money for it. But the announcement of the subject excited great interest in America, in England, and in France, and by one or another writer of the time it is spoken of as if the reward had really been made. Chastellux published an essay which he pretended was written in. competition for the prize, and much more important was the essay written by Abbé Genty who says, however, specifically, that he did not present his in competition.

The Abbé Genty thinks that he establishes six points: “First, that the discovery might have been a great advantage to the nations of America; second, that it was a great disadvantage to them; third, that it might have been a great advantage to the Spaniards; fourth, that it was a great disadvantage to them; fifth, that it might have been a great advantage to the world; sixth, that it was a great disadvantage." Here is one of his pessimistic pieces of eloquence:

"Such were the principal effects of the conquest of the New World on Europe in general. It was an inexhaustible source of calamity; it influenced more or less directly all the plagues which ravaged this part of the world. It prolonged the empire of destructive prejudices, and held back, for two centuries, perhaps, knowledge that would have been useful to mankind. It should have softened the manners of Europeans and led them to beneficence. It did make them more cruel and pitiless. It should have raised the dignity of mankind, and taught him the grandeur of his origin. All that it did was to inflame the hearts of a few despots, and furnish them with new means for oppressing and degrading the human species. It should have enriched Europe. It did cover her with mourning, and, in a deeper way, made her a desert and wretched."

It is interesting, however, and pathetic to see that all the hope which he had, came from us and our affairs. At the very end of his gloomy picture, in two or three pages which come in like a ray of sunshine after the dark clouds of a thunderstorm, he says that the hope of the world is in the thirteen States just made independent:

The independence of the Anglo-Americans is the event most likely to accelerate the revolution which is to renew the happiness of the world. America will become the asylum of the persecuted European, the oppressed Indian, and the fugitive Negro. After the population of the United States has covered her own immense domains she will give a new population to the plains which have been made desert by avarice. She will quicken by rivalry the other colonies of the New World. Her virtues will revive in the new hemisphere the laws of nature which have been for centuries forgotten. The Anglo-Americans may not conquer by arms as the Incas of Peru did, but they will be the rulers of all America, at least by their example, by the ascendency of wisdom and its benefits, and they will lead the other States of America to prosperity by the most powerful and most durable control."

He goes on to prophesy the end of gold and silver mining, the emancipation of the blacks, and the end of the slave trade, the end of European thirst for conquest, the true dignity of commerce, the end of war, and the conversion of the world to Christianity. All this is to spring from the virtues of three millions of Anglo-Americans, and he finds nothing else in America for it to spring from.

AMERICAN NOMENCLATURE.

M. S. MARTIN.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (9 pp.) in
Belford's Magazine, New York, February.

T has been truly said that this country presents the geo

I graphical anomaly of an immense uation a

name. In all official transactions we style our country the United States of America; besides being open to the objection that this is a name that other countries might, with equal propriety, lay claim to, there is the more serious objection that it admits of no adjective. At home, the inconvenience is not so great, but the moment our intercourse with other countries begins, we find ourselves embarrassed. When our traveler in Europe is asked what country he comes from, he answers unhesitatingly from America. He takes it for granted that

every one will understand that he comes from the United States. Very likely he is then asked some questions about Halifax or Rio Janeiro which show that the idea he has given is not of this country in particular, but of the continent. The Canadian, the Mexican, the Peruvian, claim to be Americans also, and the traveler soon realizes what he had scarcely thought of at home-that his country has no name. Will it be said that this is a matter of no importance? It is of importance. The idea of a distinct political community among the nations of the earth must be represented by words whether it is a single name or a phrase.

A phrase is inconvenient, harsh to the ear, and incapable of expressing the relations which the derivatives of a single name express. Every nation that has been glorious and powerful before us has had a single word for its name.

