{555}

English bigotry, under nineteenth century forms, is to-day as patent, as

understood, as calculable a mainspring and motive of public judgment as in

Archbishop Laud's era. Miss Procter's chance of any high praise was thus

never very great. But appearing as she did on the scene of letters at a

time when the Church of England was yet in the full sanctimoniousness of

righteous reaction against the dismembering logic of the Puseyites, any

good there was in her was very safe from discovery by most of the critics.

Had she been a self asserting sectarian, cramming her dogmas, as some of us

did their abolitionism, down her readers' throats, she might have been

hunted down to fame by the indignant zeal of the saintly star-chamberers of

letters, who lead public opinion much as the foam leads the wave.

Unfortunately for this opening, Miss Procter was a lady, and such

self-assertion the most foreign of traits to her nature. Not loud enough

for martyrdom, she was just firmly Catholic enough for misjudgment, or

rather for denial of judgment. While the tribunals of criticism could not

avoid taking notice of a book by Barry Cornwall's daughter, still, with all

the little good and ill the reviewers said of her, they never did her the

one essential service they could render, of putting her name where the

reading public would see it and pass judgment on her. There is a way of

praising that keeps off, and a way of blaming that attracts, the mass of

readers.

With the returning tide of ritualism, she has begun to be more appreciated,

but it is only a beginning. We are so strongly inclined to think her poems

at the outset of a new career in public favor, and we consider that so

little justice has been done her in the critical journals of this country,

that we cannot help feeling toward them accordingly; and so, in range of

our attempted discussion of her merits, and copiousness of citation, we

have treated her in all respects precisely as a new author.

For we believe sincerely that the clouds of circumstance and prejudice

about Miss Procter's entrance into literary life have obscured from us

poetical powers not only of no common order, but of that calm, self-centred

kind we have spoken of as rare enough in man, and the feminine counterpart

of which is almost unknown in literary history. Her mind is not

Shakespeare's, nor Coleridge's, nor Goethe's, but the resistless river and

the fountain of the rocks may both be the overflow of the same sunless

reservoir in the deep bosom of the mountains. And her poetry is indeed a

fountain of the rocks; pure, placid, deep of source, shaded yet sparkling,

"making a quiet music all its own;" with no torrent nor show of force, yet

musically passing all obstacles, and emerging, clear, bright, and

beautiful, in the sunlight beyond. Most varied and versatile in her choice

of subjects, she brings to all a poetic insight, a freedom and fancy of

expression, a grasp of the topic, and, above all, a strange, noble

earnestness, that altogether make up a style whose quiet charm we had

rather easily illustrate than elaborately fail in describing.

The key-note of all her writings is thoughtfulness, and withal a peculiar

kind of thoroughness of thought such as we have found in no other woman.

Mrs. Browning (perhaps we ought to add the new Mrs. Augusta Webster, whose

perceptive powers are the theme of the English reviews) is the only one who

ever has analyzed nearly so well, and she and all the others seem only

incidentally, while Miss Procter is habitually, analytical. Her entire

superiority, indeed, is the consequence and corollary of this curious depth

of mind. Bold in abstractions, tender in revealings of the heart, ingenious

in incident and invention, she is sure to have a well-defined thought at

bottom, always suggestive, often philosophic, sometimes profound. The rare

combination of entire femininity with this thinking habit is an originality

in itself. Very novel and very charming is the effect of seeing together

with this strong, clear, searching introspection, all the woman's delicacy

of touch.

{556}

But the reader is tired of our generalities, and would much rather see for

himself how well Miss Procter thinks. So we give him a fair example in the

poem called

Incompleteness.

Nothing resting in its own completeness

Can have power or beauty; but alone

Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,

Fuller, higher, deeper than its own.

_Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning,

Gracious though it be, of her blue hours,

But is hidden in her tender leaning

To the summer's richer wealth of flowers.

Dawn is fair because the mists fade slowly

Into day, which floods the world with light;

Twilight's mystery is so sweet and holy

Just because it ends in starry night._

Childhood's smiles unconscious graces borrow

From strife that in a far-off future lies;

_And angel glances (veiled now by life's sorrow)

Draw our hearts to some beloved eyes._

Life is only bright when it proceedeth

Toward a truer, deeper life above;

Human love is sweetest when it leadeth

To a more divine and perfect love.

Learn the mystery of progression duly:

Do not call each glorious change decay;

But know we only hold our treasures truly,

When it seems as if they passed away.

Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness;

In that want their beauty lies; they roll

Toward some infinite depth of love and sweetness,

Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.

This poem holds one of the great principles in Miss Procter's very noble

theory of life--a theory abundantly developed in her poems. Her cardinal

axioms would seem to be three: The great rule of life is progression; its

great agent, sorrow; its great fact and end, love. On these pillars she

builds, and 'Incompleteness' is one of the most direct statements of one

part of her creed. Another fine poem, in thought a kind of companion-piece

to this, in which we readily recognize the same underlying thought, is

Beyond.

We must not doubt, or fear, or dread that love for

life is only given,

And that the calm and sainted dead will meet

estranged and cold in heaven:

Oh! love were poor and vain, indeed, based on so

harsh and stern a creed.

True that this earth must pass away

with all the starry worlds of light,

With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness

of night,

For in that radiant home can shine alone

the immortal and divine.

Earth's lower things--her pride, her fame,

her science, learning, wealth, and power,

Slow growths that through long ages came,

or fruits of some convulsive hour,

Whose very memory must decay--heaven is

too pure for such as they.

They are complete; their work done.

So let them sleep in endless rest.

Love's life is only here begun, nor is,

nor can be, fully blest;

It has no room to spread its wings,

amid this crowd of meaner things.

Just for the very shadow thrown upon its

sweetness here below,

The cross that it must bear alone,

and bloody baptism of woe,

Crowned and completed through its pain,

we know that it shall rise again.

So, if its flame burn pure and bright,

here where our air is dark and dense,

(And nothing in this world of night

lives with a living so intense,)

When it shall reach its home at length,

how bright its light! how strong its strength!

And while the vain weak loves of earth

(for such base counterfeits abound)

Shall perish with what gave them birth--

their graves are green and fresh around--

No funeral song shall need to rise

for the true love that never dies.

If in my heart I now could fear that,

risen again, we should not know

What was our life of life when here--the

hearts we loved so much below

I would arise this very day

and cast so poor a thing away.

But love is no such soulless clod;

living, perfected it shall rise,

Transfigured in the light, of God,

and giving glory to the skies:

And that which makes this life so sweet

shall render heaven's joy complete.

As a poem, this latter is superior, because it applies beautifully to a

beautiful subject the principle which the other merely enunciates. And the

style is not less remarkable than the ideas. Can anything be more clearly,

calmly _right_ than the thought, more easy, lucid, _real_ than

its utterance? And it is not the bald perspicuity, either, of mere logical

disquisition, but full of suggestion and spirit; and it does not flag;

especially in Beyond there is not a weak line nor lower thought. Now is not

all this refreshing after the diffuse grace and dilute sweetness of female

poetry in general? It is to the run of it as a copse of May's arbutus to a

meadow strewn with buttercups.

_Apropos_ of this superiority, we find another poem which illustrates

it even more strongly, because so very many women have fluttered about the

same thought.

{557}

Every _femme incomprise_--and what poetess does not think she is one?

is full of it; why have none of them said it so broadly and well as this?

Unexpressed.

Dwells within the soul of every artist

More than all his effort can express,

And he knows the best remains unaltered,

Sighing at what we call his success.

Vainly he may strive; he dare not tell us

All the sacred mysteries of the skies:

Vainly he may strive; the deepest beauty

Cannot be unveiled to mortal eyes.

And the more devoutly that he listens,

And the holier message that is sent,

Still the more his soul must struggle vainly,

Bowed beneath a noble discontent.

No great thinker ever lived and taught you

All the wonder that his soul received;

No true painter ever set on canvas

All the glorious vision he conceived.

No musician ever held your spirit

Charmed and bound in his melodious chains,

But be sure he heard, and strove to render

Feeble echoes of celestial strains.

No real poet ever wove in numbers

All his dream, but the diviner part,

Hidden from all the world, spake to him only

In the voiceless silence of his heart.

So with love; for love and art united

Are twin mysteries; different, yet the same:

Poor, indeed, would be the love of any

Who could find its full and perfect name.

Love may strive, but vain is the endeavor

All its boundless riches to unfold;

Still its tenderest, truest secret lingers

Ever in its deepest depths untold.

Things of time have voices, speak and perish:

Art and love speak, but their words must be

Sighings of illimitable forests,

Waves of an unfathomable sea.

The positive merit of this--passing the odious business of comparison--is,

to our mind, the well-managed amplification of the main thought, and the

swell both of sense and sound at the close, which we find a beauty of high

order. The last two lines especially seize the melodic principle of the

metre, which, beyond almost any other we know, calls for long musical

words. Only "voiceless silence" strikes one as tautological to the last

degree. Miss Proctor very rarely makes outright mistakes, and she may have

seen some subtle sense added by the word "voiceless" that we cannot. All

the silences we have ever known were strictly voiceless, and decidedly apt

to terminate about the time any voice began.

The next great topic with our poetess is the sweet uses of adversity. She

is never weary of celebrating the beauty and benignity of sorrow. In fact,

she appears to have a personal friendship for misfortune, as the great

elevating and purifying dispensation of earthly existence. Grief,

disappointment, death, are to her philosophy but natural incidents, to be

expected and met without fear--processes tending to the higher result

hereafter. But here is her whole thought, better set forth than we can say

it:

Friend Sorrow.

Do not cheat thy heart and tell her

Grief will pass away,

Hope for fairer times in future

And forget to-day.

Tell her, if you will, that sorrow

Need not come in vain,

Tell her that the lesson taught her

Far outweighs the pain.

Cheat her not with the old comfort,

"Soon she will forget:"

Bitter truth, alas! but matter

Rather for regret.

Bid her not "Seek other pleasures,

Turn to other things:"

Rather nurse her caged sorrow

Till the captive sings.

Rather bid her go forth bravely

And the stranger greet,

Not as foes with spear and buckler,

But as dear friends meet;

Bid her with a strong clasp hold her

By her dusky wings,

Listening for the murmured blessing

Sorrow always brings.

This is only one of a large number of poems full of varied exposition of

these same views. Some are so ingenious and happy that we can hardly resist

quoting them, were it not that, if those were the only qualifications, we

should have to cite the major part of her poems. In fact, this conception

of sorrow as a hidden blessing is peculiarly strong in all she has written.

And yet, while recognizing in tribulation an elevating grace that wins it a

welcome from her heart, she fully feels the sadness, the weariness, the

poverty and pain of earthly lives. A strong instance of this is the "Cradle

Song of the Poor," with its singular, sad refrain:

"Sleep, my darling, thou art weary,

God is good, but life is dreary."

{558}

And the miseries of the poor have evoked the only bitter lines she ever

wrote, which, coming, as they do, the very last in her book, seem almost

like an after-addition--the strange strong lines called "Homeless." There

is a force in some of the lines that reminds us of Hood:

It is cold, dark midnight, yet listen

To that patter of tiny feet!

Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,

Who whines in the bleak, cold street?

Is it one of your silken spaniels

Shut out in the snow and the sleet?

My dogs sleep warm in their baskets,

Safe from the darkness and snow;

All the beasts in our Christian England

Find pity wherever they go.

(Those are only the homeless children

Who are wandering to and fro.)

Look out in the gusty darkness:

I have seen it again and again,

That shadow, that flits so slowly

Up and down past the window-pane:

It is surely some criminal lurking

Out there in the frozen rain!

Nay, our criminals all are sheltered,

They are pitied and taught and fed:

That is only a sister-woman,

Who has got neither food nor bed:

_And the Night cries, "Sin to be living;"

And the River cries, "Sin to be dead."_

.....

There is one other piece perhaps even sadder than this when we penetrate

its full, stern significance:

The Requital.

Loud roared the tempest, fast fell the sleet;

A little child-angel passed down the street

With trailing pinions and weary feet.

The moon was hidden; no stars were bright;

So she could not shelter in heaven that night,

_For the angels' ladders are rays of light._

She beat her wings at each window-pane,

And pleaded for shelter, but all in vain:

"Listen," they said, "to the pelting rain!"

She sobbed, as the laughter and mirth grew higher,

"Give me rest and shelter beside your fire,

And I will give you your heart's desire."

The dreamer sat watching his embers gleam,

While his heart was floating down hope's bright stream,

So he wove her wailing into his dream.

The worker toiled on, for his time was brief;

The mourner was nursing her own pale grief:

They heard not the promise that brought relief.

But fiercer the tempest rose than before,

When the angel paused at a humble door

And asked for shelter and help once more.

A weary woman, pale, worn, and thin,

With the brand upon her of want and sin,

Heard the child-angel and took her in.

Took her in gently, and did her best

To dry her pinions; and made her rest

With tender pity upon her breast.

When the eastern morning grew bright and red,

Up the first sunbeam the angel fled,

Having kissed the woman, and left her--dead.

Human waifs forgotten by all their kind are a sorrowful picture enough, but

this of a human heart so desolate, so blank, so seared, so far from all

hope or joy in life, that even God its Creator does not deny its supreme

wish to die, is inexpressibly dreary. This is worthy to stand beside

Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange."

One touch worth noticing is the fiction by which the angel is detained on

earth; that "the angels' ladders are rays of light." It strikes us as one

of the most ingenious we have ever met, and no less beautiful than happy.

The whole structure of the narrative indeed, is admirable; it is difficult

to see how the parts could be fitted more nicely. This skill Miss Procter

has in an uncommon degree, and all her longer narrative poems exemplify it.

Of course, such thoughts on life as these last verses contain blend

naturally with noble thoughts on death. Here, again, Miss Procter's

prevailing thoughtfulness has developed her ideas into many beautiful

applications. The lines called "The Angel of Death," which so touchingly

close Charles Dickens's late sketch of her, the sweet, weary "Tryst with

Death," and many others, are examples of this. But among them all there is

none which more truly embodies her conceptions, or which, at the same time,

is more deeply instinct with the hopefulness which underlies all her graver

utterances, than the admirable lines:

Our Dead.

Nothing is our own; we hold our treasures

Just a little time ere they are fled:

One by one life robs us of our treasures:

Nothing is our own except our dead.

They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping,

Safe for ever, all they took away.

Cruel life can never stir that sleeping;

Cruel time can never seize that prey.

Justice pales, truth fades, stars fall from heaven:

Human are the great whom we revere;

No true crown of honor can be given,

Till we place it on a funeral bier.

How the children leave us, and no traces

Linger of that smiling angel hand;

Gone, for ever gone; and in their places

Weary men and anxious women stand.

{559}

_Yet, we have some little ones, still ours;

They have kept the baby smile, we know,

Which we kissed one day, and hid with flowers,

On their dead white faces, long ago._

When our joy is lost--and life will take it--

Then no memory of the past remains,

Save with some strange, cruel sting, to make it

Bitterness beyond all present pains.

_Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow

Still the radiant shadow, fond regret;_

We shall find, in some far bright to-morrow

Joy that he has taken, living yet.

"Is love ours, and do we dream we know it

Bound with all our heart-strings all our own?

Any cold and cruel dawn may show it

Shattered, desecrated, overthrown.

_Only the dead hearts forsake us never:

Death's last kiss has been the mystic sign

Consecrating love our own for ever,

Crowning it eternal and divine._

_So when Fate would fain besiege our city,

Dim our gold or make our flowers fall,

Death, the angel, comes in love and pity

And, to save our treasures, claims them all._

Her ideas regarding death are very lofty. They are equally removed from the

timorous, painful harping on dissolution that characterizes the

_underdone_ poetic organism, from the graphic grimness of Miss

Rossetti's class of thinkers, who seem to take a ghastly delight in

anatomizing the subject, and last from the passionate weak welcoming of the

end--the coward courage which dares not live. In a word, Miss Procter was a

Christian.

In quitting her poems of thought, it will perhaps be well to pretermit our

long course of praise, and speak of the faults of her writing, most of

which are strongest in these very poems. In verbal correctness, she is far

above the average; for so voluminous a writer, singularly free from them.

Still, by G. Washington-Moon-light, we can discover certain errors,

principally of accent or collocation. Some few appear in the verses we have

cited. In "Beyond," "baptism" is made a trisyllable; though, standing where

it does, an appeal might well be taken to the higher equity of rhythm

against the arbitrary technicality of the law of orthoepy. Also, we doubt

if "perfécted" be the best pronunciation to-day. And in "Homeless," in the

expression,

"Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,

Who whines in the bleak, cold street?"

it might with all respect for the intelligence of the race at large, and,

above all, for the prodigious latent capabilities of all ladies' dogs--it

might be seriously questioned whether the canine personality is so marked

as to admit of the relative "who." We feel quite sure that the original

idea was to reserve this particular pronoun for selfish mankind, and we

fear that the slow science of grammar is still fettered, even as to the

most marvellous of the dog kind, by the trammelling traditions of

comparative anatomy.

But such flaws as these are venial, occurring as they do at rare intervals,

in a very large number of verses, written young, and crowded into the

compass of a few years. Many of them were mere passing contributions to the

periodical press of the day, and, taken as a whole, compare to advantage

with the hasty emanations of almost any author.

In metre Miss Procter achieves no high effects, and attempts none. With

very fair taste in selection of metre, she is by no means an artist in

rhythm, and appears to aim at little or nothing beyond passable metrical

correctness. She is carelessly harsh and incidentally melodious. Once or

twice she tries some sort of irregular or lyric measure, and it appears

rather to impede than aid her accustomed clear flow of thought.

In style she has two prominent though not great faults. One is her

refinement. She is so refined that it would, even had she reached the full

promise of her life, have prevented her, in all probability, from ever

being broadly popular. Her field is too high and narrow: she deals mainly

with sentiments and sympathies which interest only those who have not only

sorrowed, but reflected. But this blame is praise in itself. The other is

more of a real fault. Miss Procter tempts us to believe that the

diffuseness which we have attributed chiefly to their education has some

foundation in woman's nature itself.

{560}

Different as she is from the ordinary type, her womanhood vindicates

itself, though still in a way of her own. The effect on her style is not

what we spoke of--dilution--but amplification. Sometimes she is led away by

her fertility of illustration to illustrate too much. She holds up the idea

in too many lights, more than are needful to understand her. There is a

little of this even in "Incompleteness," before cited, but the

illustrations are so happy that the effect is not perceived: it is seldom

we are troubled with too many good things in a poem. Very often, however,

this practice of ramifying thoughts into so many applications--one natural

result of her thorough thinking--greatly injures the whole, and almost

always, where there is much of this amplification, it passes beyond the

strict limits of the strongest effect.

There are, furthermore, some few poems liable to cavil which seem to have

been mere exercises or experiments, and call for other criticism than her

finished performances. Others suffer from their author's inveterate habit

of seizing on every-day subjects. Now and then she takes up one so trite

that all the charm of her manner cannot mend it. The result is like a

pebble set in filigree.

