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NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

The lassitude of summer heat seems to have affected authors, publishers, and reviewers. Our Book Notes will this month be

reduced to a minimum.

1. The most interesting volume by far has come to us from the United States. "James Clarence Mangan, his Selected Poems. With a Study by the Editor, Louise Imogen Guiney." This volume has been produced with exquisite daintiness by Lawson, Wolffe and Company of Boston and New York, with whom is associated on the titlepage John Lane of London. Miss Guiney's introductory essay fills more than a hundred pages, and is an excellent piece of literature, showing deep and constant study of her poet. She arranges Mangan's poems in three divisions, namely, translations from the Gaelic (at the head of which she puts "My dark Rosaleen "), translations from the German and some other languages, and original poems. The last section is sub-divided, but substantially it consists of the untranslated pieces. Miss Guiney concludes her labours with some very useful and very necessary notes; and altogether she has earned the gratitude of all admirers of Clarence Mangan for presenting his poems in so elegant a garb with the addition of so much really illustrative matter.

2. The Alumni of the College of St. Francis Xavier have celebrated its Golden Jubilee by issuing a splendid volume of three hundred ample quarto pages, full of most interesting accounts of the various fortunes of the College, its presidents, professors, and students, illustrated by a vast number of pictures and portraits. A bibliography of the writings of the professors and alumni fills six pages of small type; and any expert who examines these pages may guess what pains and labour have been expended on the entire "Memorial and Retrospect." When studying these pages, we have caught ourselves wishing that our own Clongowes had such a record of its much longer story. Its New York compeer ought to be very grateful to those whose filial piety has produced this sumptuous tome.

3. Anything with the epithet "Irish " prefixed to it has an interest for us, This must be our excuse for the impertinence of praising The Irish Homestead and The Irish Rosary. The former is a very well written and well conducted Journal devoted to all that concerns the agricultural and other material interests of Ireland; the latter is a new organ of pious literature published under the auspices of the Dominican Fathers, who furnish their clients each month with a variety of excellent and edifying matter far too copious and far too

richly illustrated for the very modest price exacted. In this context we may give a word of praise to the new non-political series of The Irish Catholic. There is nothing now to offend an Irish Catholic, no matter what his political sentiments may be. The writer of an interesting article in the issue for August 14th-which by the way contains full verbatim reports of Father Robert Kane's panegyric on St. Dominick, and Father Philip O'Reilly's panegyric on St. Ignatius on their recent feasts in Dublin-the writer of this article, "An Irish Martyr in China," can hardly have been aware of a circumstance which he would surely have mentioned, that this murdered Sister of Charity, this latest Irish Martyr, was sister to the Rev. Daniel O'Sullivan, C.M., now stationed at St. Peter's Phibsborough, and well known throughout Ireland in connection with the Vincentian Missions. A sketch of the life of this holy Irishwoman was given in the fourth volume of this Magazine (1876).

4. The Catholic Truth Society has recently issued an admirable little tract by Father Charles Coupe, S.J., on the alas! very practical question of religious "Indifferentism; " and also one on "The Jesuits," by the Countess de Courson, which we must venture to recommend in the most effective manner by connecting it with the well known History of the Society of Jesus by B.N.-the most satisfactory that the English language has yet given to us.

5. Messrs. Moran and Co. of Aberdeen have published very neatly. "The Saint of the Font and the Fountain," a sketch of the life of St. Antonino, Patron of Monte Porzio, compiled from the Italian by G. O. M. M. From Washbourne of Paternoster Row, London, we have received a most convenient English edition of the Roman Missal; and from Messrs. M. H. Gill and Son of Dublin, Dr. Dowling's "Handbook of Health and Hygiene," price two shillingsa most interesting and useful book for which we predict a wide circulation. From the same Publishers "The Maxims and Counsels of St. Alphonsus Liguori" reached us precisely on the Saint's feast; but it is in season all the year round.

6. The Art and Book Company of London and Leamington have issued the third and concluding volume of the Rev, Henry Gibson's "Short Lives of the Saints for every day in the year." It is brought out in the usually satisfactory style of these publishers. The same publishers are jointly responsible for the excellent series of letters by E. Anstice Baker, on the question "Have Anglicans Valid Orders?" issued at Cardiff by St. Teilo's Catholic Historical Society of Wales. They have also published a second edition of Mother Raphael Drane's "Daily Life of a Religious."

7. The Story of Mary Aikenhead, Foundress of the Irish Sisters of

Charity. By Maria Nethercott (London: Burns and Oates). This is the ninety-sixth volume of the Quarterly Series begun and kept up so long by Father Coleridge, S.J. It is smaller than most of the other volumes, but it is also cheaper-three shillings. It gives a very clear and pleasing account of a most useful and holy life. Of course it is merely a summary of the great Biography of the Irish Foundress by Mrs. Sarah Atkinson, whose book indeed is mentioned but who ought to have been referred to. The author of this new Life died a holy death some months ago. She was a pious convert to the Catholic Faith. This posthumous work is the best fruit of her literary skill, which had previously been exercised in magazine stories and poems.