If it were a mere matter of taste, that would be much, for matters of taste have often, as in this very case, a great deal to do with character. A name is a bond of union. It is a sign, a watchword. Who can tell how much it may affect the national sentiment of pride and honor. While we have one country, and one people (which, please God, will be forever), let us have one name. It is a great pity that the Revolution was suffered to pass without giving a new name to the country; but at that time we were the only nation on the continent. The provinces to the South of us had no political importance. These old provinces have now become nations, all calling themselves America. We can no longer appropriate to ourselves the name of the continent. In State documents and in popular phraseology at home and abroad we find the same name used indiscriminately for our own country and for the whole continent. We should get another name for ourselves or for the continent. Is it now too late to repair the wrong done to Columbus? Why should not the whole continent be called after him? We would call the whole hemisphere Columbia that the traveler from the old world, whenever he discusses the land, may be reminded of him who discovered it. We would call it Columbia that the name of the great discoverer may be on men's lips whenever they speak of the new world that he laid open to the old. We would call it Columbia asan everlasting tribute to heroism, as a memento to the child, to the scholar, to every man, of the reward which the world finally bestows on greatness. Now is the time! We must eventually take a new name for the country or for the United States. Which is easier-which is better?

In connection with this subject, too, we have something to say in relation to proper names generally. Instead of the old Indian names which had a local significance-instead of new names appropriate to the places they are given to, we have the names of towns in the Old World given at random without the least regard to apprpriateness, and what is still worse, the names of ancient cities and classical heroes sprinkled as if by chance upon the map, with perhaps the prefix "New" to render it inharmonious as well as inappropriate. New Yorkwhat a name for the Metropolis of the New World! Compare it with the euphonious Indian name. Is there a resident of the city who would not wish to have the latter restored.

There is not a country on the face of the earth disfigured by so many harsh names as this. What an admixture of English, French, Slavonic, and Gothic-a piebald map-a confused jumble of old and new, Saxon and Frank, Arab and Mongol, as if there were nothing native, nothing that came from the soil, nothing that became the soil, nothing to distinguish the mass of human beings who are spreading with the rapidity of prairie fires.

We have committed two faults which it is not too late to repair. We have too often dropped the Indian names, and we have substituted for them the names of places in the old countries. We should repair the evil by restoring the Indian names wherever we can. Even unmeaning compounds might be formed a thousand times better than any imported names.

Books.

THE LIFE OF CATHErine bootH, THE MOTHER OF THE SALVATION ARMY. By F. de L. Booth-Tucker. Royal 8vo, 2 vols., pp. 663, 692. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

[Mr. Tucker, the biographer of Mrs. Booth, is the husband of her daughtter. He makes it entirely clear that some of the prominent traits of Mrs. Booth were inherited or the results of her bringing up. In her girlhood, we are told, whenever she was dancing she thought of damnation, and when at rare intervals she went to the theatre she shuddered when she saw the sign "This way to the pit." She would not allow her children to learn French lest thereby they should become infidels. Mrs. Booth's father, a coach-builder by trade, was a Methodist lay preacher, fervent when he was first married, but afterwards a "backslider "; never, however, interfering with his wife's method of bringing up their children. Mrs. Booth was allowed none of the innocent recreations of childhood, not even playmates, and it seems a wonder that, with her vivid imagination, she never rebelled at the fetters that bound her. A fair example of the author's treatment of his subject, and of the tone and the temper of his work, is a chapter devoted to the Earl of Shaftesbury, from which we make extracts. The Earl was one of the greatest English philanthropists of his time, especially devoted to helping the degraded beings in the London slums. He took pains to study the methods of the Salvation Army, and came to the conclusion that these methods tended to defeat the ends aimed at by Mr. Booth and his wife. What Mr. Tucker supposes to be the motives of Lord Shaftesbury are here set forth. The book contains numerous portraits of the Booth family and a Family Tree.]

SCARCELY had Mr. Booth left London when a letter was received

from Lord Shaftesbury inviting him to attend a conference for the proposed amalgamation of the various undenominational organizations at work in the metropolis. One or two meetings had previously been held for the promotion of unity and sympathy. On one of these occasions the advisability of forming choirs had been the topic for consideration. After several had spoken in favor of the proposal, Mr. Booth caused no little perturbation by saying that in his experience he had found choirs to be infested by three devils-the quarreling devil, the dressing devil, and the courting devil.

. There was very little visible result from these debates. It was, however, decided that a union should be formed, and that a meeting should be held to discuss the details of the scheme. Mr. Booth being unable to be present, his place was taken by Mrs. Booth, who was very cordially received by his lordship.