The only grave artistic fault we ever found in her poems occurs in the

Legend of Provence, one of her best narrative pieces, founded on the

exquisite Legend of the Virgin Mary's assuming the personality and filling

the place of a nun who has proved false to her vows and fled her convent.

Repentant at last, she returns, a worn-out beggar, to die where her

religion died, meets her semblance, recognizes it as what she might have

been, and implores Mary's aid.

And Mary answered: "From thy bitter past,

Welcome, my child! Oh! welcome home at last!

I filled thy place: thy flight is known to none,

For all thy daily duties I have done;

Gathered thy flowers and prayed, and sung, and slept;

Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept?"

This strikes us as a tremendous blunder. For the nun to know that her place

was kept would knock the bottom out of the entire legend. Who wouldn't sin

with his pardon drawn up in advance, and entire secrecy and perfect

restoration awaiting the first active twinge of repentance? We cannot

imagine for an instant how Miss Procter could overlook this; unless we have

made some equally egregious error in our understanding of the poem and its

scope.

We find, or fancy we find, in her writings, a shade of resemblance to the

taste and tact of her father, "Barry Cornwall." Perhaps it was because she

feared her generic tendencies of style, that she has written few or no

songs, and none at all like his sort. If her object was to avoid suspicious

resemblance, she has succeeded. The likeness is utterly intangible, and

there is not a trace anywhere of an imitation most natural to her relations

with him, and which must have proved easy to talent like hers.

Another noteworthy fact about her is also alluded to by Mr. Dickens. It is

the total absence of humor, and the sober and shaded style of what she has

written. He takes occasion, while speaking of this prevailing seriousness

in one so young, expressly to bar the inference that she was of the

melancholy moonlit sort, and mentions her abundant wit, and keen sense of

the ludicrous, and the joyous quality of her laugh. We do not think an

observant reader would misconceive her, as her kind-hearted biographer

apprehended. She lacks the distinctive element of morbidness. There is a

soundness in her sadness, so to speak, that makes us feel it to be the

shadow of a soul that knows the sunshine also. Mournful people of the true

chronic mournfulness show it far more by taking dismal views of ordinary

subjects than by dealing only in dismal things. But the fact itself

suggests a curious question which our aphorists have not yet answered. How

is it that some men naturally rollick in print, while others, not less

humorous, write nothing but the gravest stuff?

{561}

What made Hood's pen merry on his death-bed, and took the wit so out of

Sydney Smiths's sermons? These two classes are so marked that one would

think there must be a principle of some sort dividing them. Yet no one has

ever laid down this principle. We no more pretend to do this than the rest,

but merely raise the question, leaving it to some future critic to

disentangle us from a most Cartesian dubitation.

Thus far we have quoted mainly in illustration of Miss Procter's

characteristics. It must not be inferred, however, that there are not in

her books excellences not specially arising out of her peculiar ideas of

life. On the contrary, there are a number of pieces of that provoking class

of good things which we might just as well have written ourselves--only we

didn't. Very few of our friends, though, would think of looking in an

English author for the following strong, spirited protest, written in 1861,

when it was proposed to "strengthen the hands" of the mission for the

conversion of Irish Catholics:

An Appeal.

Spare her, O cruel England!

Thy sister lieth low:

Chained and oppressed she lieth;

Spare her that cruel blow.

We ask not for the freedom

Heaven has vouchsafed to thee,

Nor bid thee share with Ireland

The empire of the sea.

Her children ask no shelter--

Leave them the stormy sky;

They ask not for thy harvests,

For they know how to die;

Deny them, if it please thee,

A grave beneath the sod;

But we do cry, O England,

Leave them their faith in God!

Take, if thou wilt, the earnings

Of the poor peasant's toil;

Take all the scanty produce

That grows on Irish soil,

To pay the alien preachers

Whom Ireland will not hear--

To pay the scoffers at the creed

Which Irish hearts hold dear:

But leave them, cruel England,

The gift their God has given;

Leave them their ancient worship,

Leave them their faith in heaven.

You come and offer learning--

A mighty gift, 'tis true,

Perchance the greatest blessing,

That now is known to you;

But not to see the wonders

Sages of old beheld

Can they peril a priceless treasure,

The faith their fathers held.

For in learning and in science

They may forget to pray:

_God will not ask for knowledge

On the great judgment day._

When, in their wretched cabins,

Racked by the fever pain.

And the weak cries of their children

Who ask for food in vain;

When, starving, naked, helpless,

From the shed that keeps them warm

Man has driven them forth to perish

In a less cruel storm;

Then, then we plead for mercy;

Then, sister, hear our cry;

For all we ask, O England,

Is--leave them there to die!

Cursed is the food and raiment

For which a soul is sold;

Tempt not another Judas

To barter God for gold.

You offer food and shelter

If they their faith deny;

What do you gain, O England!

By such a shallow lie?

We will not judge the tempted--

May God blot out their shame--

He sees the misery round them,

He knows man's feeble frame.

His pity still may save them.

In his strength they must trust

Who calls us all his children.

Yet knows we are but dust.

Then leave them the kind tending,

Which helped their childish years;

Leave them the gracious comfort

Which dries their mourner's tears;

Leave them to that great mother

In whose bosom they were born,

Leave them the holy mysteries

That comfort the forlorn;

And, amid all their trials,

Let the great gift abide,

Which you, O prosperous England!

Have dared to cast aside.

Leave them the pitying angels,

And Mary's gentle aid,

For which earth's dearest treasures

Were not too dearly paid.

Take back your bribes, then, England,

Your gold is black and dim;

_And if God sends plague and famine,

They can die and go to him._

This is by far the most unpolished and unequal thing Miss Procter has ever

written, and full of faults of detail. But, spite of loose texture and

repetition, and weak lines, and identical rhymes, there is a strength in

all the essential features, and a spirit everywhere, that contrast strongly

with the patriotic effusions that we have had so much of these last few

years.

Another poem which has incidentally attracted no little notice is Homeward

Bound, which anticipates the whole plot of Enoch Arden so completely that

some shallow people felt called upon to say a number of very foolish things

about the coincidence when Enoch Arden came out.

{562}

The chief differences are that the ship-wrecked hero is thrown on a desert

island in the one and captured by Moors in the other. Enoch Arden also

turns away from the agonizing picture of his forfeited home in silence,

while Miss Procter's mariner reveals himself, kisses his wife once more

_as if_ she were his, and departs, leaving the very awkward bigamy

question wide open behind him, and in general evincing a noble ignorance of

the law of England. He also perpetrates the dramatic error of surviving in

a state of marine vagrancy for a quarter of a century. But, though inferior

to Tennyson's, this poem has many excellent touches of pathos and nature,

and must claim, equally with Enoch Arden, the full merit of its simple yet

most telling conception.

_Apropos_ of resemblances, we are tempted to quote another of her best

known poems, both for its real beauty and because it subtly reminds us of

Longfellow, and we should be thankful if some one would only tell us why:

The Storm.

The tempest rages wild and high;

The waves lift up their voice and cry

Fierce answers to the angry sky.

_Miserere Domine_

Through the black night and driving rain,

A ship is struggling, all in vain,

To live upon the stormy main.

_Miserere Domine_

The thunders roar, the lightnings glare,

Vain is it now to strive or dare;

A cry goes up of great despair.

_Miserere Domine_

The stormy voices of the main,

The moaning wind and pelting rain

Beat on the nursery window-pane,

_Miserere Domine_

Warm curtained was the little bed,

Soft pillowed was the little head:

"The storm will wake the child," they said.

_Miserere Domine_

Cowering among his pillows white,

He prays, his blue eyes dim with fright,

"Father, save those at sea to-night!"

_Miserere Domine_

The morning shone all clear and gay

On a ship at anchor in the bay,

And on a little child at play.

_Gloria tibi Domine!_

Out of many which commend themselves, we select only one more, a little gem

which we were surprised and pleased to find copied the other day in a

little New York evening paper. We think it very suggestive and sweet.

A Lost Chord

Seated one day at the organ,

I was weary and ill at ease,

And my fingers wandered idly

Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,

Or what I was dreaming then,

But I struck one chord of music

Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight

Like the close of an angel's psalm,

And it lay on my fevered spirit

With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,

Like love overcoming strife;

It seemed the harmonious echo

From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexed meanings

Into one perfect peace,

And trembled away into silence

As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,

That one lost chord divine,

That came from the soul of the organ,

And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel

Will speak in that chord again,

It may be that only in heaven

I shall hear that grand Amen.

We have yet to speak of one great element in these poems, their religion.

With those who are born and bred in a church, their belief sits on them

like their clothes--becomes a part of themselves. With converts it is

oftener like a badge which they are proud to wear, and which some are fond

of displaying. Miss Procter's was one of those rare natures in which

religion seems to stain back, as it were, and color the very fountain-heads

of all thought and impulse, as they are colored by the associations of

childhood. In her, it was not like regalia for the processions of life or a

reserve fund for emergencies, but thoroughly assimilated and vitalized; a

_living_ faith; an actual, practical element in her daily doings, as

present in her consciousness as her own individuality. Nor had she any of

the combativeness of converts, whose zeal is apt sometimes to be

aggressively meek and intolerantly lowly. Hers was a faith full of the

charity that judges not.

{563}

Like all real feeling, it never obtrudes itself, and never shrinks from

appearing in its proper place. Thus she has very few devotional and no

sectarian pieces at all in her Legends and Lyrics, but once professedly

entering on that line of thought, in her Chaplet of Verses, she is both

Christian and Catholic throughout.

Yet among the few devotional pieces in the earlier series we find one of

the best:

The Peace of God.

We ask for peace, O Lord!

