gratitude to the immense labors which the author of these lectures and sermons has performed for our profit and pleasure, have been diligently bestowed in making his first published work worthy of his high character and reputation. The cost of the volume will not, we trust, deter any who can possibly afford it from adding this rich legacy of instructive and eloquent teaching to the Catholics of the United States to their libraries, and thus, at the same time, contributing some trifling offering to the Order with which the author is identified, and which is itself wholly identified with the good of the poor Catholic people of Ireland for seven long centuries of labor and martyrdom. It is much to be desired, however, that as soon as the first costly edition is disposed of, a cheap one should be issued for the vast body of people who cannot afford to buy an expensive book. We hope, however, for the credit of our country, that no publisher will so far forget himself as to publish any such edition without F. Burke’s permission and full sanction.
The contents of the volume, which is a large royal octavo, comprise thirty-eight lectures and sermons on a great variety of the most important and interesting topics of the Catholic religion, and Irish history in its relation to religion, although there are sometimes several lectures on the same or very similar topics. Only a few of these were written out for the press by the author, most of them being extemporaneous discourses which were taken down by reporters, and only hastily revised by the father in the short and broken intervals of his incessant labors. It is due to the reporters, however, to say that their work has been performed with the utmost diligence and accuracy, and that they have reproduced, with almost literal fidelity, everything which fell from the lips of the orator—a service to religion and literature for which we tender them our most sincere thanks. F. Burke, with characteristic modesty, apologizes for the publication of his discourses, which, he tells us, he would have prevented if possible. We are very glad that it was not possible, for we have gained in this volume a new and rich casket of real jewels of truth and beauty. It is true that it is necessary to hear F. Burke in order to appreciate and enjoy fully the power of his word, which is emphatically a spoken word, and not a mere written and readable expression of thought in language. His voice, with its baritone richness; his action; his Dominican habit, so beautiful and graceful a dress for a sacred orator in itself, and so sacredly impressive from its associations; and, above all, the magnetic power of his vivid faith and noble enthusiasm for truth and justice, together with the surrounding circumstances of the scene and audience, all enter into the correlation of causes producing the convincing, persuasive, inspiring, and captivating effect of his eloquence. The power of producing the effect which he does produce, and that generally and continually, would prove F. Burke to be an orator of a high order, even if his discourses, written out and read, like those of Massillon and Henry Clay, were incapable of producing a similar effect upon a cultivated reader. But F. Burke’s discourses will bear reading, and their publication will enhance instead of diminishing his fame. Their intrinsic merits as products of learning, intellect, and imagination, prove him to be something more than an orator: they prove him to be a theologian, a philosopher, and a poet, although he is all these in subservience to his distinctive and specific character and vocation as a popular preacher and orator. F. Burke is a master of the most profound Catholic theology, a true disciple of St. Thomas. His logical and argumentative ability in proving the Catholic doctrines, especially those relating to the constitution of the church, is equal to that of our best controversialists; he is a scholar and a historian of rich and varied acquisitions, and he has the sentiment of the beautiful in nature and art to a high degree, joined to a happy descriptive faculty which belongs to his oratorical gifts. He has also an abundance of wit and humor.
But, beyond and above all this, F. Burke is a man of faith; pure, intelligent, uncompromising, Catholic faith and loyalty to the Vicar and the Church of Christ; an apostolic preacher and champion of the truth and law and cause of God. All his gifts are placed in the censer, and made to send up the incense of praise to God; they are laid on the altar and consecrated to our Lord Jesus Christ. The great aim and effort of his sermons and lectures has been to revive and strengthen faith and virtue in the breasts of the people, to arouse their devotion to the Holy See, and enlighten them on the duty of obedience and loyalty to the teaching and the cause of the Holy Father. As an instance of the effect which he has produced on the minds of the people, we may relate an incident which came to our knowledge a few days ago. A longshoreman, who had come to a priest to take the pledge, said to him: “You see, father, that since we heard F. Burke, we have been talking among ourselves a great deal about penance and putting ourselves all right, and so I have just come up to your reverence to begin by taking the pledge.” These are the best triumphs of the Catholic priest, and of far more value to him than the applause of listening thousands. There is no one who has such an empire over the hearts of his countrymen at present in New York as F. Burke. We think there is a greater work for him here than anywhere else in the world, and we therefore conclude by expressing the hope that he may remain here to do it.
