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or for both together. If for Catholics alone, this graver portion is hardly needed, for they know it already, and the novel will interest and attract them only in so far as it is light and sentimental. If they are designed for Protestants, to instruct them in our faith, to remove their prejudices, and to induce them to examine into the claims of the Church, they contain too little solid instruction, pass over too many important points, and dismiss in too summary a manner the real difficulties to be solved. If for both together, they fail, in failing to meet the peculiar wants of either. They offer a certain quantity of light and sentimental reading, on condition that one consents, without a wry face, to take a certain dose of theology, which, if he is well, he does not need, and which, if he is sick, is not enough to do him any good. Moreover, it may be set down as a general rule, that they who are seriously disposed would prefer taking the theology by itself, and those who are not so disposed will skip it. The one class will regard the light and sentimental as an impertinence; and the other, the grave and religious as a bore.

The authors of religious novels seem, in general, to take it for granted that the appeal to the sentimental, to the class of passions and interests appealed to by novelists in general, is harmless, if made in juxtaposition with an argument for religion. But we cannot but regard this as a mistake. Is not this appeal essentially the same, whether made by a Catholic or a Protestant ? Wherein is a Catholic, in so far as he relies on the sentimental for the attractiveness of his work, better than the Protestant who does the same? The sentimental is the sentimental, let who will employ it; and it is to the employment of it at all, as the source of interest in a literary work, that the moralist objects, not to the naked fact that he who employs it is out of the Church.

The age in which we live is a sentimental age, and sentimentalism is the deadliest enemy to true piety, and to all real strength or worth of character. It enervates the soul, subverts the judgment, and lays the heart open to every temptation. The staple literature of our times, the staple reading of our youth of both sexes, is sentimental novels and love-tales, and the effect is manifest in the diseased

state of the public mind, and in the growing effeminacy of character and depravation of morals. Nature herself has made ample provision for the passion and the sentiment of love, and they cannot be excited to an unnatural activity by the charms of imagination and the magic of poetry, without involving the

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most grave consequences. The early Christians chanted the praises of virginity, and employed their imagination and poetry to win souls to God, not to madden two young persons with a blind and often a fatal passion for each other, and we do not well in departing from their example.

All books which seek the sources of their interest in the passion or sentiment of love are to be distrusted, and so indeed are all which, no matter in what degree, foster a sentimental tendency. The more delicate and refined the sentimentality, and the more apparently innocent and pure it may be, the more really dangerous it is. Works which are grossly sensual disgust all in whom corruption has not already commenced ; but works which studiously avoid every indelicate expression or allusion, which seem to breathe an atmosphere of purity itself, excite no alarm, are read by the innocent and confiding, insinuate a fatal poison before it is suspected, and create a tone and temper of mind and heart which pave the way for corruption. Corruption generally, if not always, begins in the sentiments, and in sentiments which in themselves are free from blame, and which apparently cannot be too strong or active. The Devil, , when he would seduce us, comes, usually, disguised as an angel of light. If he came in his own shape, in his real character, we should at once recognize and resist him ; but coming disguised under the appearance of something which is held to be innocent and worthy to be encouraged, he is able to destroy the equilibrium of the character, to produce a morbid state of the affections, and to take from us all power to resist in the hour of trial.

We speak not, of course, against genuine warmth of heart, real tenderness of feeling, and strength of affection. Nay, we are pleading their cause. The sickly refinement, the morbid sentimentality, which the popular literature of the day has such a direct tendency to foster, is no less fatal to them than to piety and charity. Your inveterate novel-reader cannot love, in any worthy sense of the term. Her heart is blasé before she is out of her teens. Her whole being, body and soul, heart and mind, inside and out, from top to bottom, is diseased, full of wounds and putrefying sores. She has no health, no soundness, no strength to bear even the application of a remedy. She may talk charmingly, vent much exquisite sentiment, but if you want to find true warmth of heart, genuine affection, or a noble and disinterested deed, go not near her. It is this morbid sensibility, this enervating and corrupting sentimentali

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ty, which the popular literature of the day encourages, that we oppose, and every enlightened censor of morals does and must oppose.

Now, the question seems to us pertinent, whether religious novels themselves, in so far as they are sentimental, do not, in their degree, tend to produce the very evil to which we refer, and which they are designed to cure. They contain in general, we grant, sound doctrine, and, so far as formal teaching is concerned, correct morals ; but do they, as a rule, concentrate the interest on the doctrine or the morals ? Does not the interest, for the most part, turn on the sentiments and passions and fate of the principal personages introduced, and is it not precisely of the same order as that of novels in general? Is not a love-story a love-story, when told in connection with an argument for Catholicity, as much as when told in any other connection ? And, so far as it is a love-story, are not its effects precisely the same ? Is there not truth as well as point in the remark which some one makes, that religious novels are usually wretchedly dull as novels, and miserably defective as moral essays or theological treatises, wanting the chief attractions of the popular novel, and obnoxious to most of the objections urged by moralists against it ? We confess we cannot see how one is improved by reading a so-called religious novel, when he is induced to read it by what it contains of the sentimental, more than he would be by any other novel, - or how, in proportion to the quantity of sentimentality it contains, he is less injured by it.

