This new volume contains the splendid refutation of High-Church and Tractarian theories which appeared at the height of the Oxford movement in the Dublin Review. Few persons have ever convinced so many and such able antagonists by an argument as the great cardinal did in this case. If it were possible to obtain the little volume on the last illness and death of the cardinal, printed in England for private circulation, to be published with this collection of his works, the Catholic community would feel itself very much favored. The cardinal was a holy man, as well as a great prelate. We have had the pleasure of reading the beautiful account of his last illness and saintly death in the little volume alluded to, and we cannot help thinking that its publication would be an act of great propriety and utility, unless there is some reason for reserving it for a place in a large and full biography.
—Before going to press, we have noticed among the English announcements that the work above referred to has been published.
[The Fisherman’s Daughter]; The Amulet. Tales by Hendrick Conscience. Baltimore: Murphy. 1873.
It is superfluous to praise Conscience’s tales, which are even better than Canon Schmid’s. These two are uncommonly interesting, and published in a very nice and attractive form, which makes them as pretty little volumes for prizes as boy or girl could wish.
[Modern Magic.] By Schele De Vere. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1873.
This is a crude hodge-podge of facts which the author has picked up here and there, in which he utterly fails to distinguish between the natural, the diabolical, and the divine. He has read some Catholic works, and is to some extent familiar with the lives of the saints; but the little that he knows only serves to place his ignorance in a stronger light. What a pity it is that educated men should be ignorant of what a child can so easily learn! Except for the additional examples which he brings from recent times, Mr. De Vere would have been more usefully employed in translating Görres, from whom he occasionally quotes.
[La Primaute et l’Infaillibilité des Souveraines Pontifes, etc.] Par l’Abbé L. N. Bégin, D.D. Quebec: Huot. 1873.
This is another timely and admirable course of lectures from the Laval University. The topics of the lectures are historical, embracing the chief difficulties presented in the earlier, mediæval, and later history of the Roman pontiffs respecting the supremacy and infallibility of the successors of S. Peter. The controversies on rebaptism, the Philosophumena, the case of Liberius, of Zosimus, of Vigilius, of Honorius, the subject of the false decretals, the career of S. Gregory VII., the conflict of Boniface VIII. with Philip le Bel, the affair of the Templars, the great schism of Avignon, the condemnation of Galileo, the suppression of the Jesuits, and several other topics, are discussed in these able lectures in a critical and erudite manner, in so far as space and the other conditions to which the nature of his discourses subjected the author, have given him the opportunity. The whole is preceded by an essay on the doctrine of the supremacy, and concluded by a short eulogium on Pius IX. The author is a graduate of the Roman College, and imbued with the sound scholarship and orthodox spirit of that institution, the headquarters of sacred science, which may God deliver from the impure horde who are now defiling its precincts by their odious presence! There are a great number of intelligent Catholic laymen seeking with anxiety at the present time for clear, satisfactory information on just these topics which the Laval professor has handled in the lectures now published. It is a pity that they are accessible to those only who read French. If the Quebec publisher would issue an edition in English, we are inclined to think that the sale in England and the United States would reimburse him. The lectures on the Syllabus, noticed in this magazine some months ago, are also worth translating, and the publication of two such courses in the English language would most certainly bring great honor to the Laval University.
To Contributors.—New contributors are reminded that no attention can be paid to manuscripts unless accompanied by the writers’ real names, and a reference, if they are unknown to the editor.
We also desire it to be understood that short, pithy articles on subjects of present interest will have the preference, and that none should exceed twelve printed pages (of 650 words each), except by special arrangement.