Memoir of Roger B. Taney, LL.D., Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. By Samuel Tyler, LL.D., of the Maryland Bar. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1872.
This long-expected and important book has just appeared. It was known that Chief-Justice Taney had, in his lifetime, selected Mr. Tyler to write his biography, a fact well calculated to prepossess the public favorably towards the author and his work. It inspired, also, the hope that ample materials were placed within his reach, and that he would be peculiarly favored in his labors. But as the Chief-Justice, with characteristic modesty, preserved but little of his own writings, and was in the habit of destroying most of the letters he received, and of retaining no copies of those he wrote, it appears that Mr. Tyler labored under great difficulties in accomplishing his appointed duty. Towards the close of his life, when in his seventy-eighth year, the Chief-Justice was reminded, by seeing his biography in Van Santvoord’s Lives of the Chief-Justices, that his life would form a part of the history of his country, and he commenced then a memoir of himself, ending with the account of his early life and education, which now forms the first and an extremely interesting chapter of Mr. Tyler’s Memoir. It seems that the author had to rely, beyond this, chiefly upon his own industry and researches. He has done his work well and faithfully, not as an allotted task, but as a labor of love, a tribute of manly friendship. He has collected a vast amount of historical matter relating to the scenes and times in which the Chief-Justice’s lot was cast, to the great lawyers and judges of the past, most of whom Judge Taney survived, to the public men and statesmen who have shaped the destiny and made the history of our country for the last fifty years, and to the great constitutional questions which, during that period, have agitated the public mind. In order to vindicate the memory of the eminent jurist, he has, from necessity, introduced into his book issues that are now dead; he does not do this in a partisan or aggressive spirit, but treats them rather historically, and with the view of showing what were Judge Taney’s sentiments and what the motives of his action. In the Appendix he gives at length the opinions of the Chief-Justice in the celebrated Dred Scott case, in the cases of Ableman vs. Booth and Kentucky vs. Ohio, both relating to the same subject, and in the noted Merryman habeas corpus case, and has done well in doing so, because these remarkable papers are thus brought within the reach of many not in the habit of reading the law-books. Mr. Tyler’s style is easy and fluent, though not of a high literary order. The book must prove very interesting and instructive to all connected with the law and the administration of justice. Perhaps the subject has been treated too much from a professional standpoint, and for this reason may not prove as interesting to the general reader as such a theme might have been made.
There is one respect in which we regard this work with regret. Chief-Justice Taney was a Catholic and his biographer is a Protestant. It was, then, impossible for Mr. Tyler, even with the best intentions, to do full justice to the character of the Chief-Justice, to his interior life, to his Catholic virtues, and, consequently, to the motives which governed his public actions. We find no fault with Mr. Tyler for this, for he has shown an earnest desire to be fair and just, and has done his best in this as in every other respect. But that best does not meet the necessities of the subject. Mr. Tyler, himself a lawyer, was selected to write the life of a great lawyer and judge, and he has performed his work with ability and zeal, but he has performed it as a lawyer—he could not perform it as a Catholic. To the eyes of Catholics the faith and piety of Chief-Justice Taney were more beautiful and more precious than even his transcendent abilities and profound learning. We think they were the glory of his life and the motive power which made him superior to fear and to all human respect. We think they constituted the charm of his public and private life; and had they been handled by a Catholic, and as none but a Catholic can handle them, the work would have been far more valuable. There were points in the Chief-Justice’s life as a Catholic which remain to this day undeveloped and unelucidated, and for this reason, while Mr. Tyler’s memoir will prove invaluable to the legal profession and general reader, it will disappoint the expectations of his Catholic readers. No Protestant writer could be more free from bigotry than Mr. Tyler, and none could have written Chief-Justice Taney’s life as well. We impute no blame; on the contrary, we thank him for the admiration he expresses of the Chief-Justice’s religion and piety. But the subject was deeper and more fruitful than any Protestant eye could perceive or pen portray. Notwithstanding this, we can and do earnestly commend the work to all Catholics. It is a noble tribute to one of the purest and greatest men of our age. No one, be his faith or politics what they may, can read it without instruction and improvement. Indeed, no one can fairly read it without conceiving a greater respect for that ancient church of which its hero was so devoted a son.