A difficulty arose as to the system of representation which should be adopted, it being objected, in particular, that if each branch of the Christian Mission-as the Salvation Army was then called-were to be represented, this would give it undue weight in the deliberations of the union. Mrs. Booth addressed the meeting in behalf of the Christian mission. The negotiations, however, proved abortive, and the attempt was soon afterwards abandoned. There can be little doubt that the rapid strides made by the Mission excited the jealousy of some rival organizations possessing considerable iufluence with Lord Shaftesbury, and that he was thus affected with an unfortunate bias against the work of the Mission.

There can be little doubt that the attitude of Lord Shaftesbury, unreasoning and unreasonable as it was, inflicted some injury upon the work of the Salvation Army, affording to cavilers, who were less disinterested and well-intentioned than his lordship, shafts which they did not fail to make use of, and withdrawing much of the sympathy of the many who naturally looked to him for counsel and guid ance as to what attitude they should themselves assume.

There is perhaps no opposition which is so difficult to endure as that of a good man, engaged in a good cause, and actuated by good intentions. The slanders and obloquy that are received at the hands of those who make no profession of religion, being expected, become minimized. It is the wound with which we are wounded in the house of our friend that pierces deepest and rankles the most keenly. The mockings of a Herod and even the crucifixion of a Pilate are less painful than the neutrality of a Gamaliel or the opposition of a God-serving Saul of Tarsus.

Overlooking present advantages, Lord Shaftesbury waged war against future phantoms. Whilst angels rejoiced over, penitent sin

ners,

he was mourning their possible backsliding. He was too busy counting up future losses to enjoy present gains. Whilst analyzing the infinitesimal damage done by a stray lightning flash, he failed to reckon up the good that was due to fertilizing showers, and would have abolished the clouds because they had come from an unexpected quarter and assumed proportions and hues which did not suit his taste. His startled imagination wedded the ghosts of a dead past with an improbable future, and trembled at the bogus progeny with which it had peopled the air.

It is not an uncommon danger with statesmen to live in an unnatural atmosphere of their own creation. Half their time is spent amongst the grave-yards of their ancestors, amid surroundings which have long passed into oblivion and are never likely to return. They are so intent on bulwarking society against the misfortunes of bygone days, that they open the floodgates to some present calamity. The other half is spent in legislating for a future that may never come. Flattering themselves, or flattered by others, concerning their foresight, they dwell in a region of illusion, surround themselves with the mists of the unknown, enshrine themselves in a halo of semi-divinity, and send forth their oracular warnings to the world. Like the dog in Æsop's fable, they are so absorbed in gazing into the waters of futurity, that they allow the substantial bone of present advantage to drop out of their mouth, and in sacrificing the present, they lose the future also. It was one of these strange, unaccountable paradoxes with which history, alas! abounds, that he, the self-constituted patron of the poor, should have entertained anything but warmest sympathy for the poor man's apostle, for whose advent he had so long waited and so fervently prayed! The publican might well fume at losing his best customers, the rough might blaspheme at the conversion of his boon companion, the worldling might protest against the invasion of his quiet. Yet it was strange, it was incomprehensible, it was lamentable, that goodness should consent to gaze on goodness through the jaundiced eyes of prejudice, and that to this day numbers who are earnestly desirous to serve effectually their generation should allow cold neutrality to chill their love, or active opposition to extinguish their sympathy, for those whose worst faults are but the mistakes that spring from overflowing zeal.

ABYSSINIEN. Aus dem Nachlasse von E. F. A. Münzenberger, herausgegeben von Jos. Spielmann, S.J. Freiburg i. B. 1892. [Both the subject and the author make this a marked book. Abyssinia, with the sole Exception of Egypt, the only really historic land in all the Black Continent, even in these days when the old quid novi ex Africa is a living question of the day, is not understood in its historical and present importance as it deserves. The present work, based upon the best accounts published, concerning this unique land and its inhabitants, contains a more than average amount of new and instructive data. Then it is but a rare occurrence that the work of a Catholic scholar can claim special attention on the ground of independence in research and thought. In this respect this volume is typical of the best Catholic scholarship of the day. The author's account of Abyssinia and the Abyssinians is fair, even when discussing the work of Protestant missionaries, although naturally he is inclined to favor the Gospel-workers of his own religious communion.]

