most prejudiced and incredulous mind must yield to the conviction, that the Catholic priesthood cannot possibly be, what they are so often represented by Protestant preachers, the enemies of popular enlightenment; on the contrary, that they are foremost on this as well as the other side of the Atlantic in promoting the cause of education, and in storing the youthful mind with every description of useful knowledge.

One of the most important matters recorded in the American Almanac, is the act of congress, dated August 10th, 1846, which provides for the appropriation of the fund, bequeathed some years ago to the United States, by Mr. Smithson, an Englishman, for the purpose of aiding in the diffusion of knowledge among men. This measure, we hope, will result in the formation of an institution, which will not only accumulate within its walls the works of learned men and the curiosities of nature and of art, but throw them open to the inspection and use of the public, and offer other facilities for instruction in the different branches of science. This would only be accomplishing what has long been practised in many Catholic countries, where institutions of learning, instead of being taxed to increase the revenue of the state, are supported from the public treasury, and afford gratuitous instruction to all who desire it. How far this hope will be realized by the Smithsonian institution, our readers may judge from the act of the national legislature which we shall here place before them, at the conclusion of this article.

"The president and vice-president of the United States, the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of war, the secretary of the navy, the postmaster general, the attorney-general, the chief justice, and the commissioner of the patent office of the United States, and the mayor of the city of Washington, during the time for which they shall hold their respective offices, and such other persons as they may elect honorary members, are hereby constituted an establishment,' by the name of the Smithsonian

Institute,' for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men ; and by that name shall be known and have perpetual succession. From the interest already accrued on the fund, $242,129 are appropriated for the erection of a suitable building. All future appropriations for the institute are to he made exclusively from the interest accruing, at 6 per cent. on the fund, which amounts to $515,169, this interest being now devoted to this object forever. The institution is to be conducted by a board of regents, composed of the vice president and the chief-justice of the United States, and the mayor of Washington, during their terms of office, of the three senators appointed by the president of the senate, three representatives appointed by the speaker of the house, and six other persons not members of congress, two of whom must be members of the National Institute, and residents in Washington, appointed by joint resolution of the senate and house. The term of service for these last six members shall be six years, two of them going out biennially. The regents shall meet at Washington, September 7, 1846, and organize by choosing one of their own number as chancellor, and a suitable person as secretary, of the institution, who shall also be secretary of the board of regents. They shall choose three of their number as an executive committee, and fix the times for their future meetings; five shall be a quorum. The services of the regents shall be gratuitous, but they shall be paid their travelling and other actual expenses. A suitable site for the building may be taken from any of the public grounds in Washington. A suitable edifice shall be erected of plain and durable materials and structure, without unnecessary ornament, and of sufficient size, and with suitable rooms or halls for the reception and arrangement, upon a liberal scale, of objects of natural history, including a geological and mineralogical cabinet; also, a chemical laboratory, a library, a gallery of art, and the necessary lecture rooms. All objects of art and of foreign and curious research, and all objects of natural history, plants, and geological and mineralogical specimens, belonging or hereafter to belong to the United States, shall be delivered to such persons as may be authorized by the board of regents to receive them, and shall be arranged so as to facilitate the examination and study of them in the building erected for the institution; and the regents shall afterwards, as new specimens in natural history, geology, or

mineralogy may be obtained by exchanges of duplicate specimens belonging to the institution, (which they are hereby authorized to make,) or by donation, which they may receive, or otherwise, cause such new specimens to be also appropriately classed and arranged. And the minerals, books, manuscripts, and other property of James Smithson shall be removed to said institution, and shall be preserved separate from the other property.' The secretary of the regents shall have charge of the buildings and property, shall keep a record of proceedings, shall be librarian and keeper of the museum, and may with the consent of the regents appoint assistants; and the said officers shall be paid

for their services, salaries to be established by the regents, and be removable by the regents. Appropriations from the fund shall be made by the regents, not exceeding an annual average of $25,000, for the gradual formation of a library composed of valuable works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge.' Of any portion of the interest of the fund not herein appropriated, the managers may make. such disposal as they shall deem best suited to promote the purposes of the testator. Persons taking out copyrights, within three months after the publication of the work copyrighted, shall give one copy of it to the Smithsonian Institution, and one to the library of congress."

Recantation; or the Confessions of a Convert to Romanism: a tale of domestic and religious life in Italy. Edited by the Rev. Wm. Ingraham Kip, M. A., author of "The Christmas Holydays in Rome," etc. New York: Stanford & Swords, No. 139 Broadway. 1846.

HIS catch-penny book is difficult to read and doubly difficult to write about. We never could have mustered up moral courage enough to pass the first page, but for the endorsement of the reverend editor, who in a commendatory preface invites the attention of the young women of America to the salutary lesson conveyed by the "Recantation." Let us see what this salutary lesson is; after which we can better appreciate the meaning of the learned divine's advice.

The authoress is a lady who styles herself"no casual traveller ;" and, indeed, if this implies a very remarkable tourist, we are free to confess, that, not excepting Mr. Dickens, or even the megotistical Mr. Headley himself, we have never seen a

more remarkable instance of the facility which some persons have of making themselves publicly ridiculous and despicable. We are measuring our words, and do not speak under any irritation proceeding from a perusal of the lady's ideas of Catholicity. Alas, they are only calculated to make us pity her imbecility!

The authoress, out of respect, we presume, to the universal custom of Protestant tourists, begins by praising herself. She informs us that she was once young -once innocent and pure-once very beautiful;-that she has drunk deep of the intoxicating cup of flattery, and revelled in the poisonous atmosphere of general admiration. This is enough to engage our affections in the start. We learn too, that she is the daughter of a princely English merchant, who from a sojourn in Italy has learned to love the sunny south, and whose Protestantism has suffered considerably. Her mother, a zealous member of the church of England, figures largely in the sequel.

Will the reader receive a brief outline of this "no casual traveller's" story? Father, mother, and daughter the heroine

a hero may be wanted, but a heroine never is go to Florence in search of pleasure. They are invited to a ball. On the momentous evening the authoress stands before a mirror, "radiant with loveliness"-her own expression-and her father, catching a glimpse of his darling child, exclaims in ecstasy, "my beautiful Mary." Through three mortal pages she continues to lavish praise upon herself, in terms that render cold and passionless the description of La Esmeralda, of Nourmahal, or even of Beatrice. We defy any modest American lady to read without profound disgust, this "beautiful Mary's" self glorification.

The moment she enters the unequalled saloon of the Palazzo Pitti, she becomes the observed of all observers, "the gaze of every eye," "the idol" who monopolized the incense of the festival. It is impossible for any one less silly than the authoress herself, to read page twenty-five and then proceed for the sake of pleasure: it is a Rubicon to common sense. But Mr. Kip's preface may be a Cæsar; so we continue our melancholy task.

Visions of a coronet, at first vague and indistinct, but gathering truth and consistency from reflection, float constantly before the beautiful Mary. Accordingly she slights a most interesting young Protestant parson, a Mr. Harcourt, to enjoy the society of a Catholic marquis. The coronet becomes more vivid. In vain the amorous divine pours into her ear the longest and most flattering declarations ever embalmed in a novel; the noble Italian is master of her heart - she becomes the Promessa Sposa of Annibale Trionfi. But the Marchesa Onoria wont allow her son to marry a heretic, and insists upon Mary's becoming a Roman Catholic. The case now stands, "The coronet vs. Protestantism." The father offers a large sum to the mother to preserve his daughter's cherished faith; but the Marchesa is inexorable. Mary's mother refuses her consent to the apostasy, but melts at the sight of her "idol's"

drooping eye and haggard cheek. The coronet is victorious; it is dearer to her than Protestantism;-and well it may be, for error is not worth the pettiest bauble in a lady's boudoir.

But let us see how Mary contrives to swallow the odious condition of becoming a Catholic, and if we do not convict her of perjury, it will be because our words are not so conclusive as her own.

Love had so far reconciled her to Catholicity that she tells her mother that the church of Rome and the church of England differ only in form, and that the leading principles of both religions are alike. In the whole recantation there is not one libel which a Catholic would more indignantly resent than this. But she knew it was untrue, and in her heart despised the time hallowed ceremonies of Italy, whilst she adored the pulpit-worship of England; for the next page but one confesses the triumph of affection over reason, and that led on by a fatal infatuation she succeeded in reconciling her conscience to the change. This reconciliation reminds us of that between John of England and Arthur Plantagenet; and as for conscience, we have to exclaim with Lady Teazle awake to her folly, "the less said about conscience, the better." And even when she claims to be thoroughly instructed, she repeats that the difference between Catholicity and Protestantism is "so slight."

We come now to the grand point of the book-the RECANTATION, which was to precede the marriage. The fatal day dawns bright and beautiful, but “darkness was deep in the recesses of her heart." We cannot wonder, for we know her motives; we are glad that she had virtue enough to feel one touch of compunction at her hypocrisy and at the sacrifice of every honorable feeling however mistaken, to passion and unbounded vanity. At the altar she hears some one exclaim "che angiola! what an angel!" Alas, she would have fallen with Lucifer. Shortly afterwards when "it is ended, and the deed is done," "the cold dew is on her

brow, and an iron hand closing around her heart." What had she done? She had -at least she states it-sworn that she believed all the church of Rome believes and teaches, and that she abjured, detested and abominated the church of England and all other heresies. Yet the moment the declaration was made, she thus appeals to God-" Strike not the trembling sinner in thine indignation! Blast not the PERJURED one who called thy holy name to witness what she herself believed not!"'

Here is perjury, if mortal lips ever invoked "the King of Majesty immense" to witness and approve a lie. The writer is perjured by confession-and yet she comes recommended to the "young women of America," by her editor, as a very veracious and instructive person.

Could we discover a spark of humility in the book, one single regret not based upon selfishness, we might forgive the folly which preferred a first love and a coronet to adherence to a fondly cherished error. But her whole aim is to awaken sympathy for herself, and hatred to the faith she pretended to espouse; she tricks herself out gracefully in becoming mourning, and exclaims: "Behold a Magdalen!" She is not content with the record of her shame, but stands before the world a witness against Catholicity. Is this a fit attitude for one who has violated the most solemn oath? If ambition and affection could induce her to insult God by perjury in his own temple, may not the disappointment of both incline her to look with a malignant eye upon the detested creed of her deceiver, and to be guilty of a simple lie ?

