Ivrea was not yet done with its changes of government. In 1543 it was occupied by the Spaniards, who built in it a castle for its defence. In 1554 came the French; but five years later it was restored to Duke Emmanuel Philibert. In 1641 it fell, for the second time, into the hands of the French, who, after abandoning it for a while, again got hold of it in 1704. In 1796 they captured it for the last time; and from May, 1800, Ivrea was the capital of a French department, till the fall of Napoleon in 1814. Since that time it has remained an appanage of the House of Savoy,

Ivrea was once a city of fifty thousand inhabitants, but through wars and pestilence its population has dwindled to ten thousand. It is healthy, and possesses attractive surroundings-castles and convents, vine-clad hills, valleys, and exquisite lakes.

Long established as an Episcopal See, Ivrea has its cathedral and other churches, two seminaries, besides flourishing schools and orphanages, with institutions for the poor and sick. The Cathedral was once a pagan temple and circular in form, as was generally the case with pagan temples dedicated to the sun. About A.D. 350 it was purged of paganism and consecrated to the service of the true God under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin assumed into heaven, whence it became known as St. Mary's Ivrea. In course of time much of the building was demolished and its form altered. Of the older portion nothing remains but the two campanili, some tombstones, and a fresco on a pillar of the choir. The church was enlarged in 1854.

In this Cathedral were deposited the remains of the now beatified Thaddeus MacCarthy, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne; and it also possesses the bodies of several other saints and martyrs. In the garden behind are portions of the ancient cloister, dating from the days when the members of the chapter lived together and formed one community, as was the rule till about A.D. 1240.

Near the Cathedral stands the fifteenth century Church of the Confraternity of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, the interior of which is richly ornamented. Behind its high altar of marble is the choir, containing thirty stalls of carved wood representing scenes in the life of St. Nicholas. It contains also a beautiful old painting of the Madonna and Child, with St. Nicholas the Bishop, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino at each side.

In another part of the city is a beautiful church-tower, known as St. Stephen's, which is all that remains of the Benedictine

Abbey of that name founded at Ivrea by the Bishop in 1041. This abbey flourished till the fifteenth century, but in the next century it was partially demolished, and in 1757 all except this tower was taken down, Some manuscripts that had belonged to this abbey are preserved in the Cathedral Archives.

This church-tower would appear from its materials to have been built out of the ruins of the old Roman amphitheatre of Ivrea. Amongst other Roman remains is the one-arch bridge. across the Dora, which was almost totally destroyed by the French in 1706, during a siege which did immense damage to the churches and other buildings of the town. The bridge was restored by Victor Amadeus, King of Sicily, in 1716, and still further improved a century later by King Charles Felix, in 1830. There are also various urns of baked clay dating from the third century before Christ, and a beautiful marble Sarcophagus, erected in the time of Augustus to receive the remains of Caius Valerius Atticus who died at Ivrea.

Prominent amongst the mediaeval monuments, is the castle of the Four Towers, which was built in 1358, in the highest part of the city. In 1676, one of the towers containing eight hundred barrels of gunpowder, was struck by lightning and destroyed, a hundred and seventy persons perishing under the ruins. The castle of the Four Towers is now used as a prison.

The chief of the modern public monuments is one raised in memory of General Perrone de San Martino, a native of Ivrea, who lost his life on the battlefield of Novaro in 1849.

In the times when stage-coaches and railways were as yet undreamt of, Ivrea stood on what was then the highway between Italy and France; and to this circumstance it owed much of its former importance. It owed to it also the distinction of having been visited at dates widely apart by great military commanders like Hannibal, Charlemagne, and the First Napoleon. This fact also accounts for St. Patrick passing through Ivrea, as is said, in the year 431, and St. Malachy of Armagh, the friend of St. Bernard, in 1139. This moreover made it the scene of the lonely but glorious death of the Blessed Thaddeus in 1492, while making his way homeward on foot as a poor and unknown pilgrim.

Nothing now remains of the Hospice of the Twenty-one Pilgrims in which he died. It was erected in the year 1005 at the suggestion of St. Bernard of Mentone, and stood on the spot now

called the Cassinali di S. Antonio on the old Aosta road outside the city. It derives its name from the fact that members of the Solerio family endowed it with funds for the support of twenty-one passing pilgrims. It was destroyed during the Franco-Spanish war in 1544; but the church, then rebuilt, is still standing.

That Ivrea has not ceased to venerate the remains of the Blessed Thaddeus was proved by the sacred festivities of last September, in which the Bishops of Cork, of Cloyne, and of Ross took part in response to a pressing invitation, as the successors of their saintly countrymen. One of these prelates, Dr. Fitzgerald of Ross, has since been taken from us suddenly by death.

A foremost part in these solemnities was taken by Canon Saroglia, the learned and pious Vicar-General of the diocese, on whom chiefly had devolved the laborious researches which prepared the way for the beatification of Thaddeus, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne. From his writings, especially his Album of Ivrea, the present paper has with his kind permission been compiled. He is now engaged upon a large work devoted to the religious history of Ivrea, to be published under the title of "Eporedia Sacra." JAMES COLEMAN.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

1. The Messenger of the Sacred Heart. A Magazine of the Literature of Catholic Devotion. Edited by the American Central Direction. January-December 1896. Published by the Apostleship of Prayer, 27 and 29 West 16th Street, New York.

