to bear upon the Cabinet of Berlin by the Governments of England and Russia, and the interposition of the Czar, who lately visited Berlin, the political sky is now calmer, and the prospects of immediate war have passed away. But so long as Germany increases her armaments, and seeks to bring the Continent into subjection, so long as the persecution against the Church continues, and so long as the people are borne down with the weight of taxes and military conscription, so long will similar panics be likely at any moment to occur, and Europe be plunged into another long and bloody

contest.

THIS is the year of centenaries and jubilees. It is the Year of Jubilee, which has accordingly been proclaimed by Pius IX. It is the second centenary of the devotion to the Sacred Heart in the form revealed to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque on the 16th of June, 1675. It is the first centenary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell, which will be celebrated in Dublin and through all Ireland on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of August next.

It is the semi-centennial, or jubilee, of John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, the Nestor of Irish politicians, and designated by the great liberator, the "Lion of the Fold of Judah.' The 19th of April and the 17th of June, marked by celebrations of the centennial of the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, recall the memories of the American struggle.

THE Shah of Persia-improved by his late European tour-has been setting an example of "firmness" to all other despots, to Bismarck, for instance. The Turcomans have been in revolt, and the Shah sent a very able man to subdue them-so able that he was soon in a position to forward to his master ample proofs of his energetic ability in the shape of the skins of the skulls of 2500 rebels. The name of this new hero of blood and iron should not be lost to posterity -it is Nashim-oud-Daulee, and he should be rewarded with a monument or a cairn made out of the skulls of his victims. What a

blessing such an energetic slaughterer would be, against the "rebel" papists of Germany, to poor persecuted Bismarck!

A

DISTINGUISHED French nobleman, Comte Roselly de Lorgues, has lately written a work, entitled Le ambassadeur de Dieu et Pie IX, in which he treats of the virtues of Christopher Columbus, and advocates his beatification. He thinks that it would be peculiarly appropriate for Pius IX to pronounce this beatification, because he is the first Pope who was ever in America, having been to Chili before his election; and also because he has created the first American cardinal. Cardinal Donnet also advocates this project, and says that several Bishops and Divines have urged the matter on the consideration of the Roman Congregations.

THE Right Rev. J. J. Kain was consecrated Bishop of Wheeling on Trinity Sunday, May 23d, at the Cathedral church of that city, by Archbishop Bayley, assisted by Bishops Gibbons of Richmond and Becker of Wilmington. The diocese comprises the most part of the State of West Virginia, and contains 55 churches and chapels, and 30 priests. Bishop Kain was born on the 31st of May, 1841, and ordained on the 2d July, 1866.

THE control of our National Congress is fast passing westward. The last House of Representatives was composed of 102 members from the New England and the Middle States, 104 from the West, and 86 from the South.

At the rate with which the great Mississippi valley is filling up, it will soon possess an overwhelming predominating influence in the national counsels.

THE Right Rev. Francis Xavier Krautbauer, Bishop elect of Green Bay, Wisconsin, will be consecrated, on June 29th, at St. John's Cathedral, Milwaukee, by the Most Rev. Archbishop of Milwaukee.

THE CHILD; translated from the French of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans. By Kate Anderson. Boston: Patrick Donohoe, 1875. Received through P. F. Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street.

Monseigneur Dupanloup's fame is now so completely established that no commendation can add to it, nor disparagement detract therefrom. And this is true in whatever sense we apply to him, as a bishop of the church of God, a statesman of the French empire, or a Christian author. It is solely, however, in the latter capacity that we as a reviewer have to regard him. It would be but half a compliment to say that he is a beautiful writer. In this respect we could truly say of him, "favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain," were it not that he possesses the higher merits of a strong practical common sense, a far-reaching insight into the wants of society, and a true and quick perception of the surest means of relieving those necessities, or curing the people's ills, by the soothing flow of his gently forcible and polished instruction. To his former laurels his latest work adds another, and proves him as much at home in discoursing to the Christian mothers of the world, as when he is hurling his polished steel of argument at the recreant Roman traitor, Marco Minghetti. His subject is the child, and he has selected it because the child is the real object of contention between the church and her enemies. Foiled and thwarted in their attacks upon the faith of Jesus Christ, they have now turned their efforts in another direction, and hope, by destroying the faith in the seedtime of childhood, to render the harvest of its fruitfulness a nullity. Bismarck's motto, "Give me the children, and I will destroy the Church of Rome in two generations," is the password to their council-chamber of Satanic plotting. The Church on the other hand redoubles her efforts, and braves the frowns of earthly tyrants and the minions of hell, to guard those little ones whom Jesus himself has set up as our models, if we would hope to enter the portals of heaven, and against whose corruption he has pronounced an anathema the most dreadful that ever fell from the lips of infallible truth. The author's method of treating his subject is most admirable. We have over and over again in the pages of the RECORD, insisted upon home education as the true and only panacea for the evils which now beset society, and it is at least flattering to find that our position is now fully supported by so competent an authority as the great Bishop of Orleans,

