After some time, learning through a newspaper that his wife is dead, he confesses his love to Liza. She feels drawn towards him, her heart seems to respond to his love, but it is hardly with genuine passion; it is rather the agitation of a lily too rudely stirred by the breeze. Not that she has no depth of feeling; but, as she afterwards acknowledges, when she did indulge in hopes of happiness, her heart shuddered within her. Love seemed almost a profanation, as if a stranger had entered her pure maiden chamber.
Suddenly, the wife, supposed to be dead, reappears. It is all a mistake. Her husband is stunned. He feels he can never give back his love to one who has no longer his respect. And Liza is lost to him. After several attempts, he sees her again. Her eyes have grown dimmer and sunken, her face is pale, and her lips have lost their color. She implores him to be reconciled to his wife, and they part without her allowing her hand to meet his.
Six months later, Liza takes the veil in a remote convent in Russia. The Greek as well as the Latin convent seems to be the ideal refuge of startled innocence and purity. Once Lavretsky goes there, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He sees her as she is leaving the choir. She passes close by him with the quick, noiseless step of a nun, but keeps steadily on without looking at him. But he sees the almost imperceptible tremor of her eye; she bends her emaciated face still lower, and the hands that hold the rosary are clasped more tightly together.
But the chief value of M. Turgenieff's novels to a Catholic lies not in the stories themselves certainly, but in the delightful pictures of Russian life and manners they present, and the influence they have had in softening the rugged manners of the north and changing the condition of the serfs.
Wonders of the Moon. Translated from the French of Amédée Guillemin, by Miss M. G. Mead. Edited, with additions, by Maria Mitchell, of Vassar College. Illustrated with forty-three engravings. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.
This little book contains a tolerably full account of all that is known about the moon, and that is of interest to the general reader. Our knowledge of our [pg 575] satellite is in some respects hardly equal to that which we have recently acquired of the much more distant sun; though so near, comparatively, to us, it is still too far away for the telescope ever to give us as clear a view of it as we need; and the spectroscope is of little use in its examination. We shall never know much about it, and especially about its other side, unless we go to see it; and a trip to the moon, chimerical as it may seem, may not always remain an impossibility for some adventurous person who is willing to run his chance of finding in the apparently uncomfortable little place the necessary conditions for human life. However, not a few of us will be content with the information given in this book, which is vastly greater than what most persons would probably acquire by examining the moon with the finest telescope; for a telescope is of little service to one unaccustomed to use it, and few things are more provoking to an experienced moon-gazer than evident failure of others to see what seems to him so plain. To those, then, who really wish to get a good idea of the moon, and especially of its physical constitution and probable scenery, in really the most satisfactory way, this little volume, notwithstanding a few slight inaccuracies (such as the placing of Petit's bolide at 9,000,000 miles from the earth), will be quite interesting and valuable. These inaccuracies, if in the original, should have been corrected in the translation.
The Great Problem: The Higher Ministry of Nature viewed in the Light of Modern Science, and as an aid to advanced Christian Philosophy. By John R. Leifchild, A.M., author of Our Coal Fields and our Coal Pits; Cornwall: Its Mines and Miners, etc., etc. With an introduction by Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor of the University of New York. New York: G. P. Putnam & Son. 1872.
Dr. Crosby introduces this really able and valuable essay with a just and manly rebuke of the unparalleled absurdity and impudence of our modern materialistic scientists; and it is high time for him, considering what balderdash he is obliged to listen to from his chancellor's chair. The essay of Mr. Leifchild is a series of arguments on the topics of natural theology, in which some of the principal manifestations of the power and wisdom of God in the physical world are pointed out and referred to their true cause and end. The author most absurdly saws off the limb of the tree on which grows all the fruit he admires so much and gathers so carefully, by denying the value of metaphysics. But, in spite of that, his sound mind holds implicitly the very metaphysics he ignorantly despises, and he is therefore able to reason very well and conclusively. Most persons who read books of this kind are more ready to listen to a geologist teaching theology than to a professed theologian, and they prefer the roundabout method of coming to a point by induction to the straight road of logical deduction. This book is likely to be useful, therefore, and is, besides, printed in very clear, legible type, which makes it a pleasant book to read, though laboring under the sad inconvenience of having neither index nor table of contents. There are a good many interesting facts and statements about eminent writers interspersed, e.g., Spinoza and Leibnitz; but the author is seriously mistaken in ascribing any pantheistic doctrines or tendencies to Henry Suso and Tauler. We are happy to welcome such books from English writers who are adepts in the physical sciences. For these sciences, and the men who are really masters of them, we have a great respect in their own sphere. And we consider it a very praiseworthy and useful task for men of this kind, to undertake to show the conformity of these sciences with the queen over all the scientific realm—Christian philosophy.
The Minnesinger of Germany. By A. E. Kroeger. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1872.
In this little book we have a very charming, as also very learned, exposition of mediæval art. The Minnesinger or minstrel-knights of the latter half of the XIIth and earlier half of the XIIIth centuries are but little known outside of Germany. In this book we are introduced to the principal masters of this beautiful and ephemeral school of song, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walter von der Vogelweide, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, Hartmann von der Aue, Regenbogen, Conrad von Würzburg, and Henrich von Meissen, known as “Frauenlob,” or “ladies' praise.” These poets sang chiefly of religion and love. But foremost among all women, the great Mother [pg 576] of God chiefly claimed their enthusiastic homage, as we see by the long extracts given by Mr. Kroeger of some of their glorious “Hymns to the Virgin.” Here is an example, from “The Divine Minnesong,” attributed sometimes to Gottfried of Strassburg: