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from whom would descend a most salutary influence upon the people below them.

But this, it is objected, is anti-democratic, and you are false to your country in proposing it. And is every thing necessary and good, wise and prudent, to be forborne lest we appear to be anti-democratic We have studied religion and history and philosophy to little purpose, if all good influences do not come from above, instead of below. The modern dreams of equality may appear delightful to generous youth and inexperience, but there is truth as well as point in the remark of old Chief Justice Parsons, " The young man who is not a democrat is a knave; the old man that is, is a fool.” Establish and pre

; serve equality of suffrage and eligibility, establish and maintain equality before the laws, - all the equality known to our institutions, but there stop. That is all the equality desirable or attainable ; and the sooner we all become convinced of that, the wiser shall we be, and the better will it be for our country. Society must subsist ; it must provide for its own being, and, as Cromwell would say, even for its own “ well-being ” ; and if it does, some are and must be greater than the rest ; but not therefore necessarily better, happier, or more favored than the rest. The modern doctrine of equality is based on pride, and proceeds, not from a contempt of rank and distinction, but from an undue love of them. We see that in the nature of things all cannot share them, as all the crew cannot be captains, and so we resolve that there shall be no diversity of ranks or of positions. We look upon the distinguished few as specially favored, and hence our antipathy to every measure which seeks to benefit the many through the medium of the few. All this is very silly. The distinctions of this world are not worth counting, and we show our folly as much in seeking to destroy them as in seeking to obtain them. There are and must be diversities of rank and condition, and it is for the interest of each and of all that there should be ; but it does not follow that it is more desirable to be in one than in another :

“ Act well your part; there all the honor lies."

Art. VI. - LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1.- General Evidences of Catholicity ; being the Substance of

a Course of Lectures lately delivered in the Cathedral of St. Louis, Louisville. By M. J. SPALDING, D. D. Louisville : Webb & Brother. 1847. 12mo,

pp. 396.

The author of this volume is the Very Reverend Dr. Spalding, of Louisville, Ky., a native Kentuckian, educated in the College of the Propaganda, Rome, and favorably known to the Catholic public by several able, learned, and eloquent essays in the United States Catholic Magazine, of which periodical he is one of the editors, – and more especially by a work, published some three years since, in review of D’Aubigné's History of the Grand Reformation. This review, though less a review of D'Aubigné than of the Reformation itself, is a work of solid merit, and one of the best essays on the character, the men, and the consequences to religion, morals, manners, and literature of the great Protestant rebellion, that are accessible to the general reader, and has gained the author a high reputation, both at home and abroad.

The work now before us will increase the reputation of the author as an able and eloquent divine, and give him a high rank among the popular defenders of the Catholic faith.. The Lectures are marked by talent, learning, eloquence, a deep and tender piety, an ardent charity, earnest zeal, and a true Christian independence, and give us a popular, but solid and unanswerable, argument for our holy faith, - establishing beyond the possibility of contradiction, that the evidences for Catholicity and those of Christianity are not only parallel, but identical, and that whoever establishes the one establishes the other. Here and there, in the course of the work, we have detected an expression not perhaps quite exact, and now and then a sentence to which we might wish a different turn had been given ; but we have read the work with great interest and pleasure, with instruction and edification ; and we have no need to say that we warmly commend it to all who have the least desire to learn the way of salvation. To the sincere Protestant who wishes for the truth the book cannot fail to be of the highest utility, while Catholics themselves will find their faith refreshed and invigorated by its study, and themselves furnished with ready and solid replies to the various objections and cavils they are daily liable to hear urged against their Church by their heretical and scoffing neighbours. It is, after the works of the learned Bishop of Philadelphia, the most considerable contribution made to our Catholic literature, and we give it a thousand

welcomes, and pray to our Father in heaven that the life and health of the author may be long spared to us, and that this may prove but an earnest of still greater contributions which we are to expect from the same source.

A full review of the work, with an exposition of its plan, and general statement of what it has done, is due to the author, and we regret that we have no space for it in our present number; but we intend to recur to the work in our next Review, and to speak of it at length, and more worthily than we can in this brief notice. In the mean time, we commend the work heartily to our readers, as one which they will do well to read for themselves, and which they will find an excellent work to put into the hands of all such of their Protestant friends as are seriously disposed to seek the way of salvation.

2.- Perlen aus Jerusalem, ein katholisches Andachtsbuch. Von P. ALEXANDER MARTIN. Mit drei lithographirten Ansichten aus Jerusalem. Boston: Gedruckt von Wilhelm Neeb. 1847. 32mo. pp. 280.

THESE are indeed pearls from Jerusalem, brought to us by one who is himself a pearl in our American Catholic Church, and who shows by his untiring zeal, his fidelity, and disinterestedness in the work of his ministry, that he, in very deed, sells all that he has, that he may purchase the priceless pearl of eternal life. The prayers, hymns, and devotions contained in the work, the author has brought with him from the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and are those which for a thousand years have been offered to our God by the pious worshippers in that holy place. The work is entitled to high merit in a simple literary point of view. Its contents, in great part, have never appeared in English, and are little known beyond the Holy City, except to the thousands of pilgrims who visit it to pray and worship where our Lord lived, suffered, and died, and rose again. But so far as we have examined, it is really one of the best prayer-books for private or public worship we are acquainted with, and we are not quite willing that our German brethren should have the exclusive enjoyment of it. We should like to see it done into English, and, if well done, it would soon become a favorite with the Catholic public. We copy the Preface.

"Undächtiger Leser !

"Hier überreiche ich dir in der Form eines Gebetbuches einige chriftliche Kostbar. teiten, die ich zu Jerusalem gesammelt, und aus der h. Stadt mitgebracht habe. Ich nenne fie Perlen aus Jerusalem' weil es erstens kostbare Ueberliefer52

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NEW SERIES.

