ner in which they are got up, and for the excellence of their illustrations. The illuminated edition of the first compares favorably with the very best issues from the American press. The second is illustrated with original designs by Chapman.

9. The Pious Guide to Prayer and Devotion. Baltimore: F. Lucas, jr.

A VERY good little manual of piety and devotion, which many individuals will find peculiarly adapted to their peculiar spiritual tastes and devotional exercises.

10.Sparks's American Biography, Nos. VII., VIII., IX. Boston: Little & Brown. 1846.

We have been trying for some time to find space to notice these volumes at length, but other matters have pressed, and we have been obliged to postpone the fulfilment of our intention. Happily, the reputation of the work stands in no need of a lift from us. As American biography, we feel a deep interest in the series, and with the patriotic tone of the work we fully sympathize. We believe the writers aim to be impartial and exact, and we have no great reason to complain of them. The lives which will most interest our Catholic countrymen are those of Father Rale, by Dr. Francis, of Cambridge, and Leonard Calvert, by Mr. Burnap, of Baltimore. The latter, we believe, is acceptable to our Maryland friends; the former appears to have been written with honest intentions, but is not unfrequently inexact in its statements, and inconclusive in its reasonings.

11.Martyria: A Legend, wherein are contained Homilies, Conversations, and Incidents of the reign of Edward the Sixth. By WILLIAM MOUNTFORD, Clerk. First American Edition, with an Introduction. Boston Crosby & Nichols. 1846. 16mo. pp. 328.

THIS work is by a Unitarian, and is designed to show that the Unitarian heresy was not unknown or insignificant in the early days of the Protestant Reformation, -a fact we are far from disputing. The work is written with some ability, and its author has studied the epoch of which he treats, under certain aspects, with more success than most of his Protestant brethren have done. We of course have no sympathy with the peculiar views of the author, and can but smile at his allusions to Catholicity; yet we regard his work as not uninstructive. It is well adapted to teach those Protestants who deny the Christian name to Unitarians, that they do so at their own expense. We see no reason why the Unitarian has not as much right to claim the Christian name as has the Lutheran or the Calvinist. He has only travelled a little farther in the direction all Protestants take, and is in reality a little more consistent with himself. The pretensions of Calvinists and Lutherans and Anglicans to orthodoxy are ridiculous, and their claim to treat those who dissent from them as heretics or schismatics is quite laughable. They are all

alike out of the ark, and, though one may stand on a higher hill than another, it avails nothing; for the floods that come cover the tops of even the highest mountains, and those on the hills will be swept away by the deluge as well as those in the lowest valleys. When all are involved in the same sin, none should call one another naughty names. No matter how the Protestant world divides and subdivides, they are all in the same category; and unless divine grace brings them into the Church, they must all share the same eternal destiny.

12. Historical Sketch of the Second War between the United States of America and Great Britain, declared by Act of Congress, the 18th of June, 1812, and concluded by Peace, the 15th of February, 1815. By CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. In three volumes. Vol. I. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1845. 8vo. pp. 508.

PHILADELPHIA appears to be a doomed city. Its calamities of late have come neither seldom nor singly. It had first to bear the terrible calamity of its financiering; and then came riot, murder, and sacrilege; and now comes Ingersoll's Historical Sketch of the War. Unkind Charles Jared Ingersoll! Had not thy native city suffered enough already? Was she not sufficiently bowed down by her misfortunes, and afflicted by her sons, but thou, too, whom she had honorably distinguished, must throw thy Historical Sketch upon her overloaded back? Et tu, Brute? It is too bad, altogether too bad; and if Mr. Ingersoll has one spark of humanity not unextinguished, if he have any the least regard for his native city left, he will stop with this first volume, and publish no more. For his own sake we do not ask him to desist; but, for the sake of his native city, which we hope to see outgrow the disgrace which now rests upon her, and which she may outgrow, we beg him to proceed no farther, but to be content with the laurels he is winning as a statesman and legislator. Of his book we have nothing more to say.

14.- The Belfry of Bruges, and other Poems. By H. W. LONGFELLOW. Cambridge: John Owen. 1846. 16mo. pp. 151.

