The Comprehensive Geography. Nos. 1, 2, and 3. New York: P. O’Shea, 37 Barclay St. 1876.
We are inclined to think that this series is the best of the many which have of late years been presented to the public, and certainly do not know of any which are superior to it in any respect except in the department of physical geography; and it is as complete even in this as it could well be without an additional volume specially devoted to that subject.
The feature which should particularly recommend it to Catholics is the prominence which it gives to facts connected with religion. There is no branch of study for the young in which it is so important that religion should be prominent as geography, with the exception, of course, of history. Even the best text-books hitherto published are perhaps a little too reticent in this respect. The desire to accomplish this object has in the present work led to the introduction of some rather unnecessary details; but this is a fault on the right side.
We hope that this series will become popular, as it deserves to be, in Catholic schools.
The Complete Office of Holy Week according to the Roman Missal and Breviary. In Latin and English. New edition. Revised and enlarged. 18mo, pp. 563. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.
This edition of Holy Week is a new and corrected one; it is printed from large type on good paper, and is well and substantially bound. Moreover, it is complete, containing all the offices of the church from Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, inclusive. This edition is the only correct one now published in this country. It has been carefully read by persons competent to guarantee against the gross blunders that are apt to disfigure Catholic works of the greatest importance. The price is so low that the book is within the reach of every one, thus enabling them to follow easily the services of the church during Holy Week.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXV., No. 146.—MAY, 1877.
THE PRUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[[26]]
M. Julian Klaczko is by birth a Polish Jew and is a convert to the Catholic Christian faith. He was for a time employed in the office of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was afterwards a member of the imperial parliament. He has, however, generally been a resident in France, where his numerous essays on political topics have been published, all of which have attracted much attention and won for their author a high reputation. We have already, in our number for last March, made some observations on the career and policy of one of the two chancellors, whose lives and public actions, so far as they had progressed at the time of its publication, were sketched in the work whose title is given below. This work is one of the most interesting political brochures of our time, and we propose to continue in the present article the review of it commenced in our previous one, confining our attention chiefly to the chancellor of the German Empire.
Prince Bismarck has been characterized by M. Thiers as “a savage full of genius.” He is one of Carlyle’s “heroes”—an expression synonymous with that of the clever French statesman, and denoting a giant in whom is embodied intellectual and physical force, irrespective of any moral direction. To this native strength, which has remained through life to a great extent rude and uncultivated, and not in any way to a regular and careful education, Otto von Bismarck is indebted for the success he has achieved. His studies were finished on his entrance at the university, and never resumed. It is doubtful whether he ever passed the legal examination required before entering the civil service in Prussia. Nevertheless, such a man is always a sort of extraordinary professor to himself. He has read literature and studied men and events. It is absurd to call such a man uneducated; and, although he does not possess the art of speaking or writing according to rule, he is able to use both his tongue and pen with an original power which sometimes rises to the highest level of eloquence, and to coin expressions which, once uttered, can never be forgotten. We have quoted one in our former article, about the “iron dice of destiny,” and we will give one more, which we think is unsurpassed in the annals of modern speech: