236

Short Notices.

THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, &c.

A Vindication of the Catholic Church, in a series of Letters addressed to the Right Rev. John Henry Hopkins, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Vermont. By F. P. Kenrick, Archbishop of Baltimore. (Baltimore, Murphy; London, Dolman.) The Protestant Bishop Hopkins lately wrote a book attacking Milner's End of Controversy, and challenged Archbishop Kenrick to defend Milner. This he has done in the volume before us. The result is a very useful popular statement of what is, or rather what is not, Catholic doctrine, on all the common subjects of anti-Catholic misrepresentation or misconception. We have no hesitation in suggesting its addition to the libraries of Catholic institutes, and other collections of books meant for general circulation in times of controversy. At p. 183 we notice a slight inaccuracy as to a fact. The archbishop says, "I know nothing of St. Peter's tooth, and I have not visited Treves and Ancona; yet, from the universal practice of all the countries in which I have travelled or lived, I am perfectly assured that nothing whatever is demanded or given for any exhibition of relics.” We certainly can name two of the most celebrated relics which cannot be seen except on a large payment: the body of St. Charles Borromeo at Milan, and the heads of the Three Kings at Cologne. But what harm is there in the practice, after all?

The Hidden Treasure; or, the Value and Excellence of Holy Mass. By the Blessed Leonard of Port-Maurice. (London, Dolman.) Of the claims of this little volume as a translation we are not able to speak, not having the original at hand. It reads, however, easily and pleasantly; and bears the impress of being written by one whose aim was to express his own warm and devout thoughts without regard to rhetorical art. It is introduced by a few interesting remarks by the Bishop of Southwark, at whose recommendation the translator undertook the work. The treatise itself needs no recommendation from us; but we may specially point out the third chapter, as likely to give some serviceable hints to those who find difficulty in employing the ordinary methods for hearing Mass.

The Mysteries of the Faith; the Holy Eucharist. By St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. (London, Burns and Lambert.) The last issued volume of Father Coffin's edition of the works of St. Alphonsus. It contains some of the most strikingly characteristic writings of the Saint. To those Anglicans who think him an "unscriptural" Saint, we take the liberty of recommending the study of the miscellaneous treatises which form the latter portion of the volume.

Visits to the Most Holy Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary. By St. Alphonsus Liguori. A new translation, edited by the Rev. R. A. Coffin. (London, Burns and Lambert.) A very nicely-turnedout pocket edition of the well-known " Visits."

Manual of the Confraternity of La Salette, comprising every Information concerning La Salette, with Devotions for the Confraternities established in England. By the Rev. John Wyse. (Richardson.) A very useful and complete little book of information of all sorts for persons who desire to know what has been said and done in respect to the

apparition, to visit the mountain, or to propagate the devotion in England. It includes a sketch of the history, remarks and criticisms on the children, the pilgrimages, and so forth, with a large selection of appro priate prayers. And by way of a useful hint of a smaller kind, it gives the names of good inns on the route. Mr. Wyse has also devoted a few pages to a well-stated explanation of the subject of Indulgences.

The Philosophy of the Beautiful. By J. G. Macvicar, D.D. (Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas.) Dr. Macvicar attempts to show that the principles of beauty are as determinate as any propositions in mathematics. His first step is to show that every thing is beautiful; for it is beautiful that some things should be ugly. It would be an ugly piece of business if certain nasty things could be mistaken for jewels or for sugar-candy, or if parasitic insects were beautiful enough to tempt squires to preserve them as game, or young ladies to enclose a snug paddock for the pasture of industrious fleas. The laws of nature are the ground of the beautiful, and the simplicity of the laws upon which things depend is the measure of their beauty, which is destroyed by too great intricacy. The fine arts seek to simplify nature, and to exhibit in an isolated state that which in nature is wrapped up in tangled variety.

The perception of the beautiful is described by Dr. Macvicar in a manner which will rather tax the perceptive powers of his readers: "The perception of the beautiful, and how we attain to it; this we have seen to be because of the fact that the laws of nature. ... are not singular inventions, making their apparition in material nature for the first time, the intellectual nature, the soul, till then a stranger to them; but because they are the residuary action and the representatives far down the stream of being, of those very laws of the spirit-world, which constitute reason itself, the virtue of thought and feeling detained above and nought but dynamic action allowed beneath; yet so much allowed, that at sight of their operation and products, i. e. at sight of the actual, the soul claims kindred with it, &c. &c."