WE plead guilty to no slight neglect of the current literature of our Protestant countrymen. This neglect is not owing to any diminution of American feeling, nor to a growing indifference to American literature; but mainly to the fact, that our conversion to Catholicity has induced us to change our Journal, in the main, from a general to a special Review. The great theological questions with which we have had to deal, involving, as they do, man's highest and permanent interests, necessarily take precedence of all purely literary matters, however attractive to the mere scholar, or to the man of taste and leisure. We by no means give in to the notion, that the Catholic Church in this country is a foreign church, and that, by uniting ourselves with it, we, in some measure, expatriate ourselves; but it is true, that, in a country like this, in which the Protestant is the dominant party, and Catholics are in a small minority, and, for the most part, belong to the laboring classes, one, by becoming a Catholic, does, to some extent, necessarily separate himself from his Protestant countrymen, and is obliged to take a less active part in what more immediately concerns them. The literature of our country is a matter of deep interest to us, but as a Catholic we are unable to regard with much favor the literary productions of Protestants. We cannot commend them to our Catholic readers, and to censure them is of little use to our Protestant readers. Catholic life and Protestant life lie necessarily far apart, and there cannot be that mutual interchange of thought and feelings, that giving and taking, which there may be between one Protestant denomination and another. All Protestant denominations belong to one and the same family; Catholics are of another family. Catholicity can hold no divided empire with Protestantism. She will be all, or nothing. She is complete in herself, and has nothing to borrow of another.

But because this is so, it does not follow that we are less patriotic or less American in our feelings than are our Protestant countrymen. The honor, prosperity, and glory of our country are as dear to us as to them, and we trust in any hour of trial we shall always be found as ready and willing to sacrifice on the altar of our country as they are. We feel as deep an interest in the creation of a truly American literature as they do or can. But we feel very sure that true American literature will be the product, not of Protestant, but of Catholic America. It is true, we, as Catholics, are at present a small minority of our countrymen, and are likely to continue so for some time to come; but we are the largest compact body in the country, and are sufficiently numerous already for all the purposes of a national literature. We have only to wait a few years, till our colleges and universities send out their thousands of scholars, to have really a larger homogeneous public than any Protestant can command; and when that is the case, the literature of the country will be in our hands. Then the world will see, taking its rank among the literatures of nations, an American literature, a truly Christian literature, free, rich, pure, and noble, worthy of the glorious destinies of the Republic. We are, therefore, content to leave the Protestant literature to take its course, and to confine our labors and our hopes to Catholic America, - -the real America for us, the only America which has the promise of the future.

But we are forgetting Mr. Longfellow and his beautifully printed little volume of poems. Mr. Longfellow is one of our most popular poets, and

he certainly possesses a good share of poetic feeling, and more than ordinary skill in versification. He has uncommon command of the language of poetry, and is exceedingly choice in his diction. Some of his translations are exquisite. But, nevertheless, he is no poet, in the higher sense of the term. He has a sort of dreamy, sentimental merit, and recalls the idle days of our youth, when we lay stretched out at length under the old birchen tree, and listened, half asleep, half awake, to the cat-bird and the neighbouring brook. He does not strengthen us for the active duties of life, arm us for the spiritual combat, or kindle our devotion. Yet, if we find not much to admire in his verses, we find still less to censure. He seldom offends against taste or morals. In the volume. before us, the poems which have pleased us best are, "The Norman Baron," p. 36, "The Day is Done," p. 77, and "The Old Clock on the Stairs," p. 96. "The Sonnets "" we have not read, for, notwithstanding Wordsworth's admonition, we do "scorn the Sonnet "-in English.

15.- PUBLICATIONS OF THE METROPOLITAN PRESS, BALTIMORE. — 1. Lives of the Saints. By ALBAN BUTLER. 2. Milner's End of Religious Controversy. 3. Catholic Christian instructed. By the RT. REV. DR. CHALLONER. 4. The Poor Man's Catechism. By JOHN MANNOCK, O. S. B. 5. Life of St. Vincent of Paul. From the 6. Modern History, from the Coming of Christ, &c. BY PETER FREDET, D. D. 7. Models of English Literature. 8. English Reading Lessons. 9. Gems of Devotion. 10. Think Well On't. By BISHOP CHALLONER. 11. The Cross in its True Light. By J. P. PINAMONTI, S. J. 12. Spiritual Combat.

French of M. COLLET.

We have received these, and two or three other publications, from the Metropolitan Press connected with St. Mary's College, Baltimore. They are nearly all well known and standard works, and deserve mention at this time chiefly in praise of the laudable efforts of the conductors of that press to furnish the Catholic public with publications at a less unreasonable price than has heretofore been charged for Catholic books.

16.-Life of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Sisters of Charity. By M. COLLET, Priest of the Mission. From the French, by a Catholic Clergyman. Baltimore: Metropolitan Press. 1845. 12mo. pp. 346.

WE have already enumerated this work among the publications of the Metropolitan Press, but it deserves a separate notice. It is an admirably written life of a great saint, and should be in the hands of every man, woman, and child that knows how to read. The translation appears to be made with uncommon skill, and to preserve the freedom, simplicity, and unction of the original. Here and there we detect the foreigner in the translator, and, in two or three instances, he so far mistakes the English idiom as to say precisely the reverse of what he intends. The corrector of the press has also suffered rather more errors to escape his notice than are pardonable. Nevertheless, the book is excellent, and we know not