Thy children ask thy peace;

Not what the world calls rest,

That toil and care should cease;

That through bright sunny hours

Calm life should fleet away,

And tranquil night should fade

In smiling day:

It is not for such peace that we would pray.

We ask for peace, Lord!

Yet not to stand secure,

Girt round with iron pride,

Contented to endure;

Crushing the gentle strings

That human hearts should know,

Untouched by others' joy

Or others' woe:

Thou, dear Lord! wilt never teach us so.

We ask thy peace, Lord!

Through storm, and fear, and strife,

To light and guide us on

Through a long, struggling life:

While no success or gain

Shall cheer the desperate fight,

Or nerve what the world calls

Our wasted might;

Yet pressing through the darkness to the light.

It is thine own, Lord!

Who toil while others sleep;

Who sow with loving care

What other hands shall reap:

They lean on thee entranced

In calm and perfect rest:

Give us that peace, Lord!

Divine and blest,

Thou keepest for those hearts who love thee best.

Very like this in sentiment are several of her best pieces, "Per Pacem ad

Lucem," "Ministering Angels," and "Thankfulness." There are a number also

addressed to the Virgin Mary, the best of which are too long for insertion.

It is this which will restrict our quotations to one more piece, which

breathes that lofty ardor that every struggling Christian has felt in his

brighter hours of exaltation, and sighed to know that common moods cannot

rise to it.

Our Titles.

Are we not Nobles? we who trace

Our pedigree so high

That God for us and for our race

Created earth and sky,

And light and air and time and space,

To serve us and then die?

Are we not Princes? we who stand

As heirs beside the throne,

We who can call the promised land

Our heritage, our own;

And answer to no less command

Than God's, and his alone?

Are we not Kings? both night and day,

From early until late,

About our bed, about our way,

A guard of angels wait;

And so we watch and work and pray

In more than royal state.

......

Are we not more? our life shall be

Immortal and divine.

The nature Mary gave to thee,

Dear Jesus, still is thine:

Adoring in thy heart I see

Such blood as beats in mine.

O God! that we can dare to fail

And dare to say we must!

O God! that we can ever trail

Such banners in the dust,

Can let such starry honors pale

And such a blazon rust!

Shall we upon such titles bring

The taint of sin and shame?

Shall we, the children of the King,

Who hold so grand a claim,

Tarnish by any meaner thing

The glory of our name?

But, although just to-day, in the present undeveloped state of woman's

intellect, Miss Procter may strike us most by her advance in thought beyond

her sex, she has a far higher claim on us for the admiration due to true

womanhood. Where do these poets school their souls, that they come forth

full of the experience of threescore years and ten? We know that Miss

Procter died in the prime and summer of her days, with most of the great

epochs and experiences of a woman's life yet before her. It is not even

said that she ever loved; for the sake of him who should lose her, we hope

it may be so. Yet her poems hold more tenderness and truth, more of real

love, its anxiety, faith, fulfilment, more of woman's inner life, than any

ten of the sweet soft natures who have taken these things to be their sole

province; who fancy their inkstands are in their souls, and devote a

lifetime of harmless harpings to rhyming some flutterings of heart and more

flutterings of nerves.

{564}

Here, as everywhere, we meet with Miss Procter's unfailing force and

clearness, and tremble at first to meet it. For of all agonizing things (as

many a sensitive nature can testify) there is none like the unconscious

cruelty of pure intellect when it comes to deal with the strange

intuitions, the noble unreason, the holy follies of the heart. But hand in

hand with her inborn analysis comes such a womanhood, so deep, so delicate,

so full of sympathy and sweet counsel, as passes words. This union it is,

as we said before, that stamps Miss Procter a poet. We men cannot half

appreciate this; the sisterhood of sex that her poems must establish with

women who have loved and suffered is for some woman only to set forth.

It is difficult to choose any one poem which stands pre-eminent in these

qualities. One which will show her insight into the seemingly contradictory

impulses of a woman's breast is

A Woman's Question.

Before I trust my fate to thee,

Or place my hand in thine;

Before I let thy future give

Color and form to mine,

Before I peril all for thee.

Question thy soul to-night for me.

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel

A shadow of regret:

Is there one link within the past

That holds thy spirit yet?

Or is thy faith as clear and free

As that which I can pledge to thee?

Does there within thy dimmest dreams

A possible future shine,

Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe

Untouched, unshared by mine?

If so, at any pain or cost,

Oh! tell me before all is lost.

Look deeper still. If thou canst feel

Within thy inmost soul

That thou hast kept a portion back,

While I have staked the whole,

Let no false pity spare the blow,

But in true mercy tell me so.

Is there within thy heart a need

That mine cannot fulfil?

One chord that any other hand

Could better wake or still?

Speak now--lest at some future day

My whole life wither and decay.

Lives there within thy nature hid

The demon-spirit Change,

Shedding a passing glory still

On all things new and strange?

It may not be thy fault alone--

But shield my heart against thy own.

Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day,

And answer to my claim

That fate, and that to day's mistake--

Not thou had been to blame?

Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou

Wilt surely warn and save me now.

Nay, answer _not_--I dare not hear,

The words would come too late;

Yet I would spare thee all remorse,

So comfort thee, my fate--

Whatever on my heart may fall,

Remember, I _would_ risk it all.

The strength of this is in the rendering of that eloquent instinct of love

which intuitively strikes the most responsive chord. Here it hits on the

strongest appeal a woman can make to a man--to save her against himself.

And no one can deny the boldness and beauty of the closing turn of thought.

The following poem bears a strong resemblance to the last in tone and train

of analysis, with an element of calm fruition instead of the utter

devotion. The one is love's June of trust; the other its September of

fulfilment.

A Retrospect.

From this fair point of present bliss,

Where we together stand,

Let me look back once more, and trace

That long and desert land

Wherein till now was cast my lot,

And I could live, and thou wert not.

......

What had I then? A hope that grew

Each hour more bright and dear,

The flush upon the eastern skies

That showed the sun was near.

Now night has faded far away,

My sun has risen, and it is day.

A dim ideal of tender grace

In my soul reigned supreme;

Too noble and too sweet, I thought,

To live save in a dream;

Within thy heart to-day it lies,

And looks on me from thy dear eyes.

Some gentle spirit--love, I thought--

Built many a shrine of pain;

Though each false idol fell to dust,

The worship was not vain,

But a faint radiant shadow, cast

Back from our love upon the past.

And grief, too, held her vigil there;

With unrelenting sway,

Breaking my cloudy visions down,

Throwing my flowers away:

I owe to her fond care alone

That I may now be all thine own.

Fair joy was there: her fluttering wings

At time she strove to raise;

Watching through long and patient nights,

Listening long eager days:

I know now that her heart and mine

Were waiting, love, to welcome thine.

Thus I can read thy name throughout,

And, now her task is done,

Can see that even that faded past

Was thine, beloved one.

And so rejoice my life may be

All consecrated, dear, to thee.

{565}

There could scarcely be a truer sign of poetic power than the fidelity and

finish of some of these heart-pictures. Out of many others we select two

for contrast: one tracing the deep, dreary introspection of passive

suffering; the other following out the subtle, restless impulses of pain

with pangs. The first we take from a longer poem, "Philip and Mildred."

Dawn of day saw Philip speeding on his road to the great city,

Thinking how the stars gazed downward just with Mildred's patient eyes.

Dreams of work and fame and honor struggling with a tender pity,

Till the loving past receding saw the conquering future rise.

Daybreak still found Mildred watching, with the wonder of first sorrow,

How the outward world unaltered shone the same this very day,

How unpitying and relentless human life met this new morrow--

Earth, and sky, and man unheeding that her joy had passed away.

Then the round of weary duties, cold and formal, came to meet her,

With the life within departed that had given them each a soul;

And her sick heart even slighted gentle words that came to greet her;

For grief spread its shadowy pinions, like a blight, upon the whole.

_Jar one chord, the harp is silent; move one stone, the arch is shattered;

One small clarion-cry of sorrow bids an armed host awake.

One dark cloud can hide the sunlight; loose one string, the pearls are scattered;

Think one thought, a soul may perish; say one word, a heart may break._

Life went on, the two lives running side by side, the outward seeming,

And the truer and diviner hidden in the heart and brain:

Dreams grow holy put in action, work grows fair through starry dreaming:

But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

We hardly know which to like the better, the description itself or the

moralizing. Very different, very far from moralizing, and yet even more to

the life, is

A Comforter.

"Will she come to me, little Effie,

Will she come to my arms to rest,

And nestle her head on my shoulder,

While the sun goes down in the west?

"I and Effie will sit together

All alone in this great arm-chair:

Is it silly to mind it, darling,

When life is so hard to bear?

"No one comforts me like my Effie.

Just, I think, that she does not try,

Only looks with a wistful wonder

Why grown people should ever cry;

"While the little soft arms close tighter

Round my neck in their clinging hold:

Well, I must not cry on your hair, dear,

For my tears might tarnish the gold.

"I am tired of trying to read, dear;

It is worse to talk and seem gay;

There are some kinds of sorrow, Effie,

It is useless to thrust away.

"Ah! advice may be wise, my darling,

But one always knows it before;

And the reasoning down one's sorrow

Seems to make one suffer the more.

"But my Effie won't reason, will she?

Or endeavor to understand;

Only holds up her mouth to kiss me,

As she strokes my face with her hand.

"If you break your plaything yourself, dear,

Don't you cry for it all the same?

I don't think it is such a comfort,

One has only one's self to blame.

"People say things cannot be helped, dear,

But then that is the reason why;

For, if things could be helped or altered

One would never sit down to cry.

"They say, too, that tears are quite useless

To undo, amend, or restore:

When I think _how_ useless, my Effie,

Then my tears only fall the more.

