FOOTNOTES:
My heart is soft
As sweetest gum,
My tears they flow
With resin sad;
Hear my elastic song,
Hear my song, lady!
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Historical Sketches. Third Series. By John Henry Newman, D.D.
The Idea of a University, defined and illustrated. By the same. London: Basil Montagu Pickering. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
It would perhaps be proper to say that the revised edition of Dr. Newman's writings bears the same relation to their original publication that fulfilment and prophecy sustain to each other. In the one we see the germ, the promise, and in the other the matured and mellowed fruit. In the former, we foresee the inevitable result of the principles set forth, on a mind so single and intent on the truth. And it is because they do not reflect the perfect image of the truth he now holds that he would blot some of the lines therein written. In the latter, readers will again meet the same wise simplicity and transparency of style which charmed them before, and which mark all the products of his pen.
As a study of diction, Dr. Newman's works are richly worth whatever they cost. We doubt if any author of the time has done more to bring both writers and speakers down from the stilts formerly thought essential in the expression of thought. Almost unconsciously, the leaven of his pure idiomatic English has worked, until its influence is shown in a large number of written and spoken productions, both at home and abroad. As a reflex of a truthful, honest soul, deeply solicitous for the spiritual welfare of his kind, they have a pathos and unction which will have an ever-increasing influence as time goes on.