have ever seen of the contents of the contemporary Catholic and ecclesiastical magazines of France, Italy, and Germany. This new periodical is worthy of its connection with the sacred City of the Seven Hills.

8. No. 7 of Irish Gardening (price twopence) for September, 1906, is the first that we have seen of this "monthly educational journal devoted to the advancement of horticulture in Ireland.” It is very beautifully printed and illustrated by John Falconer, 53, Upper Sackville Street, Dublin; and we strongly advise our readers to subscribe to it if they are interested in the cultivation of flowers and fruits and kindred subjects. Even a rank outsider and ignoramus has found it extremely interesting. Life may be beautified, and money made, by the cultivation of flowers and plants.

9. More Five O'Clock Stories in Prose and Verse (price 2s. 6d.) is very prettily printed and bound, even above the usual standard of the publishers, Benziger Brothers, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago. One of her American reviewers calls "the Religious of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus," to whom we owe the charming little book, Sister Mary Peter, an American probably. She has a pure and pleasant style both in verse and prose― witness for verse "St. Werburgh's Goose," and for prose "St. Opportune's Donkey."

10. Irish Fairy Tales. By Edmund Leamy. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. (Price 2s. 6d.)

Mr. J. E. Redmond, M.P., introduces this book very effectively by a brief preface, which begins by calling the author "one of the brightest and most poetic spirits that have appeared in Ireland in the last half century." This book alone (which has been for several years out of print and is practically new) proves this assertion abundantly. It is a work of genius, and - will preserve Edmund Leamy's name when his earnest and self-denying political career is forgotten. The illustrations by S. Fagan have merit in their very peculiar kind; but we confess that we would part with them without a pang.

II. Anglican Ordinations: Theology of Rome and of Canterbury in a Nutshell. By the Rev. N. C. Semple, S.J. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger. (Price Is. 6d.)

These sixty pages give a sufficiently full account of Leo the Tenth's final decision of this question, and of the grounds

on which it is based. Father Semple, within his narrow limits, has, we think, treated the whole question very clearly and satisfactorily.

12. Messrs. M. H. Gill & Son have published a second and revised edition of Robert Emmet, a History Play in Three Acts, by H. C. O'Mangan. Mr. O'Mangan has shown elsewhere his aptitude for historical studies, and even in this dramatic form he has kept close to historical truth. His effort has considerable literary merit also; but it takes us back to a melancholy time, and Robert Emmet's fame might be more wisely left to the music of Moore and the vagueness of tradition.

13. We do not know why the sermon preached at the funeral of Sir John Thompson, Prime Minister of Canada, by the Archbishop of Halifax, Dr. C. O'Brien, is published now ten years after his death (E. P. Meagher, Halifax, Canada, price 25 cents). But it is worth publishing. It is by no means a commonplace oration, but interesting and original. Sir John Thompson, who had raised himself to the highest political station in Canada, was a very devout Catholic, we believe a convert, and a man of sterling worth. He would hardly have had an elegy from Sir Lewis Morris if he had not ended his life so dramatically by dying under the roof of Windsor Castle as a guest of Queen Victoria. A crucifix and a rosary were found on his person. May they be among the marks to identify us also if any of us should be suddenly called out of life! 14. The Red-haired Woman. Her Autobiography. Louise Kenny. London: John Murray. (Price 6s.)

By

We took up this story with a certain degree of distrust, for we had seen it praised by a lecturer who seemed to reserve his praise for Irish novels rather lurid and ugly, and who, though he referred to living and dead, did not name Gerald Griffin, Rosa Mulholland, Katharine Tynan, or (we think) Jane Barlow. We are glad to find that The Red-haired Woman is written in a much better spirit, though we do not altogether like the view that is taken of Irish life and character. The tastes of an English public and an English publisher seem to have been consulted for, and the reader, if he trusts to the story-teller, will carry away false impressions on many points. The introduction is rather confusing; its references to Dean Swift, the battle of Trafalgar, Gladstone collars, and other land-marks of history,

are hardly reconcilable with any possible chronology. One of the active characters is a lady 105 years old. The book is certainly clever, and it is so well written that we wonder that the writer in revising the proof-sheets did not change many a wrong word, and recast many a faulty sentence. Does any dictionary contain the words "magnality," "venturist " (p. 244), "curtal" (p. 257), "galliardise" (p. 268), "implemented," "supernacular" (p. 329)? The story suffers from the well-known disadvantages of being told in the first person by the heroine. Miss Kenny's next book will, we hope, be drawn more directly from the heart of our people, will be more Irish and less Danish, and her clever style will be somewhat simpler; but her present book, whatever faults may be found. with it, has undeniable merits, and is by no means commonplace.

15. It may be mentioned here that Father Eyre's translation of Valuy's Guide for Priests, recommended at page 566, is sent free by post for 2s. 10d. in these countries and for seventy cents to America.

16. Is it the same "Religious of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus," who gave us the two series of Five o'Clock Stories, that we have to thank for Talks with the Little Ones about the Apostle's Creed? (Benziger, New York.) The book is very beautifully printed, and each of the articles is illustrated by an ingenious picture, of which a useful explanation is given on the back of it. The style is sure to catch the minds of young readers, everything is put so simply and so skilfully with pleasantly-told anecdotes to fix the various points in memory. The net price of the book is half-a-crown. It is sure to have a wide circulation.

PIGEONHOLE PARAGRAPHS

MR. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, who is himself a brilliant American novelist, has a poor opinion of most of his fellow-workers in that overtilled field of literature; for certainly most of them come under the divisions that he thus enumerates :

"If a novel flatters the passions, and exalts them above the principles, it is poisonous; it may not kill, but it will cer tainly injure; and this test will alone exclude an entire class of fiction, of which eminent examples will occur to all. Then the whole spawn of so-called immoral romances, which imagine a world where the sins of sense are unvisited by the penalties following, swift or slow, but inexorably sure, in the real world, are deadly poison: these do kill. The novels that merely tickle our prejudices and lull our judgment, or that coddle our sensibilities or pamper our gross appetite for the marvellous, are not so fatal; but they are innutritious, and clog the soul with unwholesome vapours of all kinds. No doubt they, too, help to weaken the mental fibre, and make their readers indifferent to plodding perseverance and plain industry, and to matter-offact poverty and commonplace distress."

I am sure that John Stuart Mill was a bad judge of the constituents of happiness; and I fear that John Morley is not a much better authority on the subject. The latter quotes the former as saying that "happiness is not a life of rapture, but moments of such in a life made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole not to expect from life more than it is capable of bestowing." Here there is no hint of conscience, duty, the future, immortality, or God.

The Stonyhurst Magazine, May, 1906, links with the famous passage in the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans which will be recalled to many readers by the words, ita ut sint inexcusabiles, this noble question of Cicero's: "Quid potest esse tam apertum tamque perspicuum, cum coelum suspeximus coelestiaque contemplati sumus, quam esse aliquod

Numen praestantissimae mentis quo haec reguntur ?"-" What can be so open and so manifest, when we have looked up to heaven and contemplated the celestial phenomena, as that there exists some Power of transcendent intellect by whom these things are ruled ?" Cicero asked this question triumphantly some fifty years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Haeckl is a madman or an impious devil to doubt about the answer in this twentieth century of Christianity. I do not know the writer who is quoted by Lindley Murray to illustrate one of the rules of syntax: "The sun that rolls over our heads, the air we breathe, the rest that we take, the food that we enjoy, daily remind us of a superior and superintending power." I have not seen or heard of this these fifty years, and I may have changed some of the words slightly.

Perce-neige and porte-voix are more prosaic than "snowdrop" and "speaking trumpet;" but "Speak of the devil, and he appears " is less elegant than "Parlez du soleil, et voici ses rayens;" and "Every dog has his day," is coarse beside Ogni santo a la sua festa."

Rosebank is a flourishing convent boarding-school near Sydney in Australia. The girls, with the help of the nuns, issue occasionally a pleasant miscellany called Memoirs of Rosebank. The following verses filled a corner under the title What's in a name?".

of

Her parents named her Marguerite,

And friends and kinsfolk said, "How sweet !"

But here I will relate to you

What happened as she upward grew.

Her eldest sister called her Meg;

Her teasing brother called her Peg;
Her girlish chums to Daisy took;
Plain Maggie satisfied the cook.

And Madge she was to her papa;
And Margie to her fond mamma;
And Peggie in her grandma's voice;
And Magpie was her grandpa's choice.