8. Father Gallwey's Watches of the Passion (Art and Book Company, London and Leamington) has in a short time reached a fifth large edition. It is quite a phenomenal success in Catholic literature. It has been found necessary to charge four shillings for each of the two volumes; but, as each of them consists of more than seven hundred pages, with several maps and pictures, and as the volumes are particularly well printed and bound, this is a very low price. It is a very holy book and will continue perhaps for centuries to help Christians greatly to meditate on the Passion of Christ,

9. The Five Thrones of Divine Love upon the Earth. Translated from the French of R. P. Alexis Louis de Saint Joseph, Discalced Carmelite and Examiner in Theology. (London: Burns and Oates).

A work of this nature, even though written by an Examiner in Theology, ought to be examined by a theologian, especially when turned from French into English by an anonymous Translator who probably belongs to the sex that St. Paul forbids to speak in church. But there is no Imprimatur for either the original or the translation; and there is not a line of preface from either author or translator. The entire omission of contents and index increases the blank, forlorn appearance of the book, which is strange in a large, well-printed volume of 270 pages. We are left in doubt as to all particulars about the book, whether written recently or belonging to a bygone century. The "five thrones" are the womb of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Crib, the Cross, the Eucharist, and the faithful soul. Thirty-five "readings" are devoted to these proofs of God's love for man, and the reflections are pious and good. But it is impossible to approve of the manner in which they are presented to us, especially in English. The exclamatory style of the original is not toned down in the least, and feminine italics disfigure almost every page. The very first sentence is a well known text from our Lord's discourse at the Last Supper, and this is translated anew from

the French instead of being copied from the authorised English translation; and the same plan is followed all through. Nay, this first text is given differently on the second page with the strange combination, "You who art the only true God." We do not know whether the work of Father Alexis Louis of Saint Joseph was capable of being rendered into readable English; but certainly it has not been presented in an English dress in this handsome volume. In every page we meet such phrases as this: " May I see in one and the other my chetive' humanity, penetrated, consumed by the divinity, as the burning bush of Horeb," It is a pity that so large a collection of edifying matter has been given to us in so unsatisfactory a form.

Our Catholic Publishers ought to insist on greater vigilance in the printing of quotations from other languages. In the book just noticed the first piece of Latin is Quam bonis et suavis, Domine, est spiritus tuus; and even in the Comtesse de Courson's admirable little sketch, "The Jesuits," among the C. T. C. publications, several foreign names are disfigured by the printer, who on page 50 gives us this curious "ablative absolute," Imperatrix jubente.

PIGEONHOLE PARAGRAPHS.

We demurred somewhere to Burke's famous saying about vice losing half its evil by losing all its grossness. A correspondent, W. B. M., tells us that Cardinal Newman has made a similar objection to the famous mot; but W. B. M. by a comparison of many passages has convinced himself that Burke meant nothing more than this, that Vice, wearing the mask of decency, was a less destructive evil than Vice as Callista describes it to have been at Sicca and as it is now in Paris, flashed into the eyes of the pure and innocent.

*

The Rev. Dr. Taylor, formerly P.P. of Maryborough, once extemporised a jesting epitaph on his friend, the Rev. Dr. Magee, P.P. of Stradbally:

Hic jacet

Et tandem tacet
Joannes Magee

S. T. P.

Vitam egit in loquendo,

Nova semper proponendo,

Nihil unquam faciendo.

He seems to have furnished on the spot a translation of his Latin; for the concluding triplet has reached us in this form also:

All his life he talked right through,

Still proposing something new;
Not one thing he'd ever do.

Among the "Winged Words" of our April Number, 1876, we see three signed E. G. . . This signature does not consist of three initials like "S. G. O." [Sydney Godolphin Osborne] once a favourite letter-writer in The Times. E. G. O. was simply ego, the Editor himself. These three thoughts, therefore, ought more strictly to be classed in our present department which is supposed to consist of matter more or less original. And so I crush all the three into the next paragraph, though they have no connection with one another.

The Arabs discern the approach of the simoom by a smell of sulphur. Certain seasons of strong temptation announce themselves thus. In the simoom of passion save yourself from suffocation by sinking low down in humility and self-abasement, as the camels save themselves from being stifled by burying their nostrils in the sand.

When we think of the return God makes for little things we do for Him, is it not like "realising the dreams of alchemy, and transmuting lead into gold?"

If I had the management of the moral and physical atmospheres, there would be less rain and fewer tears. But probably heaven would be less populous in that contingency and the wheat crop less abundant.

The Rev. John Grene S.J. twenty years ago printed off some copies of an ancient Irish Litany to the Blessed Virgin, which Eugene O'Curry had translated. He sent a copy to Cardinal Newman, whose kind heart made it the occasion of this little act of gratitude to his friends in the Society of Jesus :

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My dear Father Grene,-I thank you for your most kind letter, which is on a par with the friendliness which the Society has always shown me. I am very glad to have the copies of the Litany, which is of a most remarkable antiquity.

Most truly yours in Xt.,

JOHN H. CARD. NEWMAN,

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