We regard it, moreover, considering the end for which we need a popular literature, as a defect in the works which have fallen under our notice, that they nearly all appear to be written on the principle, that they must be filled with arguments for the Church, or have a good Catholic moral tacked on to the end, or they will not be recognized as Catholic. But, unless we are very much mistaken, a book may be recognized as Catholic by its spirit and temper, by the kind of interests it appeals to, the emotions it excites, and the general impression it leaves on the reader, as well as by its formal teaching. We have in our mind, just now, a very neatly executed little work, recently published, which contains an unanswerable argument for the Church, and yet contains not a sentence which a Protestant, having one or two of our more widely circulated elementary works before him, could not have written, if so disposed. One does not like polemics everywhere, and on

every occasion. Why can we not have books which shall be attractive to the general reader, and be strictly Catholic, too, in their tone and influence, but which shall nevertheless be free from polemics ? A book may be as truly Catholic by what it leaves out as by what it takes in, by refraining from appeals to those passions and interests which our religion teaches us to subdue or subordinate, as by its pitched battles for the faith. The Tales of Canon Schmidt, so far as we have examined them, are illustrations of our thought. The Tears on the Diadem, by Mrs. Dorsey of Baltimore, in its general design, though not in its execution, is a specimen of the kind of religious novel we have in our mind, and would like to see flourishing among us. It seems to us we might have novels and popular tales which should have a high moral aim, a really Catholic influence, and be made sufficiently attractive by appeals to those interests and affections which the Church approves and consecrates, without set arguments for religion. They could and would be read with pleasure and profit by those who are not quite zealous enough, nor quite serious enough, if you will, to be always delighted with religious controversy.

Good books in defence of our holy faith, adapted to all tastes and capacities, are no doubt desirable ; but whether a work, one half of which is a sentimental tale, and the other a brief, imperfect, and one-sided argument for Catholicity, comes within the category of such books, may be fairly questioned. Nor is this all. Desirable as such books are, they are not the books which we most want. We want books for those who are within as much, to say the least, as for those who are without. In this reading age, Catholics must and will read, and, if they do not find reading to their taste in the Church, they will be tempted to seek it out of the Church. The class of Catholics, whose welfare is in this respect to be especially consulted, are not the earnest, serious, and devout members of the Church, who are prompt to their duties, and find in religion itself all they need even to amuse them ; but that large class who think very little of any thing beyond the passing moment, and find no interest in moral lectures or religious discussions. We want books for these, even more than for the conversion of those who are without. Catholic literature should be written primarily for the Catholic community, and adapted to its wants. Living as we do in a Protestant community, where the wealth, the influence, and the worldly reNEW SERIES. - VOL. I. NO. I.

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spectability are in great measure on the side of those who, unhappily, are opposed to the Church, we are prone to underrate our own importance, and to place too little reliance on our own people. We should be glad to see Protestants converted, but for their sake, not for ours. They have nothing to give us, nothing we want, and our first duty is not to them, but to our Catholic population. Indeed, the best and speediest way of bringing about their conversion, and of making this country truly Catholic, is for us to rely, after God and Our Lady, on ourselves, and to consult, and as far as we are able provide for, our own wants. We have enough in the simple fact that we are Catholics to be thankful for. This simple fact gives us a wealth and a nobility which make all else in comparison poor and mean. Let us know, that, with God's blessing, we are sufficient for ourselves, and think full as much of the importance of providing for the wants of those who are liable to stray away from us, as of meeting the wants of those who are already opposed to us.

Our readers must not understand us as intending to imply that the little works included in Dunigan's Home Library are doing nothing to meet the wants of these. They do much, perhaps all that we could reasonably expect, but they do not do all we wish. They do not seem to us to be sufficiently adapted to those among us who are thoughtless and giddy, trifling and vain, and careless of what is serious and holy. We want books which these will be induced to read, and which they may read without injury, and perhaps now and then with profit. We do much when we keep them out of harm's way, out of the way of temptation, or of that which would be likely to corrupt them. Mr. Dunigan's publications, excellent as they may be in their way, look rather to the conversion of Protestants than to the preservation of Catholics, and therefore, though looking to a good end, do not look to that which is at present perhaps the more important and pressing. A Catholic young lady wrote us the other day to send her some books to read. She is sufficiently instructed in her faith not to need the more elementary books written to explain and teach it, and not sufficiently devout to read only ascetic books. What were we to send her, which would supply for her the place of the popular literature of the day? This case explains precisely the want to be supplied. But how this want is to be supplied we know not, and that it can be at once supplied from among ourselves, without borrowing

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