These are all excellent stories, choice flowers of fiction culled from French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English gardens, while those of native growth are not forgotten. They are reprints from The Catholic World; and how admirably fitted they are to meet a general want the reader may judge for himself by glancing at this month’s Bulletin, which presents the verdict of the Catholic press on them. Nothing is more needed nowadays than good popular Catholic literature, stories, perhaps, more than anything else. We accordingly welcome the republication in book form of stories which were universally well received as they appeared in the columns of The Catholic World, and only hope that the series may be continued.
Episodes of the Paris Commune in 1871. Translated from the French by the Lady Blanche Murphy. Benziger Brothers, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 1876.
This is a little volume of very readable sketches, relating the persecutions and sufferings of the various brotherhoods of Paris during the brief reign of the Commune in 1871. Their schools were closed, their houses invaded, and the brothers
who had not succeeded in escaping to some safe hiding-place were arrested and thrown into prison. The services of the Christian Brothers as ambulance nurses during the war were known to the whole country; but the Commune ruthlessly drove them from the bedsides of the wounded and dying soldiers. “Down with the Black-gowns!” was the cry. “Death to the Brothers! Let them go join Darboy.”
“The watchword of the Revolution,” said Raoul Rigault to M. Cotte, the writer of one of these sketches, and late director of the press ambulances of Longchamps—“the watchword of the Revolution is death to religion, to ritual, to priests!” And he added: “As long as there is left in the land one man who dares pronounce the name of God all our labor will have been in vain, and we shall not be able to lay down the sword and the rifle.”
The style of the translation is easy and simple, and these Episodes will very fittingly occupy a place in “The Catholic Premium-Book Library.”
The Story of a Vocation: How it came about, and what became of it. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1876.
This is really the story of two vocations—of one in the world, and of another in, but not of, the world. It is one of those pure, graceful, yet interesting tales which are only too few. The translation, from the French, is well done. Parents and those who have charge of children will find this book not only highly entertaining but of real utility.
The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland, and Ireland, a.d. 1400 to 1875. With appointments to monasteries and extracts from consistorial acts taken from MSS. in public and private libraries in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Ravenna, and Paris. By W. Mazière Brady. Vol. I. Rome: Tipografia della Pace. 1876.
This collection of curious documents relates to the Catholic succession. It is of great utility to the searcher into ecclesiastical antiquities. The author has consulted archives and searched out old records with much diligence, and gathered together a number of curious items of information of great value and interest to the antiquarian student. The most interesting of these is the account of Dr. Goldwell,