It doubtless surprised many intelligent readers to find what interesting facts even a cursory investigation would bring to light, while reading what our “Looker-Back” saw while in London. This work is a treat of a similar character. It is constructed on the plan of an itinerary, and divided into nine “walks,” in which the most notable localities are looked at from an archæological point of view, re-peopled by the actors on the stage at the respective dates, and reanimated by the deeds then being performed.
Notes of the Wandering Jew; or, The Jesuits and their Opponents. Edited by John Fairplay, Esq. Dublin: McGlashan & Gill. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
We are doubtless indebted to the famous romance of Eugene Sue for these notes of the Wandering Jew, in which this extraordinary personage, after his ceaseless journeyings for more than eighteen hundred years, finally turns up as an author, and, surprising as it may seem, a defender of the Jesuits.
The first part of the little volume is devoted to S. Ignatius. The Wandering Jew had seen him on two occasions—first in Spain, in his hot youth, with his light, graceful form clad in a page's rich attire, with the plumed cap and velvet mantle, the hawk upon his wrist, the hounds following at his heels, whilst his foot seemed hardly to touch the ground as he walked; and again, at Rome, he saw him in his old age, arrayed in the flowing gown of the priest, with the calm of deliberate wisdom on his high forehead, advancing with a sweet and awful majesty to the altar.
“I loved and revered him then,” says the Jew, “albeit a stranger to his communion; and I cannot recall the memory of that marked and expressive countenance, whether in the gallant boy or the venerable and saintly old man, without feeling some interest in the fate of that illustrious order which he alone created, and which still bears the impress of his character and genius.”
The remaining chapters are devoted to The Spiritual Exercises, “The Constitutions of the Order,” “The Missions and Schools of the Jesuits,” and, finally, to answering some of the charges which Protestants and infidels have brought against the Society. There is a very good chapter on the Provincial Letters, in which Pascal, with a wit and power of sarcasm surpassed only by the artful unfairness with which he treats the subject, has sought to make the whole order responsible for the extravagant opinions of some few Spanish and Flemish Jesuits.
The author, who is evidently not a Catholic, has written with great fairness and good sense, and we most willingly recommend his book to our readers.
The Red Flag, and Other Poems. By the Hon. Roden Noel. London: Strahan & Co. 1872.
We have been asked to notice this book. But how are Catholics to regard it with favor, when, before they have read far in the poem of “The Red Flag,” they come upon a passage containing an insult too gross and slanderous, we should have thought, for even Exeter Hall? We forbear to quote the words. Suffice it to say that the author, ignoring the martyred archbishop and priests, represents the church as gloating over the execution of the communists in Paris.
Affectation, verboseness, and sensuous description characterize these poems as works of art; while the metre of “The Red Flag” is in the worst taste, and the lyrics are spoilt by all sorts of quirks and the clumsiest divisions of stanzas.