Holy Readings, giving the Cream of many books in one, hopeful and good for all Catholics every where. By the author of "Catholic Hours." Jones, London.

We cannot give this work higher praise than to say that it fulfils the promise given in its quaint old engraved title-page. The passages from approved writers are selected with judgment; and the different languages in which they wrote, are translated into intelligable Saxon-not Norman-English. The "Thoughts" from Pascal are here arranged on what is known to have been the grand scheme of their author; and stand out more consecutively and powerfully than they have ever done in any former edition. The work contains several original pieces, in prose and verse: from these, we cannot refrain from extracting the following imagined picture of the Holy Family:

"I wish the reader had seen a picture which is often present to the eye of my mind. I first beheld it many years ago; and often as it occurs to me, I think I discover some new beauty in the design, some deep feeling in the expressions which had not before conveyed their full meaning to me.

"It is a large painting; and I was first struck by the brilliant, glowing, and yet subdued gladness of its colouring. It plainly tells of the loved land of the south. There is the radiant fleecy transparency of the sky-deepening into unfathomable yet transparent blue towards the top of the painting. There, too, are the clearly-cut and rocky barren mountains of the land of the Sun :-barren I may call them; for although one highest part of the distant ridge upbears a dark canopy as of pine or cedar, the rest of the hills are bare, and shine only with the amethyst tints of the evening hour. A large palm tree, too, rises in the foreground; and spreads its waving and feathery leaves over an ample space below. Beside this solitary tree, and placed so as partly to conceal a village which lies a little way further back, is a small cottage built of unhewn stone placed roughly together with gravelly mortar, as is the way of the South: many square pillars of rough masonry, joined together at the top by unhewn timber, run around the dwelling, and bear up a natural trellis-work of vines, which, having clomb up the pillars, stretch and entangle their boughs above-forming a verandah of green leaves, through which the large purple bunches of grapes smile as the rays of the sun glance through the gushing fruit.

"The door of the cottage stands open; and the poor family to whom it belongs are busied on the outside between the palm-tree and a large shed, in which are piles and spars of hewn timber, and under which a large dun-coloured ass is lazily browzing on some half-dried tops of Indian corn. A man, a woman, and a child are the only human figures in the picture. The man is dressed like a mechanic, and is leaning over a carpenter's bench, steadily planing a piece of wood-a door-case or a window sill—before him. The woman is seated a few paces from him and nearer to the door of the cottage. Her features are regular; her skin is a transparent brown; her hair, a rich brown, is smoothly braided on each side of her pale forehead. It is evident that a calm smile is almost constantly springing from her heart to her lips; whilst

those full dark eyes seem to express an intelligence, a thoughtfulness and a meaning far greater than usually belongs to one in her condition of life. I cannot convey the impression which those large, full, meaning eyes produced upon me: they seemed to glance into the future with such a searching and yet such a confiding look! Resignation, wonder, and natural modesty, and a timidity which she seemed to strive to overcome, were evidently the more constant expression of her features: but all these gave way to a wonderful mixture of veneration, awe, and mother-love, when she gazed upon the child who toddled and played upon the ground before her. Near the bench of the father, the child plays about with the chips and the shavings which are collected together around it.

It

"Suddenly the mother checks the finger which had industriously twirled the light spindle and spun coarse thread from the distaff above her left arm. Suddenly, with her lips apart, she seems to break off from some quiet song or hymn that, methinks, she has been humming. Her right hand is still partly raised; and half-rising from her low stool, she silently touches with it the arm of her husband. He looks round without stopping his plane. She points to their child with an expression of increased wonder. The child sees not that it is noticed; but continues to play as it had been playing. 'Tis a strange, thoughtful, mysterious-looking child! See; it has found two pieces of lath, a longer and a shorter one; and laying the one across the other, has formed them into the implement on which criminals are executed. has formed them into a cross; and stands there gazing thoughtfully and silently upon it, with an earnest expression of pain, love and resignation-more than one would think the heart of childhood could conceive or the features of childhood could convey. And see; the mother gazes from her husband to the child; silently gazes; and is evidently about to clasp her hands together and to look earnestly up to heaven, unheeding that large full tear that swells on her hanging eyelash. Surely, surely a depth of feeling must be at work in that anxious mother, in that earnest, superhuman child! And the air is still; the landscape is gladsome; and the bright sun shines in the sky and seems not to mark the lowly indwellers of that carpenter's cottage. It seems not-but stay: what is that glowing sunbeam that sheds a broad shower of light over the silent child? Methinks something moves in its golden rays: -slight, scarcely-perceptible figures, more transparent than motes, float up and down in the light: it is so-small spiritual creations, with with just so much substance as to be distinguishable, move in that stream of liquid amber, and wave their tiny wings around the head of the heedless child.