The only part of the titlepage that we have omitted is the statement that this is the eleventh volume of the New Series, the 31st volume of the entire, and therefore that the present year is the thirty first in the existence of this American Messenger. Ample as these particulars are, they do not overcrowd the large titlepage of this noble volume. Perhaps the Editors will yet imitate the present conductors of The Dublin Review, give up the confusing division into various series, and go back to the simple plan of numbering the volumes by the large number of years that have elapsed since the beginning of the undertaking. No doubt there is a brilliant contrast between the present appearance of the American Messenger and what it was thirty years ago. We believe it to be at the head of all the purely religious

periodicals of the world. Of the organs of the Apostleship of Prayer it is equal to all the other Messengers in the English language taken together, with two or three continental ones thrown into the bargain. The present volume begins with a very clearly arranged index, which, we are glad to see, names the authors, forswears anonymity, and even discourages initials. This excellent index enables you to make your way pleasantly through this vast storehouse of variously interesting and instructive matter, all of it, even the fiction, preserving the tone that becomes a periodical bearing so sacred a name. We could not desire better type and paper. The sumptuous volume is lavishly illustrated, the pictures rivalling in their execution the foremost of the secular American magazines, which in such matters leave us dull Europeans far behind.

2. Ada Merton. By Francis J. Finn, S.J. (St. Louis, Missouri : B. Herder).

woman.

We have heard, but we are not quite sure, that this story was written earlier than "Tom Playfair" and Father Finn's other well-known books. It is interesting and very feelingly written and of course with the very highest aim in view. The Author knows his own world best, but for our Catholic world over here there is no use in supposing angelic little daughters with atheist mothers, even though their atheism be only skin-deep like Mrs. Merton's. Carlyle said he knew a greater monster than an irreligious man—namely, an irreligious If there are such monsters in circumstances such as surrounded Ada's mother, I should rather not listen to them, let them blaspheme ever so mildly, and I could not imagine them so amiable and so loving as Mrs. Merton. Of course all are converted, even the Methodist coloured man-servant. The Irish woman-servant is the best of them, but her Irish-English idiom is evidently a foreign tongue for an Irishman born outside his native country. Father Finn has no little skill in working out a plot in an interesting, natural way. We object to the very last word of the book: to Robin Ada would not be "his little sisser" but would seem a great big girl.

3. Bishop Doyle: a Biographical and Historical Study. By Michael MacDonagh. (London: T. Fisher Unwin).

This is the newest addition to the New Irish Library, of which it is the eleventh volume. Mr. MacDonagh tells us in his preface that fifty years ago John O'Hagan undertook to write the Life of Dr. Doyle for the Library of Ireland (to which he gives a name that belongs to a different series). It is a pity the idea was not then carried out; the tone would in some instances have differed from that adopted in these pages, and the great Catholic judge would have given

a somewhat different estimate of the great Catholic Bishop. Able and interesting as the present Sketch is, the trail of the Sham Squire is over it all. Mr. MacDonagh has followed too faithfully his one authority, Mr. William J. Fitzpatrick, whose passion for the mere gossip of history and biography made him drag in all sorts of facts and rumours of facts, even to the length of refuting with portentous gravity the idiotic statement (did any lunatic ever make it ?) that J. K. L. had died a Protestant! But, though there are many expressions and even some statements to which we demur-though Mr. MacDonagh in his strenuous efforts to be impartial goes a little in the other direction and is almost crooked from straightness-this 'new volume of the New Irish Library is an excellent shilling's worth, and fixes the mind strongly on an interesting period of our history. We are surprised at the number of oversights in proof-reading. In the first few pages Dr. Doyle is spirituelle; of four Latin words two are mispelled; "council" is given for "counsel," Camæns for Camoensand so on. Dr. Staunton dies in 1814 after admitting Father Doyle to the Carlow College Staff in 1817. In his next edition Mr. Mac Donagh ought to remodel the grotesque sentence which fills half of his second page, especially as he repeats at page 18 the particulars that make it so cumbrous.

4. Modern Irish Poets. By W. J. Paul. (Belfast: W. Mullan and Son. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son).

This is the second volume of a curious collection of contemporary Irish poetry, the first volume of which appeared three years ago. There are biographical sketches of some forty Irish men and women who have written verse, with three or four samples each of their versemaking. Along with some whom the reader will hear of for the first time, and with some surprise that he hears of them now, we have such well-known writers as Edwin Hamilton, Lecky, Todhunter, Jane Barlow and Mr. Edward Dowden. Our own magazine is represented by its Editor, by Mr. Edward Harding and Mr. T. H. Wright; and we are so much pleased with Mr. Robert Blake and his "Fairy Bridges of Bundoran " that we advance a claim which will be proved next month. We cannot do the same for Miss Ellie Sweetman of this collection, whom some are sure to mistake for our too rare contributor, Miss Eleanor Sweetman, author of "Footsteps of the Gods and other poems." In the last pages, oddly enough, there are crowded together brief but very appreciative notes on Lady Gilbert (Rosa Mulholland) Alice Esmonde, Mrs Clement Shorter (Dora Sigerson), and others; but no specimens of their poetry are given, evidently because space ran short. This mishap ought to have been prevented by the omission of some that have found a place, and especially by the exclusion of