VOL. I. NO. III.

ungen find, welche im Meere tausendjåhriger Verwüftungen und Blutvergießungen sich an den Felsen rechtgläubiger Christenherzen zu Jerusalem erhalten haben, und weil es zweitens Gebete, Anmuthungen und Lieder find, die schon seit vielen Jahrhunderten, so wie noch jekt in der Kirche des h. Grabes J. C. zu Jerusalem aus dem Munde der armen verfolgten arabischen Katholiken und ihrer Missionåre tagtäglich erschallen, und von denselben gleich einer kostbaren Perle vor den Entehrungen der Türten und Keher fortwährend bewahrt und beschüßt werden müßen. Perlen aus Jerusalem nenne ich endlich drittens mit Recht die dem Gebetbuche beigegebenen Bilder, weil sie drei der merkwürdigsten Orte aus der Leidensgeschichte Jesu darstellen, und dieß so getreu, wie vielleicht noch kein Bild dieser Art. Denn sie wurden etwa nicht einer andern Zeichnung nachgemacht, sondern zu Jerusalem an der Stelle selbst von der Meisterhand eines deutschen Katholiken unter meinen Augen abgezeichnet, und zwar so genau daß jedes Fenster, ja faft jedes Gras, jeder Stein in denselben ausgedrückt ist.

"Mit diesem Büchlein in der Hand kannst du daher dich im Geiste recht lebendig nach Jerusalem versehen, die h. Orte betrachten, welche dein leidender Jesus vom Garten Getsemani bis zum Calverienberge mit seinen blutigen Tritten geheiliget hat; von dort aus dich hinabbegeben zu den frommen Wächtern des h. Grabes (Franzis kaner) um neben ihnen an diesem h. Orte niederzuknien, und mit ihnen zu beten; kannst dann mit eben diesen Priestern sowohl, als auch mit den bedrångten arabischen Katholiken Dich vereinigen, um in Procession die h. Geheimnißorte zu besuchen, und dabei die nämlichen Gebete, die sie zu Gott hinaufsenden, mitbeten, die nåmlichen Lieder mitsingen, mit denen fie täglich Jesum unsern Erldser preisen.

"Sollte dies wohl nicht manchem chriftlichen Herzen zur Freude dienen? Sollte dieß wohl nicht wenigstens Etwas dazu beitragen, die Ehre Gottes und das Heil der Seelen zu befördern? Dieß war wenigstens mein Zweck, mein Wunsch bei Be arbeitung diese kleinen Wertes. Gott gebe hiezu sein Amen! "Boston, im Februar 1847.

“P. A. M.“

When we add, that the work is published with the authority and recommendation of the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Boston, we need say no more to commend it to all our Catholic brethren whose mother tongue is the German.

3.1. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, to which are added a few Poems. By ALEXANDER H. EVERETT. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1845. 12mo. pp. 563.

2. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By the same. Second Series. Boston: The same. 1846. 12mo. pp. 475.

THESE elegant and instructive volumes deserve a more extended notice than we are at the present moment able to give them. Mr. Everett, their distinguished author, we have no occasion to say, ranks high in our republic of letters, and as a contributor to the higher and more solid periodical literature of the country stands unsurpassed, if not unrivalled. He is a man of a richly cultivated mind, a scholar of varied and extensive attainments, a

a

deep and earnest thinker on moral, political, and philosophical subjects, a writer worthy of being studied for the purity of his diction, and the classic grace, ease, and repose of his style. His essays are free from all the usual faults of our American writers. They are never childish or bald, never feverish or florid, turgid or inflated, but calm and flowing, strong and clear, chaste and manly. No man among us has done more to check the tendency to extravagance and corrupting neologisms, and to keep our authors within the current of pure and genuine English style and diction.

Of Mr. Everett's poems we have not much to say ; but some of his translations from the German are very well done, show a correct appreciation of poetic beauty, and a command of poetic language not always to be found in translators of much higher pretensions. We have been particularly pleased with the translation of the Spirit Land, or Invocation to the second part of Goethe's Faust, The Worth of Woman, or, as we prefer to say, Dignity of Woman, from Schiller, and the Spectre Bridegroom, imitated from Bürger's Leonora. Among the purely literary articles, the one in which he proves the Spanish original of Gil Blas has interested us the most. It has always seemed to us that a work so peculiarly national in its spirit, tone, and coloring could not possibly have been written by any but a native Spaniard. Mr. Everett, we think, makes it clear that Le Sage was its translator, not its author. The philosophical essays compose a large part of the second series, and have great interest for us, both from their intrinsic importance, and from their carrying us back to the time when we enjoyed the personal intimacy of the author, and were ourselves all-engrossed with the questions they discuss. A few years ago, all minds here were turned to the discussion of metaphysical topics, and all the world were becoming philosophers. A change has come over the spirit of their dream now, and other tendencies and other topics have their hour. We do not always agree with Mr. Everett in his philosophical views, but we find him always sober, always free from cant and Transcendentalism, and though he may not always be sound, and though his tendencies to liberalism and rationalism are too decided, he is always sounder and more trustworthy than the authors he opposes. He never gives in his adhesion to modern pantheism, socialism, or progressism; and though he may sometimes yield too much to the popular speculations of the day, he is never a no-government man, never a radical at bottom, but in fact a legitimist in the true sense, and the supporter of law and order; and, except in their indirect bearing on religion, his essays may in general be read with pleasure and profit, and in a country where so little is produced that a Catholic citizen is not obliged to condemn, they may even be commended as likely to exert a salutary influence.

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