"All to-day I struggled against it,

But that does not make sorrow cease;

And now, dear, it such a comfort

To be able to cry in peace.

"Though wise people would call that folly,

And remonstrate with grave surprise,

We won't mind what they say, my Effie;

We never professed to be wise.

"But my comforter knows a lesson

Wiser, truer than all the rest,

That to help and to heal a sorrow,

Love and silence are always best.

"Well, who is my comforter tell me!

Effie smiles, but she will not speak,

Or look up through the long, curled lashes

That are shading her rosy cheek.

"Is she thinking of talking fishes,

The blue-bird, or magical tree?

Perhaps I am thinking, my darling,

Of something that never can be.

"You long, don't you, dear, for the genii,

Who were slaves of lamps and of rings?

And I--I am sometimes afraid, dear,

I want as impossible things.

"But, hark! there is nurse calling Effie!

It is bedtime, so run away;

And I must go back, or the others

Will be wondering why I stay.

"So good-night to my darling Effie;

Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise:

There's one kiss for her golden tresses

And two for her sleepy eyes."

We do not know where to look for anything like this. It is so graphic, so

simple, so true. We, at least, never _realized_ a scene so vividly, so

minutely, with all the details we would notice if it actually happened, and

not a touch beyond, unless perhaps after reading Maud Müller.

{566}

The kind of force is in many respects the same, except that the woman-poet,

as usual, says what the man-poet suggests of the inner life underlying. But

it is excellently said, so well that one mentally declines to apply the

principles of aesthetics, which would dictate Whittier's method as the more

thoroughly artistic. How well the whole logic, or illogic, of that grand

solace, a good cry, is given, and how natural and how sweet if one could

only chance on an Effie that would not tell nurse all about it, to have a

little "comforter" that would only know the grief and never care for the

causes!

We have only one more poem to quote--one which we consider in many respects

Miss Procter's best. If feeling, delicacy, pathos, truth, make beauty and

poetry, this alone ought to entitle its author to distinction. Bare of all

factitious ornament, carrying no overload of elegances, it goes straight to

the heart of every mother, and strikes the deepest key-note in the organism

of the world--motherhood. And it seems to us that, if all men today were to

league against her memory, this poem should win her an immortality in the

hearts of womankind:

Links With Heaven.

Our God in heaven, from that holy place

To each of us an angel guide has given;

But mothers of dead children have more grace,

For they give angels to their God and heaven.

How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary,

Knowing her dearer self safe, happy, warm?

How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,

Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?

How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,

Our God forgot, our holy saints defied;

But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,

And thrust those little angel hands aside?

Those little hands stretched down to draw her ever

Nearer to God by mother love: we all

Are blind and weak, yet surely she can never,

With such a stake in heaven, fail or fall.

She knows that, when the mighty angels raise

Chorus in heaven, one little silver tone

Is hers forever; that one little praise,

One little happy voice, is all her own.

We may not see her sacred crown of honor,

But all the angels flitting to and fro

Pause smiling as they pass--they look upon her

As mother of an angel whom they know;

One whom they left nestled at Mary's feet--

The children's place in heaven--who softly sings

A little chant to please them, slow and sweet,

Or, smiling, strokes their little folded wings;

Or gives them her white lilies or her beads

To play with: yet, in spite of flower or song,

They often lift a wistful look that pleads

And asks them why their mother stays so long.

Then our dear Queen makes answer she will call

Her very soon: meanwhile they are beguiled

To wait and listen while she tells them all

A story of her Jesus as a child.

Ah! saints in heaven may pray with earnest will

And pity for their weak and erring brothers;

Yet there is prayer in heaven more tender still,

The little children pleading for their mothers.

In conclusion, we think the world will not know for a while yet how much it

has lost in Adelaide Anne Procter. Her time to be missed will come when

Catholic England will need to be represented in the national literature.

For those who will force it into recognition, there will of necessity be

strong rather than fine intellects. Then the world will turn back to her

pages, and wish she were but there to represent Catholicity in England;

then she will be carefully read, and, once this happens, her place is

assured. And yet, even then, we can never know her as she was; for beyond

almost any author we recall, Miss Procter impresses us as being far

superior to her works. She is the best of examples of her own doctrine of

imperfect expression. The fulness and fineness of her nature strike one

from the beginning as being immeasurable by what she has written. There is

something exalted and tender, rich and yet reserved, about the life which

animates her poems, that interests us uncommonly. And when we come to read

of her, what was her life and what its aims, and, above all, when we see

how she is mourned by those who held her dear here, we recognize her for

one of those rare and beautiful hearts whom God loves too well to leave us

long, and conclude, in laying down these broken reflections of her spirit,

that her noblest poem was herself.

------

{567}

The Indissolubility of Christian Marriage.

Number One.

The frightful corruption in the legislation and practice respecting divorce

which has spread so widely during the past few years in our country has at

last aroused the attention of those who are interested in the preservation

of the public morals. They are beginning to write on the subject, and are

casting about for the means of protecting the endangered institution of

marriage. We feel it to be our duty to exercise what little influence we

may possess in the community at large, in the same direction. At present,

we shall restrict our remarks to one single point, which is the theological

question of the lawfulness of divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_, for the

cause of adultery, under the law of Christ. In order to make our intent and

meaning plain, we shall begin by stating the proposition we wish to

maintain. The marriage of Christians, validly ratified and consummated, is

absolutely indissoluble; and therefore there can be no legal and valid

divorce of the parties to such a marriage _a vinculo matrimonii_. The

best and ablest Protestant writers admit this with one exception, that is,

of the innocent party in the case of a marriage which has been violated by

adultery. We leave them, therefore, to defend the indissolubility of

marriage in all other cases, and confine ourselves to the one case in which

they permit divorce.

The sole argument for the lawfulness of divorce in this instance is derived

from the following texts in St. Matthew's gospel. "Whosoever shall put away

his wife, _excepting for the cause of fornication_, causeth her to

commit adultery." (v. 32.) "Whosoever shall put away his wife, _except it

be for fornication_, and shall marry another, committeth adultery."

(xix. 9.) The Catholic interpretation of these passages is, that our Lord

permits a final separation _a mensâ et thoro_, for one cause, and one

only, which is the grievous crime mentioned in these texts. In accordance

with this interpretation, we explain these passages by the following

paraphrase: "Whoever, for any lesser cause than the crime of adultery,

separates himself finally from his wife, places both her and himself in the

danger of sinning, and is guilty of creating a proximate occasion of

adultery. If he separates himself from her on account of the grievous crime

above mentioned, he is not responsible for her future crimes, nor is he

guilty of placing himself without just cause in a condition in which the

observance of his marriage vows becomes more difficult. Nevertheless, if he

marries another, he commits adultery."

In order to sustain the truth of this interpretation, it is necessary to

defend three propositions. First. That our Lord declared the bond of

marriage indissoluble. Second. That he condemned all _soi-disant_

marriages of persons who were divorced, as adulterous. Third. That he

permitted a final divorce _a mensâ et thoro_ simply, for the cause of

adultery, and for no other.

The first proposition is established by all the texts of the New Testament

which speak on the subject. We will first examine the text of St. Matthew,

which includes the passage that is in dispute:

"And the Pharisees came to him, tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful

for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said

to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man in the beginning, made

them male and female?

{568}

And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and

shall cleave unto his wife: and they two shall be in one flesh. Wherefore

they are no more two, but one flesh. _What therefore God hath joined

together, let not man put asunder_. They say to him: why then did

Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? He saith to

them: Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put

away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so."

It is evident from these words of our Lord that the reason for the marriage

of one man with only one woman, and for the perpetuity of this union, is

founded in the law of nature and the primitive revelation of God to the

founders of the human race. Also, that our Lord intended to restore

marriage to its primitive and perfect law, abrogating all temporary

dispensations in favor of polygamy and divorce. His commandment not to put

asunder what God hath joined is universal, and establishes the principle

that marriage is not dissoluble by human law. In the gospel of St. Mark we

are further informed that "in the house again his disciples asked him

concerning the same thing. And he said to them: Whosoever shall put away

his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if the

wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth

adultery." (x. 11.) St. Luke also relates the words of our Lord with the

same explicitness: "Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth

another, committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her that is put away

from her husband, committeth adultery." (xvi. 18.) The same doctrine is

established by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans: "For the woman that

hath a husband, whilst her husband liveth, is bound to the law: but if her

husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Wherefore,

whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with

another man: but if her husband be dead, she is free from the law of her

husband: so that she is not an adulteress if she be with another man."

(vii. 2, 3.) This passage lays down clearly and without exception the law

that the bond of marriage can only be dissolved by death. It is confirmed

by other texts in the first epistle to the Corinthians: "But to them that

are married, not I, but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from

her husband: and if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled

to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife." "A woman is

bound by the law as long as her husband liveth: but if her husband die, she

is at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord." (vii. 10,

11, 39.)

There can be no question between us and that class of strict Protestant

moralists who allow of divorce only in one case, and of re-marriage even in

that one case only by the innocent party, that the passages we have cited

lay down in general terms the indissolubility of Christian marriage. The

only point to be discussed, therefore, is, whether they are right or wrong

in so interpreting our Lord's words as to permit re-marriage in this one

particular case. If it cannot be shown that our Lord distinctly and

positively releases the innocent party in this case from the _vinculum

matrimonii_, our proposition stands firm that this _vinculum_ is in

all cases indissoluble except by death.

In regard to this point we remark, first, that obscure passages ought to be

interpreted in conformity with those which are clear, and not the reverse.