We wonder whether Dr. Macvicar considers his grammar or his wonderful ablatives absolute to be beautiful; or whether he thinks that contraria ex contrariis generantur, and that the cause and reason of the beautiful is the ugly, which can only be expressed in language next-door to inarticulate. We do not deny that Dr. Macvicar has got hold of some truths; but we beg to call in question the value of any philosophy which its author thinks it necessary to bury under a bushel of verbiage. De non apparentibus et de non existentibus eadem est ratio. An explanation which makes nothing plain is not to be considered as an explanation at all.

Christian Theism: the Testimony of Reason and Revelation to the Existence and Character of the Supreme Being. By R. A. Thompson, M.A. 2 vols. (London, Rivingtons.) (1st Burnett Prize.) We do not consider this such a successful production as the second-prize essay of Mr. Tulloch, which we noticed in our last number. Mr. Thompson begins well enough with asserting that the cogency of on ological proof depends on the proof of an objective reality corresponding to the subjective determination. But when he goes on to prove this correspondence by psychology, he makes utter shipwreck of his argument. Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus. The mind is the white paper on which the senses paint the perceptions; therefore, if we would know that which is the necessary and unchanging element of all ideas and of all perceptions, we must

analyse the picture, and distinguish the form from the material, the colour from the canvass, the sensation from the intellectual element, the painting from the paper which holds it. And this must be done by an anatomy of our complex ideas and perceptions, and in no other way. We cannot tell what is the common element of all perceptions which have visible form, by dissecting the eye or the optic nerve, but by analysing the perceptions themselves. We cannot tell what a person has written by examining the pen with which he wrote; nor can we tell what the mind has supplied out of its own stores by psychology or phrenology. We ask for an analysis of ideas, and Mr. Thompson gives us a dissection of the mind as invented by Reid. As well might we call a dissertation on wax-tablets, styles, parchment, papyrus, and ink, an analysis of Cicero's philosophy.

Institutes of Metaphysic; the Theory of Knowing and Being. By Professor Ferrier, St. Andrew's. (Edinburgh, Blackwood.) This remarkable work professes to be a novelty in philosophy; it claims to demonstrate that whatever is known must consist of two elements, the object and subject, neither of which can be known by themselves; that neither object nor subject by itself can be known by any possible intelligence; that whatever is, is a possible subject of knowledge: therefore, that nothing exists which is not a synthesis of two elements, subject and object, mind and matter, God and the world. "The only absolute and necessary existence is a supreme everlasting mind in synthesis with all things." Hence, unless Professor Ferrier holds with Berkeley (and we think he does so), that matter is but a modification of the divine Mind, the thought of God, he holds that neither God nor the universe are real existences in themselves, but only two elements of one existence, two indeterminate nothings, which are correlations of one another and cannot exist apart;—a manifest heresy, and one which is not required by the system; for he owns that "the ego, or mind, in any determinate condition, or with any thing or thought present to it," is "the substantial." God, therefore, in the determinate condition of God, is substantial; is both subject and object; knows Himself, and is absolutely and exclusively. With this protest, and with an exception against the utter want of precision in the proof of the first proposition, from which all the others are derived, we think highly of the book, as one of real talent, precision, and clearness; though it is marred with what we take leave to call bumptiousness, and the assumption of the jovial style in which certain private tutors cram fast young men for their little-goes.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

Anna Clayton; or, the Mother's Trials. A Tale of Real Life. (London, Low and Co.) We have not read Anna Clayton, and we advise every body else not to read it. Indeed, we do not think many of our readers will do so when they have read the following delicious specimen of priestly conversation, put into the mouth of a certain "Father Francis," and addressed by him to a little boy: "No more of your puling round me, you young brat! I've had enough of you, I hope. As I hated your vile heretic mother, so do I hate you;-and now you've got to smart for all the bother you've been to me! Yes, and that little palefaced wretch of a sister of yours has got to take it now, I reckon! We'll see who's master round here now! This is "real life" indeed.

The Reculver; or, the Two Sisters of Thanet. Compiled by the Authoress of "The Indian Princess," &c. (Published at 61 New Bond Street.) The authoress of The Reculver does not tell us what she means by saying that her little book is "compiled;" it is a story, partly in verse and partly in prose; but is it all original, or partly new and partly borrowed? Its quality is as heterogeneous as its title-page is odd. Passages of descriptive power and real beauty alternate with such dreary stanzas as the following:

My Travels; or an Unsentimental Journey through France, Switzerland, and Italy. By Capt. Chamier, R.N. 3 vols. (London, Hurst and Blackett.) An eccentric book, in a fizzy, popgun sort of style. The author has all the disposition for the marvellous which distinguishes the genuine tar, mixed with the facetious indifference and flippant irreverence which characterises the man about town, or the BroadChurch Christian of little or no faith. He thinks he does a very witty thing when at each cross that he passes on his way he says the prescribed Pater and Ave to gain the indulgences, which he supposes the Protestant has as good a right to as the Catholic; he amuses himself with people's devotion or want of devotion in the churches; but he speaks of what other Protestants would call their idolatry with good humour and freedom, as if he were not at all shocked at it. He gives, moreover, a long account of "St. Genaar" of Naples, and of the periodical liquefaction of his blood; which he admits to be a fact, though he disputes the certainty of the relics being really his, and though he treats the belief in a few supplementary miracles as a miracle of sottishness and superstition. He perpetually calls attention to the superior comfort and external progress of Protestants, and never omits an opportu nity of saying something sharp against "tyrants," especially against the Austrians in Lombardy. Altogether the book may be recommended; for the author's heresies are put forward in too simple a manner to do much harm. The spelling of the Italian words which frequently occur argues either shameful negligence or shameful ignorance on the part of the correctors of the press.

A Londoner's Walk to the Land's End, and a Trip to the Scilly Isles. By Walter White. (London, Chapman and Hall.) This work has the interest of a road-book, or rather of a path-book; for the author usually follows the unfrequented by-ways along the shores, and visits all the headlands between Poole and the Land's End. He is an honest narrator, who tells exactly what he sees, and who goes out with a very definite idea of what he intends to see. The business-like way in which the Londoner enjoys his annual holiday is amusing, and the narrative itself has the same kind of interest as one of Murray's hand-books.

The Dead Sea a new Route to India; with other Fragments and Gleanings in the East. By Capt. Wm. Allen, R.N., author of " Narrative of Niger Expedition." 2 vols. illustrated. (London, Longmans.) Captain Allen's volumes are chiefly arranged from papers read with applause before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Geographical Society. His great idea is the making a shipcanal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, by letting these seas into the vast depression of the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea (which is some 1400 feet below the level of the ocean), by means of canals through the plain of Esdraelon, along the brook Kishon, and through the probable dessicated strait which divides the Wady Arabat, the valley which commences from the southern point of the Asphalt Lake, with the Red Sea. This operation would destroy Tiberias, the whole lower valley of the Jordan, and would submerge about 2000 square miles of land, most of it country which is hallowed by the footsteps of our Lord. Captain Allen's other theories are characterised by the same cool indifference to the religious convictions and prejudices of others, from the poor Arab, whom this dictatorial John Bull would eradicate from the land which he "infests," to the Christian who prostrates himself and weeps before the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Quoting as he does the writings of Mr. Van de Welde, and other half-crazy biblical interpreters (one of whom makes out from Isaias that England is to be the power which shall restore the Jews to Palestine), we think it strange that we have not alighted on a single reference to the work of M. de Sauley on this same country. Captain Allen has certainly collected many very valuable observations; but we do not like a man who wraps himself in his own private Christianity, and treats with the most offensive scepticism and disdain all the cherished convictions and traditions of the great societies of Christendom, especially when they stand in the way of commerce,

Maud, and other Poems. By A. Tennyson, Poet Laureate. (London, Moxon.) Hitherto Mr. Tennyson has devoted his exquisite versification and melodious rhythm to the services of the English Christian Transcendentalist school, as represented by Maurice, Kingsley, and others; he sung of human nature tamed by love, and accomplishing its highest end in the summum bonum (or nodum) of matrimony. But since he has crowned his brow with laurel, he has outstripped his teachers; the martial wreath has budded and blossomed, and, like certain peas, has produced a crop of scimitars; the laureate breathes war more than love. The poem before us represents a moody, envious, and misanthropical young gentleman gradually tamed by falling in love with the squire's daughter Maud, relapsing into delirium in consequence of his shooting the young lady's brother in a duel, and then restored to himself by the first booms of the cannon in the Black and Baltic Seas. The poem is in a series of autobiographical pictures, and the verse, melody, and diction vary very naturally with the states of mind intended to be expressed. We warn our readers, however, that they must read the poem through; otherwise they might incur the same fate as a friend of ours, who opened the volume at p. 89, where the hero paints his delirium, and is about as consecutive as Mad Tom. Our friend was of course confirmed in his opinion that poetry is only foolish prose cut into lines of a certain length. This little volume contains also the ode on the Duke of Wellington, and a ballad on the charge of the light brigade at Balaklava, to the tune of "All the blue bonnets are over the border,' which have been published before, and an idyll, "The Brook," and a