who throws aside all the usual arguments in favor of Christian education as of but little avail, if the groundwork is not laid by the mother at the Christian fireside. How this is to be done, he tells us in a few homely but beautiful and pointedly comprehensive instructions to parents. The necessity of such a work speaks for itself, for if we are to measure the standard of Christian training, as laid down in these pages by the real condition of affairs, we might well ask how many Christian mothers there are in existence. Henceforth, then, we hope that the name of Felix, Bishop of Orleans, will be known in social history as a terror of enfants terribles, Anglice, spoiled children, and likewise of

SPOILED MOTHERS.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Translated from the French of Louis Venillot, by Rev. Anthony Farley, Pastor of St. Monica's Church, Jamaica, L. I. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1875. Received through Cunningham & Son, 29 S. Tenth Street.

We always had a sort of instinctive aversion for lives of Christ. The very name smacks of congregationalism, free religion, etc., etc. Of course we are not unmindful of St. Bonaventure's great work, so sadly parodied in later years by Beecher, Renan, Furness, et id omne genus. But we have taken a sort of childish notion that the only real life of Christ was to be found in the pages of the four inspired Evangelists, and they were all-sufficient for our information. Moreover, early prejudices are very hard to overcome; but if they are to be subdued in our minds in respect to such works, we frankly confess that the victory belongs to the great editor of l'Univers. Besides, our Holy Father has given this work a special commendation. Locuta est Roma, sit finis litium, even if the utterance be not ex cathedra infallibi. The work was written in answer to that infidel production the Vie de Jesus of Renan, and, in the language of the supreme Pontiff, is "a vindication of the outraged Godhead of Christ." The author pointedly tells us, in his preface, that the infidels of the present day declare that God made man, is simply a man whom ignorance has made God. He then declares that while the gospel is, as we have stated, allsufficient as an exponent of the life, mission, and miracles of the God incarnate, it is moreover of itself the best proof of his divinity, while the divinity of Jesus Christ in turn proves the truth of the gospel. Cavillers are forced against their will to avow it. While, therefore, the gospel facts

are concisely recounted, they are also developed by the author's graceful and poetrydistilling pen into so many exponential testimonies of the theological truth of the hypostatic union between God and man in the person of our divine Lord. It is not the life of the missionary Christ nor the prophet Jesus; it is the earthly career of the Godmade man, confounding the scoffer by the self-evident omnipotence of "the carpenter's Son." In the production of this splendid work, Louis Venillot has been aided by the genii of theology, history, poetry, and devotion, or, to speak in a more Christian manner, the divine spirit of wisdom has been his teacher.

THE STORY OF A CONVERT, as told to his former parishioners, after he became a Catholic. By B. W. Wicher, A.M., late clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church. New York: P. O'Shea, 1875. Received through C. A. Hennessy, 827 Arch Street.

The Widow Bedott Papers are still fresh in the minds of the public. Like Mrs. Slimmen's window observations, and Dame Caudle's curtain lectures, they will live on with a force commensurate to the source from which they sprung-a lady's organ of loquaciousness, proverbial for its strength and endurance under vigorous wear and tear. Much of what might prove trite controversy is relieved in this essay, by the easy colloquial style not unmixed with the characteristic humor of the author, in what he himself has designated as a simple story, addressed

to the common sense of all, told by a simple country clergyman, possessed of a heart more filled with gratitude and affection for the religion which he has embraced, than aversion for that which he has abandoned, and who has only words of kindness and charity for the most erratic of his former fellow Protestants. A story that, by the blessing of God, may touch some lonely heart, groping in that darkness which Protestantism, in the name of liberty, has cast like a pall over us; a story which may lead such a heart into that true light whereby may be found the peace which surpasseth all understanding.