THE

HE Abyssinians are a unique people. They are the modern representatives of an ancient and highly civilized race, the Ethiopians of history. In reality they are not Ethiopians at all, i. e., they are not black, nor do they belong to the black race. They are Semitic in origin and in national and physical traits. They are thus ethnologically related to the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Babylonians, Assyrians, and other nations which have been leaders in making the history of the world. Their pedigree is thus of the best. That they are called Ethiopians—a term which they have themselves accepted from the Greeks, but not in the significance of "Black" (they prefer the native name of Geez, or Freedmen, or Franks) is only another case of lucus a non lucendo. Being the only inhabitants of Africa known to ancient peoples outside of Egypt, their name was given by later writers to the other or black races of Africa, with which they have not. the slightest connection. In fact the Abyssinians are emigrants from Southern Arabia. Recent finds of several thousands of inscriptions in Southern Arabia, made by the German traveler, Ed. Glaszer, have shown beyond dispute that about the beginning of the Christian era the Abyssinians were on the east side of the Red Sea, and only later did they cross over and extend their supremacy over the "Switzer

land of Africa," as their monntains and table-lands are frequently called by travelers.

As unique as their origin is also the record of their civilization and Christianity. The Abyssinians are the only Semitic people which, as a nation, accepted Christianity-the only possible exception to this being the Syrians. Thus Christianity, although springing from Semitic soil, did not find its lodgment there, but among the Aryan peoples. Shem dwelling in the tents of Japhet! Even the Abyssinians are scarcely an exception to this rule. Although Semitic in origin and kinship, the civilization, and especially the Christianity, of Abyssinia, is Aryan. The Abyssinians were converted in the fourth century through the Greeks, and from the Greeks accepted their type of Christianity in doctrine and thought. Only a century or two after this, on account of the Monophysitic controversy, the Abyssinians, together with the Egyptian Copts, severed their connection with the Greek Church, and through the conservatism inherent in the Semitic people have remained practically at a standstill in Church matters ever since, We have thus in the Abyssinian Church of to-day practically the stereotyped and fossilized Greek Christianity of the fourth and the fifth century. The Abyssinians have not been in touch or tone with the development of religious and theological thought and life of the Church universal, since their separation; their church and religion is a magnificent ruin more than a thousand years old.

But, notwithstanding this, this people have had life. For more than ten centuries they have withstood the onslaught of Mohamedanism, and have been a bulwark to the progress of Islam in that direction. Solely and alone of all the Christian nations of Africa, they have been able to maintain their independence as a Church and State. "The once so flourishing Christian Churches of North Africa have dis-appeared; the Coptic Church of Egypt is in a state of servitude. Only the Abyssinian has not submitted to Moslem dominance. This historic prominence belongs to this singular people without reservation.

The attempts at the evangelization of the sterile Christianity of Abyssinia made by both Protestant and Catholic missionaries, have -only been partially successful. It seems exceedingly difficult to infuse life into these dead bones. Yet some progress has been made, espe.cially among the Falashas, or Black Jews. So far these are the most promising in the land.

The present significance of Abyssinia for the civilization and Christianization of Africa cannot be overestimated. It is here, in these old seats and centres of Christian culture, literature, and learning, that the best basis for operations can be found, and from here the work could extend in all directions over the black continent. The regeneration of Abyssinia is the first step toward gaining Africa for modern civilization and the Gospel.

STUDIES IN THE CIVIL, SOCIAL, AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF EARLY MARYLAND. Lectures Delivered to the Young Men of the Agricultural College of Maryland. By the Rev. Theodore Gambrall, A.M., D.D. New York: Thomas Whittaker. 1893.

[The spirit in which the author has approached this work can be gathered from the language of the preface in which he enunciates his views as to how history should be written, that is by first determining the facts, viewing them according -to their setting in the midst of their own times, and explaining them according to the exigencies that created them, or the purposes for which they were called into being. The author does not claim to call his work a history, he tells us, so much as a series of panoramic views, full and sufficiently clear in outline to convey definite and accurate ideas of the earlier life of the State. The writer in his introductory chapter enunciates some broad views-views more widely held than freely expressed-on the rights of conquest.]