The passages we have cited which proclaim the indissolubility of the

marriage-bond are clear. Those which are cited in proof of the exception

are obscure. It is not clear on the face of them how far the permission to

dismiss the guilty wife extends, and the conclusion that this permission

includes the permission to marry another woman is a mere inference.

{569}

The Catholic interpretation, that the permission extends no further than a

divorce _a mensâ et thoro_, harmonizes those passages with all others

in the New Testament which speak on the subject, and is, therefore, in

itself more probable.

We remark, secondly, that the opposite interpretation is intrinsically

improbable, because it contravenes the evident scope and intention of our

Lord's words, which were to abrogate the special dispensations of the

Mosaic law, and introduce a stricter law in conformity with the original

institution of matrimony. Our opponents explain the law as giving the wife

an equal privilege of divorcing her husband with that conceded to the

husband. But, according to the law of Moses, the woman could not divorce

her husband for any cause whatever. If, now, our Lord gave her this

privilege, he relaxed the Mosaic law in an important respect. This is

highly improbable, seeing that it is only by inference that we can apply

the permission given the injured husband to dismiss his wife to the injured

woman in similar circumstances. We admit fully that, our Lord did intend to

give woman an equal right in the premises with that which he conceded to

man. But, if that right had been the one claimed by our opponents it is not

to be supposed that he would have failed to express it in clear and

distinct terms. We argue that, as his whole scope was to make the law of

marriage stricter, and as the law of Moses gave women no right of divorce,

our Lord did not concede to Christian women that right. Our opponents admit

that no more was conceded to men than to women, therefore no right of

divorce was conceded to men.

We remark, thirdly, that the divorce permitted by our Lord cannot have been

a divorce _a vinculo_, from the concession of our opponents, who admit

that the guilty party is not released from it so as to be capable of

contracting a second marriage.

They admit that the guilty party commits adultery by attempting another

marriage, and that the person marrying the one divorced commits adultery.

Adultery is not possible where there is no _vinculum matrimonii_

subsisting. But there can be no vinculum except between two parties. It is

absurd that a woman should be bound to keep faith with the man who has

another lawful wife. Therefore, on the principles of our opponents, since

the guilty party is still in the bonds of the first marriage, the innocent

party is so also.

Let us now examine the passage itself, which permits the dismissal of a

guilty consort, to see if it can fairly be interpreted in accordance with

the doctrine we have endeavored to establish. Our opponents argue that the

sense of the passage is as follows: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and

marry another, commits adultery, unless the cause of his putting her away

was adultery on her part." Therefore, they say, if she was put away for the

crime above mentioned, he does not commit adultery, though he marries

another. The mere verbal construction admits of this interpretation, but

does not positively require it. It may fairly be understood to mean this:

"Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, commits

adultery, and whosoever shall marry another commits adultery." That is, he

who puts away his wife for any lesser cause, causes her to commit adultery,

and exposes himself to the danger of committing the same sin, on account of

the facility given by the civil law to both parties to contract second

marriages, and also because of the danger in which a woman is placed, when

cast off by her husband, of giving herself up to a bad life through want

and desperation, especially in a state of society which is morally corrupt.

And, much more, the one who actually does contract a second marriage during

the lifetime of the wife whom he has repudiated commits adultery, by

contracting an invalid marriage. Both acts are a violation of the marriage

vows, the desertion of the wife, and the formation of a second, unlawful

union with another; and, therefore, both are classed together, although it

is only the latter which is strictly and technically called adultery.

{570}

Our opponents may justly say that the text does not require this

interpretation, and that, if this really was the sense and meaning of our

Lord, the apostle has expressed it in an elliptical and obscure manner.

Very true. And if we had no other information than that which is furnished

by St. Matthew, the real doctrine of our Lord would be doubtful. This is

nothing strange or surprising. The sacred writers frequently speak in an

obscure, in artificial, and elliptical manner, which obliges us to

interpret their meaning from sources extraneous to the text. There is no

evidence that all the words used by our Lord himself to explain his

doctrine to the by-standers in public, or to his disciples in private, have

been recorded with verbal accuracy or completeness. St. Matthew gave a

brief summary of Christ's doctrine in his own language, which was

intelligible to his readers at the time, because they already knew the law

which had been promulgated in the Christian church. We hope to show

hereafter what this law was, from evidence furnished by the early Christian

writers and by the uniform canonical practice of the church. Meanwhile, we

think we have proved that the general scope of the language of the New

Testament sustains the doctrine of the indissolubility of Christian

marriage.

Our second and third propositions have been established in the process of

maintaining the first, and flow from it obviously. It is evident that,

where the _vinculum matrimonii_ subsists between two persons, either

of them who attempts marriage with a third party violates the rights of the

lawful consort, and makes an invalid contract, whatever the civil law may

decide to the contrary. It is also evident that our Lord did permit a final

dissolution of the _connubium_ between married persons for one cause,

and one only. If this dissolution is not a divorce _a vinculo_, it

must be _a mensâ et thoro_. We leave the subject here for the present,

hoping to resume it again at a convenient opportunity; and we respectfully

recommend to our learned readers, who are desirous of investigating it

fully, the work of Perrone, _De Matrimonio Christiano_, 3 vols. Rome,

1858.

------

Miscellany.

_The Magnetic Polarity of Rifles_. Mr. J. Spiller has lately made some

very interesting observations respecting the magnetic power assumed by

rifles. He finds that all the long Enfield barrels of the arms in the

possession of the volunteers of his company exhibit magnetic polarity as

the result of the violent and repeated concussions attending their

discharge in a direction parallel to the magnetic meridian. The Royal

Arsenal range runs nearly north and south, and the rifles, when in use, are

always pointed either due north or a few degrees toward the west--in fact,

nearly in the direction indicated by a compass-needle--so that the

repeated shocks brought about by the explosion of the powder may, Mr.

Spiller thinks, be considered equivalent to so many hard blows from a

hammer, which, as is well known, have a similar effect. Mr. Spiller goes on

to say that the magnetic character appears to be permanent, which would not

be the case if the gun-barrels were of the softest description of malleable

iron; and the region of the breech is, in every instance, possessed of

north polarity, since it strongly attracts the south pole of the compass

needle.

{571}

These effects should not be noticed at all, or only to an inferior degree,

in arms ordinarily fired in directions east and west; and it is supposed

that by reversing the usual practice, if it were possible, and firing

towards the south, the indications of polarity would be changed.

_Mont Cenis Railway_.--In a paper read before the Institute of Civil

Engineers, Capt. H. W. Tyler has fully described the results of experiments

with Mr. Fell's locomotive, which has been adopted for surmounting the

steep gradients and sharp curves of the Mont Cenis route. On Mr. Fell's

system an intermediate or centre rail is adopted, against which horizontal

wheels worked by the engine are pressed by springs, so as to yield any

requisite amount of adhesion. The engine constructed for the Mont Cenis

line is partly of steel; its weight fully loaded does not exceed 17 tons.

There are two 15-inch cylinders working both the four coupled horizontal

and the four coupled bearing wheels. The pressure on the additional

horizontal wheels can be varied by the engine-driver at pleasure; during

the experiments it amounted to from 2½ to 3 tons on each wheel, or 10 tons

altogether, but provision was made for increasing this pressure to 24 tons

if necessary. During the official trials, with a load of 24 tons exclusive

of the engine, on an average gradient of 1 in 13, with curves of 2 to 4

chains radius, the speed of 6.65 miles to 7.46 miles per hour was attained

in ascending. With a load of 16 tons the speed was 10 miles.

_Fossil Man in the Rhine Valley_.--In the Lehm of the valley of the

Rhine, near Colmar, there is a marly deposit composed of a mixture of clay,

fine sand, and carbonate of lime. It forms part of the diluvial beds, and

in it M. Faudel has found a number of human and other remains. These

consisted of shells, bones of a huge stag, teeth of _Elephas

primigenuis_, and a human frontal and right parietal bone of a man of

middle size. M. Faudel concludes that man was contemporaneous with the

mammoth fossil stag and bison.

_Tobacco Smoking Injurious to the Eyes_.--In a recent number (February

15) of the Bulletin de Thérapeutique, M. Viardin describes two cases of

serious eye affection (amblyopia) resulting from the habit of smoking. M.

Viardin at once, on learning the habits of the patients, induced them to

smoke a much smaller quantity of tobacco than usual, and the result was a

complete restoration of vision in a few weeks from the date of their

application.

_Intermittent Fevers produced by Vegetable Organisms_.--Some time

since, we called attention to Dr. Salisbury's observations, tending to

support the theory expressed above. More recently these ideas have been, in

some measure, confirmed by Professor Hannon, of the University of Brussels.

In 1843, says M. Hannon, "I studied at the University of Liege; Professor

Charles Morsen had created in me such an enthusiasm in the study of the

fresh-water algae that the windows and mantel-piece of my chamber were

encumbered with plates filled with vaucheria, oscillatoria, and confervae.

My preceptor said to me: 'Take care at the period of their fructification,

for the spores of the algae give intermittent fever. I have had it every

time I have studied them too closely.' As I cultivated my algae in pure

water, and not in the water of the marsh where I had gathered them, I did

not attach any importance to his remark. I suffered for my carelessness a

month later, at the period of their fructification. I was taken with

shivering; my teeth chattered; I had the fever, which lasted six weeks."

_Origin of Petroleum_.--Although nearly all geologists are agreed as

to the organic origin of petroleum, a great many are of opinion that the

rock-oil is the result of a natural distillation of coal. Professor

Hitchcock, however, no mean authority, comes to a different conclusion.