THE INTERNAL MISSION OF THE HOLY GHOST. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 31 Barclay Street. From Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

This latest work of Cardinal Manning is a companion treatise to his "Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost." That beautiful volume was mainly intended as an exposition of the workings of the Holy Spirit on the Church and the world; the latter has for

its object a portrayal of the Spirit's operations on the Christian soul. Man is, by the grace of the Sacraments, the temple of this third person of the Blessed Trinity; and as the contemplation of the architectural beauties of the glorious material temples of the world tends to raise our minds and hearts to the Infinite Being, in whose honor they have been created, so the study of the graces of a soul adorned by the Divine Architect, the Holy Spirit, will serve to make us know better, and to obey more lovingly his sacred and lifegiving inspirations. The magnificent festival of Pentecost is almost at hand, and we can suggest no work more suitable than this, as a book of meditation, during the beautiful days of Whitsuntide and this season when the frequent administration of confirmation leads our thoughts naturally towards the Dator omnium munerum celestium.

THE DEVIL: DOES HE EXIST, AND WHAT DOES HE DO? By Father Delaporte, of the Society of Jesus, Doctor of Theology, and Professor of Dogma in the Faculty of Bordeaux. Translated from the sixth French edition by Mrs. Sadlier. Revised and corrected by the authors. New York and Montreal: Sadlier & Co., 1875.

We never had any doubts about the existence or the potency of his Satanic Majesty, Catholics who have; but there are a great and we presume there are very few good many people, even inside the pale of the Church, who regard possession by the devil

as a disease which died out with the downat spiritual seances, table-turning parties, fall of Judaism, and who, by their attendance and even by their expressed belief in magnetism, and consultation with fortune-tellers, seem to be totally oblivious of the potent fact hand on the electrified table, and shuffles the that the prince of darkness has the heaviest cards of the clairvoyant. Even if these performances could be explained on scientific principles or the art of jugglery, it is manifest that the impressions conveyed to the minds of those ignorant and stupid people who place faith in such necromantic science, are capital weapons in the hands of the arch enemy of mankind to work its destruction. Let all such people read this excellent little book, and learn therefrom what the renuncio diabolum of their baptismal vows imposes

upon them.

THE VICTIMS OF THE MAMERTINE: SCENES FROM THE EARLY CHURCH. By Rev. J. A. O'Reilly, D.D., Apostolic Missionary. New York and Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1875. Received through Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

This is a companion work to the Martyrs of the Coliseum, and the great favor with

which that volume was received by the public from the Pontiff-prince of Rome, down to the humblest newspaper critic, should be a sufficient guarantee of its excellence. It is rich in historic lore, and fruitful with soul-stirring inspirations. We have heard of a Quakeress who, on a recent visit to the celebrated prison of the Apostles,—a descriptive account of which forms the subject of this work,-requested, on descending into it, that all the rest of the company should leave her, in order that she might commune alone with her thoughts, or, to use her own language, “that she might feel as Paul felt when he was in the Mamertine." If our readers will peruse this book, they may with less spiritual presumption emulate in a slight degree, though perhaps a more appreciative one, the sensations of our fair Quakeress.

THE LIFE OF FATHER BERNARD, Missionary Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. By Rev. P. Cloessens, of the Metropolitan Church, Mechlin. Translated from the French. New York Catholic Publication Society, 1875. Received from Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

This biography of a zealous servant of God, and historic sketch of the Apostolate of a Redemptorist missionary, is not only interesting in itself, but is peculiarly acceptable to the American reader, from the occasional glimpses which it gives us into the lives and labors of many Redemptorist Fathers, well known to Catholics on this side of the Atlantic. Fr. Hecker, now Superior of the Paulists, Frs. Giessen, Muller, and other celebrated missionaries, are prominent figures in its pages.