THERE

God

HERE can be no reasonable doubt of the right of the Europeans to plant their colonies on the American continent, with the approval of the natives if possible, without it if necessary. created the earth for man, and a few savage tribes wandering over .immense tracts of forest was never within His intention. There are laws superior to written ones, laws which man recognizes by intuition, and, looking at the matter from this point in time, we feel that the right of the strongest as then exercised is a natural and legitimate right. It is, however, a law that requires unlimited Christian charity 'for its commentary. It is a terrible instrument in the hands of selfish men; but still it is a law, and if it had not been observed and its priv

ileges insisted on, the fairest dominion on the face of God's earth would never have been created, and the noblest institutions, such as we have, for the fostering of the human spirit, might never have existed.

In the Second Lecture the author passes to the consideration of the various colonial charters of the day, comparing them with each other and that of Maryland, in which latter the king's right was represented by two arrow-heads to be delivered to the king annually at Windsor. Such nominal claims on the part of the Crown, practically vested the colony in the grantee-Lord Baltimore in this case. That is, it was made, not a royal, but a proprietary colony. The powers of the grantees were despotic, and the constitutional remedy of Habeas Corpus was not extended to the Colonies till the reign of Queen Anne. The Crown, however, reserved a monopoly of the trade with its colonies, and no ships of other nations were allowed to trade directly with them. A notable peculiarity of all these charters was that they embodied an obligation for the extension of the Christian religion among the natives. And, strange as it may appear, Baron Baltimore in his charter had the patronage and advowson of all the Churches conferred upon him, though he was a professed Roman Catholic. Of the early settlement of Maryland we read:

When, however, we turn to Cecilius Calvert we find one who was shown to be great by his founding and administration of the Province of Maryland. It was at the period of the Thirty Years War in Europe, and while Englishmen were sturdily asserting the rights of English freemen as against the claims of royal prerogative and arbitrary government.

Cecilius was but twenty-six years old when the inheritance fell to him, but he conducted his affairs with a good judgment and wise policy that brought him through every trouble and enabled him to hold his own, and to hand on to his successor a strong, vigorous, growing, wealthy colony. Such skill and such success demonstrate the man, the more especially when we remember that he had to encounter troubles within as well as without, that he had a mixed multitude to govern as well as to conciliate "-a multitude in part high-toned and spirited, jealous of individual rights and dignity, and in part the very refuse of England, with those of every intervening condition; when we remember also that he had the members of his own Church to restrain lest they should succeed in their claims, which would have crushed down his own rights, as well as excited tumult among the colonists; when we remember the bigotry of the same class of refugees who had set England on fire, and who now settled in Maryland, after being expelled from Virginia, and who had, to inflame them, the sense that they were martyrs for their faith, that they alone held the truth, and that the Lord had prospered their cause in England by the overthrow of all their enemies-when we remember all this, and yet see how successfully he had conducted his administration through fortythree years, we cannot but be struck with the wisdom of the man.

His administration may have been one of policy, and a shrewd recognition of the necessities of his position, or it may have been the genius of the high-toned statesmen. Either could have determined his course in the way he took. The probabilities, however, are in his favor, for mere skill of policy is never consistent, and in time is almost certain to overreach itself to the ruin of all its schemes. As we have seen from first to last, Cecilius Lord Baltimore met with no such fate, but under king, under parliament, under commonwealth, and under restored kingdom, maintained or soon recovered his own.

[This meagre outline of the author's account of the early settlement of the colony will suffice to convey a good general idea of his treatment of his subject. The work is not a mere skeleton of the dry bones of history. The facts are there, but the chief facts are human actions, and these the author has striven to interpret in the light of the conditions which environed the actors. Like New England, Maryland, too, was a colony, in which the early founders sought "freedom to worship God in their own way." Like the Puritans of New Eagland, the Catholics of Maryland were early inspired by religious zeal to make others worship God in their way also; but the author shows us the broader liberality of Lord Baltimore, opposing a determined front to the pretensions, first, of the Jesuits, and, later, of the Puritans, rendering Maryland in fact as in word a theatre of religious freedom. The history of Maryland is far less familiar than that of New England, but by no means less important to the student of American history; the sturdy independence shown by the latter was exhibited as emphatically, and on the same lines, by the former. Indeed, our author makes a strong point of the fact that, while the obnoxious Bostonian tea-ship was burned at night by masked men, the citizens of Maryland rose in open day, and compelled the master to fire ship and cargo with his own hands.]