"He sees or heeds them not; he is evidently about to cast down his momentary playthings and to run smiling to his mother's opening arms. "Reader, I wish I could show thee that picture:-but, as yet, it exists only in mine own imagination."

This little book is a library of pious reading, suited for every mind however pious or however thoughtful, whether Catholic or Anglican.

By Francis P. Ken-
Philadelphia, 1845.

The Primacy of the Apostolic See vindicated. rick, Bishop of Philadelphia. 8vo. 488 pp. This is not so much a mere vindication of the Primacy of the Apostolic See, as a history of the world in its connexion with religion. We do not mean to say that the author does not fulfil the object announced by his title; on the contrary, we consider that he has made good his case to the satisfaction of every impartial mind. But during all the middle ages and, in fact, even in these later times-the Apostolic See has been so bound up with the history of nations, that it was impossible to give an account of the one without becoming, more or less, involved in that of the others. Therefore, although this book will afford ample information and references and authorities to those who study it for ecclesiastical lore only, we can promise a vast fund of instruction and enlarged views of history to the desultory and the political reader.

The book before us does not evince the enthusiasm and the eloquence of M. De La Mennais' splendid work, Du Pape: but it is more useful and more suited to those amongst whom it will probably circulate. To the citizens of the United States of America it principally addresses itself and we own that we are surprised and grieved to find that those for whom we feel some sympathy, and would wish to entertain more, should be so ignorant and prejudiced as to require the explanations which the author evidently feels to be necessary. "The idea," says Dr. Kenrick, "the idea of absolute power capriciously exercised by an Italian bishop over the citizens of a free republic, separated from him by thousands of miles, is absurd." Absurd, indeed! but most absurd that the citizens of said free republic should lack such an assurance. "I am not insensible," says the writer, in another place, "to the evils and calamities which resulted from the order of things (in the middle ages): nor do I regret that, in the actual state of society, the Church should enjoy her independence at the cost of some of the favours which the state formerly bestowed on her. As a lover of order and peace, I wish to see carried out fully and faithfully the constitution under which we live. We ask no special favours-we aim at no ascendancy-we wish for our fellow-citizens the permanent security of all the civil rights which we ourselves enjoy."

The tone of these remarks pains us. It pains us to see that the people of the United States should be animated by the ignorant and narrow bigotry of European realms, in which each party of religionists still contends for supremacy or equality. Have not their boasted institutions led them to feel, as an established fact, their independence of all religious supremacy? Did they properly appreciate their own system, the system of religious equality, it would be as much a work of supererogation in an American writer to recognize this most valuable provision of their constitution, as it was in the Austrians to recognize the existence of the French Republic at a time when Napoleon, looking over the draft of the treaty of Campo Formio, drew his pen through the humiliating clause, with the proud expression, " On ne reconnoit pas le soleil à midi. Who in the United States cares what your religion is ?"

We admire the cool unimpassioned tone of this volume. It freely admits abuses in the past government of the Church; and only pleads, in their extenuation, that they were intended to counteract still greater disorders. Certainly he knows nothing of the state of society in the middle ages, who thinks that he may judge of it by that which now obtains. Thus does our author explain that the Inquisition in Spain was a civil tribunal, instituted by Ferdinand and Isabella to discover the Moors and Jews who, after a struggle of seven centuries, still lurked in the heart of their kingdom, and plotted against their newlyemancipated dominions. Nothing that can be said, no argument that can be adduced, shall lead us to sanction an inquisition by one man into the religious opinions held by another man; nor, indeed, does Dr. Kenrick uphold the iniquitous institution: but viewing it as a matter of history, he cannot but admit "the glory of Spain in literature, as well as in arms and enterprise, spread abroad in the reigns of Ferdinand, Charles V, and Philip II,—which are admitted to have been the golden age of the Spanish nation. I do not claim," continues the writer, "the merit of these results for the Inquisition; but I advert to them merely to silence an oft-repeated calumny that it crushed the energies and blunted the faculties of the Spaniards."