THE LAND OF THE CID. From the French of Frederick Ozanam, by P. S. A. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1875. A charming little narrative of a tour through Spain, or rather, as its author might prefer to have us say, of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. We designate it as charming, for how could it be otherwise, coming from the same pen that gave us The Civilization of the Fifteenth Century?

THE TWO VICTORIES. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter. New York and Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1875. Received through Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

We have frequently had the pleasure of reviewing Fr. Potter as an authority in sacred eloquence, and his entertaining little novels and sketch-books are well known to Catholic readers. The Two Victories fully sustains his past reputation; indeed, our only complaint

is, that he does not give us something more expansive in the way of Catholic novels. ROSE LEBLANC. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. New York and Montreal: Sadlier & Co., 1875. Received through P. F. Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

This novelette, from the pen of the gifted Lady Fullerton, is familiar to the readers of the RECORD, it having been published serially in our pages. Our judgment of it was expressed in that manner, and we therefore deem further praise superfluous.

ADELMAR DE BELCASTLE; OR, BE NOT
HASTY IN JUDGING. Translated from the
French by P. S. A. New York: Catholic
Received
Publication Society, 1875.
through P. F. Cunningham & Son, 29
South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

A beautifully written story, the moral of which is intended to show forth the evils of rash judgment. The superb manner in which the book is printed and bound makes it peculiarly suitable for a premium.

THE DOUBLE TRIUMPH: A Drama in Two
Acts. Dramatized from The Martyrs of
the Coliseum, by Rev. A. J. O'Reilly, D.D.
Miss. Ap.
New York and Montreal:
Sadlier & Co., 1875.

All the above works were received through P. F. Cunningham & Son, 29 South Tenth Street, Philadelphia.

FLOWERS OF CHRISTIAN WISDOM.

By

Lucien Henry, late Scholar of the Universities of Paris and Nancy. With a Preface by Right Hon. Lady Herbert. New York and Montreal: Sadlier & Co., 1875.

A neatly printed and beautifully bound collection of Christian aphorisms, serving as a vade mecum of spiritual inspiration.

THE FAMILY. By Rev. Augustus Riche,

Priest of Saint Sulpice. Translated by Mrs. Sadlier. New York and Montreal: Sadlier & Co., 1875. Received through Cunningham & Son, 29 S. Tenth Street. An admirable little treatise, which should keep company with Bishop Dupanloup's work, since its mission is similar, but its scope wider, though more concise in its treatment. A TREATISE ON PLAIN AND SPHERICAL TRIGONOMETRY. By C. F. R. Bellows, C. E., Professor of Mathematics in the Michigan State Normal School. New York: Sheldon & Co., publishers, 667 Broadway.

An excellent text-book, on the latest and most improved models.

"BUT can ye not discern the signs of the times?" The restless and feverish anxiety of mind, the skeptical habitude of thought and inquiry, the superinduced propensity of universal doubt; and the malformation and crudity of mental processes that meet the observer on every side, make the solution, and reading of the moral and intellectual signs, a rather perplexing and difficult problem, what will this fast-approaching future reveal? Doubt, and mystery, and darkness, "and thrice threefold the gates" that shut out from the calculating vision the yet unborn heir of all our wisdom and folly, our virtues and vices, and our ignorance and knowledge. The race of prophets is entirely extinct, at least, in an official or Judaic sense, and seers no longer are sent to comfort the doubting and console the weak. But the desire to know something of the coming times is still strongly inherent. Moral speculators will confute and politic calculators opine on rational or irrational bases. That there is a radical commotion, if not an

VOL. IX.-9

entire change, in many or most of the fundamental canons of both religion and science, hitherto' fixedly held by a great part of the civilized world, is now too evident to suppose the possibility of denial. There is something more than mere coincidence in the fact that physico-mania and rituo-mania coexist, and are identified almost historically in their birth, growth, and popular acceptance. Superficially they have nothing in common. The one displays an inevitable tendency towards the grossest materialism, whilst the other is accepted among the good, easy, hopeful, prayerful, and pious Catholics as "a step in the right direction." The writer looks on this latter view of the matter as a "golden dream," sweet but delusive, and will proceed to give reasons for the faith that is in him. The reasons may not bring conviction to every mind; but if they arouse attention, and elicit an interchange of views on a subject that will soon engross the whole of Christendom, their end is fully attained. Lest the remotest.