Admitting, with all who have carefully studied the matter, that petroleum

is of organic origin, he says that, in his opinion, it comes from plants,

and that it is not, as some have suggested, a fish-oil or a substance

altered to adipocere. It does not appear to be the result of a natural

distillation of coal, since its chemical composition is different from the

oil manufactured artificially from the cannels, containing neither

nitro-benzole nor aniline. Moreover, petroleum occupied fissures in the

silurian and devonian strata long before the trees of the coal period were

growing in their native forests. The nearly universal association of brine

with petroleum, and the fact of the slight solubility of hydrocarbons in

fresh, but insolubility in salt water, excite the inquiry whether the salt

water of primeval lagoons may not have prevented the escape of the

vegetable gases beneath, and condensed them into liquids.

{572}

_Structure of the Liver._--Dr. Lionel Beale's opinion as to the

structure of the vertebrate liver has been recently substantiated by the

researches of Herr Hering. This histologist states that the liver is

constructed like the other secreting glands. It is of the tubular type,

with canals, anastomosing in every direction, and having a tendency to form

a series of networks. Like other secretions, the bile travels along

glandular canals surrounded by glandular cells. It is easy (he says) to

observe this arrangement in the livers of vertebrates. Five or more cells

are disposed in simple layers around the circular and minute aperture of a

hepatic utricle seen in transverse section. This arrangement loses itself

insensibly in that variety of structure in which there are no utricles

properly so called. Occasionally may be seen four, three, or even only two

cells, uniting to form a biliary canal. The Russian anatomist denies the

existence of hepatic trabeculae of biliferous capillaries, and believes

that the biliary cells are persistent. He looks upon serpents' livers as

the only organs for minute inquiries upon the subject.

_The Cometary Theory of Shooting-Stars--to whom does it belong?_--The

Abbé Moigno, who has broached this question, and who evidently feels

strongly on the point, makes the following observations in our

contemporary, the Chemical News, of March 15th: "In a quite recent note

inserted on March 3d, in the International Bulletin of the Imperial

Observatory, and on the 8th inst. in the Bulletin of the Scientific

Association of France, M. Le Verrier resumes on the cometary theory of

shooting-stars, and persists in attributing the honor of it to himself,

without condescending to mention the name of Schiaparelli, whose letters,

however, have been published in a journal of great authority, the

Meteorological Bulletin of the College of Rome, issued under the

superintendence of the Rev. P. Secchi, and were translated by the writer

before M. Le Verrier had published a single word of his researches. We are

really frightened by this system of organized cool-blooded appropriation,

and more so by these lines, the effect of which has been even more coolly

calculated: _'Sir John Herschel, who, along with his son, Alexander

Herschel, has paid great attention to shooting-stars, gives his complete

assent to_ the theory of the swarms of November.' Poor M. Schiaparelli!

Happily the Astronomische Nachrichten have collected the necessary papers,

and he will soon be in a position of having his revenge."

_New Form of Telegraphy._--An invention for the transmission of

despatches by an automatic electro-chemical method has been devised by MM.

Vavin and Fribourg. Its object is to utilize all the velocity of the

current on telegraphic lines. The Abbé Moigno, who has called attention to

it in England, gives the following description of it: It consists in the

distribution of the current through as many small wires, very short and

isolated, as there are signals to be transmitted, all the while only

employing one wire on the main line. Each of these small isolated wires

communicates, on the one hand, with a metallic plate, of a particular form,

fixed in gutta-percha; and, on the other, with a metallic division of a

disc, which is also formed of an insulating substance. A group of eleven of

those small laminae form a sort of cipher, which will give all the letters

of the alphabet by the suppression of certain portions of the fundamental

form. "Now," says the abbé, "suppose rows of these compound characters to

be placed on a sheet of prepared paper of a metallic nature, the words of

the telegram to be sent are written on them with isolating ink, leaving the

other parts of the small 'stereotyped' blocks untouched. The consequence is

that the current is intercepted at every point touched by the ink, and a

letter is, imprinted on the prepared paper at the other end of the line

where the telegram is to be received."

_A Cheap and Ingenious Ice Machine._--M. Tonelli, says the Abbé

Moigno, has just devised an ice-making machine which bids fair to become

very popular in this country, since it is convenient, cheap, and efficient.

The inventor calls it the "_glacier roulante_." It is a simple

metallic cylinder mounted on a foot. The salt of soda and the salt of

ammonia are added in two operations, the smaller cylinder, containing the

water to be frozen, is introduced into the interior, and the orifice is

close by an india-rubber disc, and then by a cover fastened with a catch;

the cylinder is then placed in a sac, or case of cloth, and it is made to

roll on the table with a slight oscillatory movement given by the hand.

{573}

After a lapse of ten minutes, the water in the interior of the cylinder

becomes a beautiful cylinder of ice. Nothing is more simple, more

economical, or more efficacious than the new "glacier roulante" which costs

10 fr., and gives us, moreover, what could not hitherto be obtained with an

apparatus containing freezing mixtures the means of freezing a decanter of

water or a bottle of champagne. The apparatus, in a case, packed for

travelling, with 20 kilogrammes of refrigerating materials and a measure,

costs, at present, only 1_l._--_Popular Science Review._

_The "Cybele Hibernica."_--The invaluable work which Mr. Watson

achieved for England is being imitated on the other side of the Irish

Channel. Messrs. Moore & More have issued a volume upon the subject of the

distribution of Irish plants, and the facts it lays before the botanical

public are both numerous and interesting. Taking the number of species for

Britain proper at Mr. Watson's estimate of 1,425 species, the authors of

the "Cybele Hibernica" claim for Ireland about 1,000 species. Of the 532

plants of the British type, Ireland has all, or very nearly so. The

Atlantic type is the only other one where she has decidedly more than half,

forty-one species out of seventy. Of the boreal species, (Highland,

Scottish, and intermediate types taken together,) although there is not a

single one of the twelve provinces in which there is not a hill of upward

of 2,000 feet in altitude, Ireland has only 106 species out of 238. Of the

458 English and local species she has just over one half; and, finally, out

of the 127 Germanic species only 18.

------

Original.

New Publications.

History Of England,

from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony

Froude, M. A. Vols. VII., VIII., IX. and X. 12mo. New York: Charles

Scribner & Co.

The four volumes of this work which are now before us carry the history of

the reign of Elizabeth from her accession to the death of Maitland and

Grange, and the consequent extinction of the Mary Stuart party in 1573. The

wars and troubles in Ireland, the invasion of Ulster, the insurrections and

death of Shan O'Neil, the quarrels of the Ormonds and the Desmonds; the

career of John Knox; the reign of Mary Queen of Scots; the English maritime

adventures of the sixteenth century; and the St. Bartholomew massacre, are

some of the exciting topics which Mr. Froude touches with his brilliant

pen, and upon which he lavishes his wonderful powers of narration and his

skill of dramatic arrangement. That our readers should be satisfied with

the pictures he presents to them is not to be expected. They must not look

in his pages for candor or judicial calmness. They will find Mary Stuart

painted here in darker and more horrible colors than in any other modern

work; John Knox lauded as "the one supremely great man that Scotland

possessed;" and the Huguenot massacre detailed with all the exaggerations

and harrowing circumstances which the partisan spirit of former historians

has spread about it. Mr. Froude is too anxious to make an effective story

ever to be an honest historian. A picturesque grouping of events and

persons has a temptation for his refined literary taste which often

overcomes the cardinal principle of historical composition, to tell the

truth and the whole truth. The extravagant admiration of the Tudor dynasty

with which he began to write has not cooled with the progress of his

labors. The fealty which he held to Henry and Edward he has now transferred

unshaken to Elizabeth; but there is this to be said for him, that

Elizabeth, with all her many faults, (and now and again even Mr. Froude

recognizes some of them,) possessed many really great qualities, which the

most uncompromising of her enemies must admire.

{574}

We have no purpose to go into the vexed question of the character of Mary

Queen of Scots; but it is only fair to mention that Mr. Froude fortifies

his unfavorable conclusions by copious references to authorities which have

only recently been brought to light, and that he has enjoyed in particular

a free use of the important manuscript archives of Simancas to which

historians were so long denied access.

The Student Of Blenheim Forest; or,

The Trials of a Convert.

By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. John Murphy & Co. Baltimore.

This is a new and revised edition of an old work. It is a narrative of the

trials of a convert from Protestantism to the Catholic Church at the time

it was written. These trials, thank God, are daily becoming less as the

doctrine and practice of the church become better known, and prejudice and

misrepresentation disappear. Not every convert is called to pass through

such trials as the hero of this tale, although all should have the same

willingness to suffer for Christ, to give up friends and worldly hopes

rather than be untrue to one's conviction.

The scene is laid in Virginia, and gives us a vivid picture of Southern

life. We think, in a book intended for general reading and the diffusion of

Catholic truth, it would be better to omit unfriendly allusion to what the

authoress calls the "cold customs of the North."

Studies In English; Or,

Glimpses Of The Inner Life Of Our Language.

By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D., Professor of Modern Languages in the

University of Virginia. London: Trübner & Co. New-York: Charles Scribner

& Co. Printed at the Riverside Press, Cambridge.

This is one of the few American books we are called upon to notice which

make a real and important addition to any solid and useful branch of

learning outside of the circle of the physical sciences. It is a thoroughly

scholarly production, full of the most instructive information regarding

the history, formation, and component elements of the English language.