We suspect that the discovery of America, and the advent of wealth to the treasury from many sources at that period, had a greater share in the prosperity of Spain than the establishment of the Inquisition. But as Bishop Kenrick does not argue in its favour, we will not press the point.

Our author's chapter on the Crusades, which exercised so mighty an influence on the state of the civilized world for some centuries, has much pleased us. He repudiates, with spirit, the modern idea that these were mere holy wars undertaken with no other view than to free the sepulchre of the Lord from the profanation of the infidel. "The struggle between the Turks and the Christian forces," he says, "which continued for ages with various success, proves that their power was in the highest degree formidable. It was, then, a master-stroke of policy to carry the warfare into their own territory, and to dispute with them the possession of their actual dominions, lest they should go on in their course, and obtain an easy victory over each European potentate, singly battling for his own safety. The union of all the Christian powers was the only means of effectual resistance; and was, accordingly, wisely devised by the enlightened pontiff, Urban II." The completeness with which this, the principal object of the Crusades amongst statesmen, has been popularly lost sight of, is, to us, an extreme instance of the power of bigoted misrepresentation. Even Mills says that "if Europe had armed itself for the purpose of succouring the Grecian emperor, the rendering of such assistance would have been a moral action." If it had armed itself for such purposes, forsooth! Can any man, with the least pretension to scholarship, be ignorant that such was the real design for which it did arm itself—although it was necessary to preach other motives to the ignorant multitude who then constituted the independent bulk of every army, and who had to be moved by appeals to their passions

rather than to their pockets? Even the unenthusiastic Gibbon (and we are surprised that Dr. Kenrick does not quote his authority), even Gibbon records how, in the council of Placentia, "the ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their sovereign and the danger of Constantinople, which was only divided by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common enemies of the Christian name. In their suppliant address," continues the historian, "they flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and appealing at once to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the barbarians on the confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in the heart of Europe." (Chap. viii.)

We have dwelt more on the account given by our author of the origin of the crusades and of the inquisition, than on his chapters more immediately bearing upon the history of the supremacy of the see of Rome, because we are certain that the ecclesiastical student will be glad to avail himself of the fund of information contained in the one portion of the work, and we wished to shew that it was equally interesting to the general reader. To all we cordially recommend it. In its getting up, also, it is creditable to the American press, though not to the binder.

Lands, Classical and Sacred. By Lord Nugent. 2 vols. Knight. During an absence of six months from England, Lord Nugent visited Athens, Egypt, the Holy Land, and Syria: and who, after reading the very pleasant volumes that- describe his tour, would not grudge the same six months which he himself may have been spending at an English watering-place-aye, or amid the platitudes of fashionable European society? There is a freshness, too, in the style of writing in these volumes which makes us feel the East to be the East once more; and not a half-macadamised track, parcelled up into stages by ingenious guide-books, and betravelled over by the race of cockneys-or worse who have disenchanted Italy. Lord Nugent carried with him a power of original observation, which enabled him to judge of what he saw independently of the opinions expressed by former tourists. This is a rare merit. In fact, were we to dispatch a traveller into any country with a view to derive pleasure and instruction from his written account of what he saw, so far from allowing him to be "crammed," as most tourists are, by reading the accounts given by their predecessors, we would positively restrict him from perusing a single line on the country he was about to visit, further than was requisite to make him understand its history and previous position.

Lord Nugent has a power of description which enables him most aptly to reproduce all those little scenes and incidents which show so much of the character of a people. We should like to extract many of his Egyptian descriptions, and his opinion of the camel in particular, because it is so totally different from that generally entertained of the patient "ship of the desert." "What you took for an expression of patience," he says "is one of obstinate, stupid, profound self-sufficiency." Nor does he dislike the gait of the animal less than the physiognomy and the temper of the "ill-conditioned beast." We cannot,