But we are anticipating the catastrophe. This much however we have settled, that the beautiful Mary, a priori, is not a competent witness against the least devout monk in Italy; but having been ruled in by the Rev. Mr. Kip, we must receive her testimony "with many grains of allowance."

Now let us see what she says. We mean to give the reader all the information

the book contains, except that relating to the authoress herself: but let him not be startled, for a single leaf will hold it all. Not until the ninety-second page can we meet a single fact worth remembering; but there we are informed that Tuscany alone preserves the language of Dante in all its purity.

We never yet read a book-always excepting Dickens' Pictures from Italyin which we could not praise something. So here the young contadina and her dress are well described; and though a few hasty touches make up the picture, we cannot but prefer the classic peasant to the carefully finished and self glorified "Mary." The reader has perceived that his information is confined to Tuscany. We will not follow the bride in her peregrinations from Florence to Rimini, &c. In Romagna she sees murder in every peasant's eye who stares at her carriage. But a fine scene occurs between her and an innkeeper, in which the latter rubs his fore and middle finger significantly against his thumb, after imputing all the miseries of the Romagna to the injustice and venality of its government, to denote money, saying "a little of this will do any thing!" He might have pointed to the coronet embroidered upon her handkerchief, and made the same observation. What is most powerfully dramatic, however, mine host is made to exclaim, that the prevailing injustice and extortion could not possibly be wondered at, "since its rulers were men who had no children." "The truth and simplicity of his reasoning" struck our lady so forcibly, that she goes back to the confines of time immemorial to illustrate it. We Americans are not going to yield so ready an assent to this very simple syllogism: most of our presidents have been childless, and Washington himself was unblessed with issue. Besides we are not quite willing to set up the number of a monarch's children as the measure of his merit, lest Asiatic and African despotism should present us the bowstring as a substitute for the trial by jury.

She swallows complacently all the monstrous stories of her mother-in-lawevidently impromptu offerings to the old leaven of Protestantism-relies most implicitly upon her slanders of Italy, and at the same time tells us that the Marchesa had visited England, but gave the most distorted views imaginable of its condition and society. Yet with all her radicalism the Marchesa is charitable to an extent that would shock an English lord of ten times her income, and that seemed to Mary to be but encouraging idleness. Thus it is the monasteries encouraged idleness because they gave freely out of their abundance; and after the bread of poverty had been squandered by Henry VIII, and the paupers' lips frozen by the wintry virginity of Elizabeth, the Protestant bishop sold small beer at the gate where the Catholic abbot had given it. Church of England charity has always drooped at the bare prospect of encouraging idleness: the horrid nightmare keeps its hoof immovably upon the heart of Protestant benevolence. We shall soon see in the book of common prayer," better that ninety-nine really destitute should starve, than that one impostor should be fed." And yet these timid souls pretend to have read the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and that five hundred baskets were filled with the fragments. Let them behold there the divine archetype of monastic charity!

In the pontifical states the bride shudders at the recollection of the inquisition : we wish it were as idle for her to tremble at the recollection of her recantation.

But not until her husband Trionfi becomes rather remiss in his attentions, does she give full rein to her struggling ire. Of course the Italian was not long in discovering that, unlike the infant Addison, his wife must have thrown away the rattle and kept the bells, which discovery inclines him rather to the billiard room than to the parlor.

It would be too trivial to refute all her Scriptural knocks at the rock-seated church

of God; it would take up too much time and space to explain many things which appear to puzzle her, but which we trust are clearly understood by every one of common intelligence. She is illiterate or malicious enough to repeat the old story of the rejection of the second commandment by the Catholic church. Any one capable of making this charge is sure to suppose that the commandments were originally punctuated just as they are now, and that the apostles themselves wrote in detached verses, and numbered them as we quote them. Indeed we should not be surprised if the authoress of "Recantation" imagined, as we once heard a Methodist minister seriously affirm, that the Bible was given in a lump by Jesus Christ to his apostles.

We will not follow her flight from text to text, until she-what?, not abandons Catholicity, for she had never embraced it, but, increases her Protestantism, or no-Catholicity, in amount and intensity. Her reverend editor professes to have corrected her theology; but we should like to know how his interpretation of the Scriptures must be truer than her's, when both are confessedly fallible? He might have told her that the celibacy of the clergy is not a dogma.

As a matter of course she finds "a complete system of polytheism in the Romish church, at the head of which the pure and spotless virgin," the highly favored and blessed among women, “has been raised to the station and attributes of a Divinity!" It is appalling to hear the fearful irony with which Protestants repeat the virtues of the mother of God. Whilst they denounce us as idolaters of a virgin, they prove themselves haters of the Blessed Virgin. May God forgive us if we err through want of charity, but we sometimes think that our accusers never dream that we pay divine honors to Mary, but assume it merely for the sake of denying her right to simple reverence. The pride which erects every individual into a church, which will not admit one body of