This information is communicated not in a dry, technical, and

college-text-book manner, but in a graceful, charming, and entertaining

style, rich in illustrations and apt references to classic authors, which

makes the reading of the book a true pleasure. Happily, the author does not

ride the Anglo-Saxon or any other hobby, but does full justice to the

Latin, Celtic, and other elements of the language. It is especially

interesting to the Catholic reader to notice the abundant evidence the

author furnishes of the ineffaceable impress the Catholic religion has

stamped upon the English language. It is impossible to overestimate the

importance of a thorough study and right understanding of _words_ as

the signs of thoughts, the vehicles of the transmission of truths, the

current coin of the intellectual kingdom. It is this which is one great

secret of the power possessed by such great masters of the divine faculty

of speech as Dr. Brownson and Dr. Newman. Sophists, like Carlyle, corrupt

thought by corrupting language, and confused, inconsistent reasoners, like

Dr. Pusey, obscure truth by obscuring language. The volume before us will

prove an invaluable aid to the scholar who wishes to study the pure, good,

sound sense, and correct use of our mother tongue. We think the author

betrays some English prejudice, in ascribing a peculiar faculty of

understanding the genuine doctrine of the Scriptures to the English people.

This is a spice of the Anglican "True Church" theory, which all the rest of

mankind laugh at. We think, also, that he somewhat exaggerates the

excellence of the English language, and its influence on the world. We were

reminded while reading his eulogium on the English language of the verse of

Kenelm Digby:

"Greek's a harp we like to hear,

Latin hath a trumpet clear,

Italian rings like marriage-bells,

While Spain her solemn organ swells,

French with many a frolic mien

Tunes her jocund violin,

The German beats her heavy drum

As Russian's clashing symbols come;

But Britain's sons may well rejoice,

_For English is the human voice._"

The English people are proud, and the American people are vain of a fancied

superiority in all things, except the fine arts, over the rest of mankind.

Neither are aware how far behind some other nations they are in many of the

highest branches of science and literature. A little boasting will,

therefore, add to the popularity of an author in the English language, as

indeed it will in any other.

{575}

We will not quarrel over this point with Professor De Vere, for nothing is

more difficult than a precisely accurate judgment concerning the relative

merits of the principal modern languages. We have a mother tongue with

which we have every reason to be satisfied, and therefore let us try to use

it well, and preserve it from corruption. On this head, we have great

reason to fear for the future, and therefore we give a hearty welcome to

the learned professor's suggestion that an English Academy should be

constituted, which shall decide all questions respecting the spelling,

pronunciation, and right use of English words.

It is enough to say that this volume is from the Riverside press to

guarantee its typographical excellence, and we hope this circumstance will

counterbalance, in those minds disposed to be rigid in excluding everything

which has not the Boston stamp, the fact that the author hails from

Virginia.

Antoine De Bonneval.

A Tale of Paris in the days of St. Vincent de Paul. By Rev. W. H.

Anderdon. Kelly & Piet, Baltimore.

In this narrative are portrayed some of the most exciting scenes in French

history. It tells of that period in which Richelieu, Mazarin, St. Vincent

de Paul, and Monsieur Olier figured so largely, and whose history is so

suggestive to the thoughtful reader. The style is vigorous and the volume

worthy of a place in a Sunday-school or parochial library.

Etudes Philologiques Sur Quelques

Langues Sauvages De L'amerique.

Par N. O., Ancien Missionnaire.

Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 55 Grande Rue St. Jacques. 1866.

The Indian dialects of North America deserve a more attentive study than

they have yet received. If the inquirer did no more than confine his

researches to the languages spoken by the Algic tribes, (to use an epithet

happily devised by Schoolcraft to designate the native races found east of

the Alleghanies,) the compensation would be fairly worth the work. Resolved

into two groups, the Algonquin and Iroquois, these varieties of speech

present contrasts so striking and analogies so rare as to forbid the theory

of a derivation from a common stock. The words of these two families of

tongues are not only wholly dissimilar, but are, for the most part,

mutually unpronounceable. The Algonquin cannot articulate an _f_ or an

_r_; while the Iroquois, to whom these sounds are familiar, can make

nothing of a _b_ or an _m_. The two languages, with the doubtful

exception of a corrupt dialect, and then in words evidently borrowed from

the conqueror, agree in little else than an odd aversion to the letter

_l_, and, we may add perhaps, in a plentiful lack of adjectives and a

most oppressive multiplicity of _verbs_.

It is in this last-mentioned field (the analysis of Algic verbs) that our

author N. O. has exerted his main strength, and has given the best proofs

of his linguistic skill. The Algonquin verb to love, _sakih_,

expatiates, in the course of twenty-two pages of this treatise, into two

active and three passive voices, served by eight moods, three past tenses,

two futures, and two first persons plural, with participles and gerunds to

match; and all subject to fifteen accidents, corresponding to the various

modifications of Semitic verbs. The Iroquois verb, though in quite another

way, rejoices also in conjugations, moods, tenses, and numbers not unworthy

of comparison with the Greek, subject to secondary forms more or less

resembling the Semitic. The Algonquin participle may assume a negative

shape, and it is this nullifying syllable _si_ that mainly

distinguishes the two words which in that language signify Catholic and

Protestant. The Catholics are _tcipaiatikonamatizodjik_, literally,

"they who make upon their own persons the sign of the wood of the dead body

of Christ." "Protestants" (having as usual failed to make themselves

understood except as deniers of Catholicity, and who are _nothing if not

negative_) are _tcipaiatikonamatizosigok_, "those who do _not_

make upon themselves the sign of the wood of the dead body of Christ." It

is to be hoped that the theologians of the two professions have shorter and

more convenient terms when they resort, as they have been known to do, to

the refreshment of reciprocal objurgation.

We regret that we cannot go into details. The book is pleasantly written,

lucidly arranged, and full of satisfactory evidence of a keen perception of

philological distinctions. We cordially recommend it to those who are

ambitious to gain an insight into the philosophy of the languages, before

they also (we mean the languages) take their inevitable turn to be numbered

with the dead.

{576}

The Literary Character Of The Bible.

A Lecture delivered before the Wilmington Institute.

By H. Beecher Swoope, Attorney-at-law.

The author delivered and now publishes this as "A Lawyer's tribute to the

Bible," and it is surely a very graceful one. It shows a just appreciation

of the literary excellences of the sacred volume, of the grandeur of its

history, the depth of its philosophy, the sublimity of its poetry. We

dislike, however, this consideration of the inspired volume merely as a

literary production, without keeping in view its sacred character as the

word of God. Containing as it does, the revelation of God's infinite

perfections, it must necessarily contain all that is most beautiful,

profound, sublime. We agree with the author that, "in order to bring out

all the hidden beauties of the original Scriptures, we need a new

translation brought fully up to the present standard of our language," and

that "our present version of the Bible is sublime, grand, and beautiful,

only because many of the ideas and conceptions are so essentially great and

lofty that they necessarily appear magnificent in the most artless dress."

Catholic Anecdotes; Or, The Catechism In Examples.

Illustrating the Sacraments.

By the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier.

New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This is the third and last part of this series of anecdotes. They are

intended to assist those engaged in teaching the Christian doctrine, by

giving them examples illustrative of the subject they may be teaching. They

are arranged in the same order as the subject matter of the Catechism, and

are well adapted for this purpose.

Lives And Times Of The Roman Pontiffs.

2 vols. Sadliers.

This great work, in two large quarto volumes of nearly 1000 pages each, is

a translation from the French of the Chevalier Artaud de Montor. The author

is both a well-informed historian and an elegant writer. Although there are

some faults in the translation, and some typographical errors, the value of

the work is nevertheless very great, and it is a noble addition to our

Catholic literature. There is much beauty in the mechanical execution, and

the illustrations are numerous. Many of the portraits and other

illustrations are excellent, though a few are quite indifferent. The

preface is carelessly written, and has not the excellence which ought to

characterize the introduction to such a great work. The hand of a finished

scholar would have done great good in retouching the whole work, which is,

notwithstanding its minor defects, on the whole a superb one and a credit

to its publishers.

Christianity And Its Conflicts, Ancient And Modern.

By E. E. Marcy, A.M.

New-York: Appleton & Co.

For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street.

This work comes upon our table just as we are going to press. A rapid

glance over its contents shows us that it presents a comprehensive view of

the church and its work, contrasted with the vain and fruitless attempts

made by her enemies to set up a rival system of Christianity. It is a work

which will be widely read and excite no little interest, and deserves at

our hands a more extended critical notice, which we propose to give it in

our next issue. It is not an ordinary book of controversy, and we advise

our readers in the mean time to get a copy and read

it.

H. McGrath, Philadelphia, announces a new and illustrated volume of Poems,

by E. A. S.

Books Received.

From P. O'Shea, New-York.

The Beauties of Faith; or, Power of Mary's Patronage.

Leaves from the Ave Maria. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 272 and 145. Price, $2.

From Charles Scribner & Co., New-York.

Liber Librorum; its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose.

A friendly communication to a reluctant sceptic.

1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232. Price, $1.50.

Studies in English; or, Glimpses of the Inner Life of our Language.

By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $2.50.

From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New-York.

Peter of Castle and the Fetches.

By the Brothers Banim.

1 vol. 12mo, pp. 348. Price, $1.50.

From M. Doolady, New-York.

The History of Pendennis, etc.

By W. M. Thackeray.

1 vol. 16mo, pp. 479. Diamond Ed.

From the author.

Dion and the Sibyls; a Romance of the First Century.

By Miles Gerald O'Reilly, H. M. Colonial Secretary in Bermuda. 2 vols. 8vo

Richard Bentlev, London.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New-York.

Fathers and Sons. A Novel.

By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgeneff.

Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler, Ph.D.

1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50.

The Man with the Broken Ear;

from the French of Edmond About.

By Henry Holt. 1 vol. l2mo. Price, $1.50.

From P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia.

Stories of the Commandments;

The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy;

Caroline, or Self-Conquest.

Being vols. 16, 17, and 18 of the Young Catholic's Library. Price, 50

cents each.

------

{577}