absolute certainties to him (such as the quite unproved proposition of the independence of matter and the quite improbable proposition of its power to originate mind), and he at length fell back upon this question, which he delivered with an honourable heat of defiance and indignation: 'Well, can you tell me any man of intellect, great in science or philosophy, who accepted the miraculous?' I said, 'With pleasure. Descartes, Newton, Dr. Johnson, Faraday, Newman, Gladstone, Pasteur, Browning, Brunetière-as many more as you please.' To which that quite admirable and idealistic young man made this astonishing reply: 'Oh, but of course they had to say that; they were Christians.' First he challenged me to find a black swan and then he ruled out all my swans because they were black. The fact that all these great intellects had come to the Christian view was somehow or other a proof either that they were not great intellects or that they had not really come to that view The argument thus stood in a charmingly convenient form: 'All men that count have come to my conclusion; for if they come to your conclusion they do not count.'

Among the "Good Things Well Said" of our May number was this from Francis Apricot: "A child's day is longer than a man's week." The author of Francis Apricot has since written to me: "It is a curious fact that on the very day I saw this quoted in the IRISH MONTHLY I came upon the following in a poem by Campbell-one that I ought to have known, but I do not remember to have seen before :

The more we live, more brief appear.
Our life's succeeding stages:

A day to childhood seems a year.
And years like passing ages.

But literature is full of such coincidences."

Dr. James J. Walsh, of New York, preparing one of his entertaining and edifying books, which aim chiefly at showing the union between true Religion and true Science, asked for some particulars about the great Irish physician, Sir Dominick Corrigan. Among more important details I mentioned how, on his deathbed the priest who attended read for him an act of resignation to God's will. When the priest had retired, the dying man said to someone: "That was a foolish prayer. Resigned to God's will! Why, we must be resigned." Dr. Walsh's letter of acknowledgment contained this passage: "I wished to be sure that he had remained a devoted Catholic

before committing myself to that statement. Your little anecdote is characteristic, I think, of the spirit that comes to the physician after a time. He sees so clearly the hopelessness of things and the necessity of resignation whether or no, that he realizes very poignantly that a virtue must be made out of necessity. Fortunately I believe there are those who do not hesitate to say that the most sublime of all virtues may be, under certain circumstances, the virtue that is made of necessity."

The description that Cardinal Newman gives somewhere of the consolations of the Sacrament of Penance, is verified chiefly in certain special crises of a soul's history; but it is substantially true of every due reception of the Blessed Sacrament -to share with it a name that we reserve for the most divine of all the sacraments. We may repeat the great convert's words in the next paragraph :

-

"How many are the souls in distress, anxiety, or loneliness, where the one need is to find a being to whom they can pour out their feelings unheard by the world. Tell them out they must. They cannot tell them out to those whom they see every hour; they want to tell them, and not to tell them. And they want to tell out, and yet be as if they were not told; they wish to tell them, yet are not strong to despise them; they wish to tell them to one who can at once advise and sympathise with them; they wish to relieve themselves of a load in order to gain a solace; to receive the assurance that there is one who thinks of them, and one to whom in thought they can betake themselves, if necessary, from time to time, while they are in the world.

"How many a Protestant heart would leap at the news of such a benefit, putting aside all ideas of sacramental ordinances altogether! If there is a heavenly idea in the Catholic Church -looking at it simply as an idea-surely next after the Blessed Sacrament, confession is such. And such it is ever found, in fact; the very act of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign of the cross, hanging, so to say, over the head bowed low -and the words of peace and blessing, declare it. Oh, what a soothing charm is there which the world can neither give nor take away! Oh, what a piercing, heart-subduing tranquillity, provoking tears of joy, is poured almost substantially and physically upon the soul-the oil of gladness, as the Scripture calls it-when the penitent at length rises, his God reconciled to him, his sins rolled away for ever! This is confession as it is in fact, as those who bear witness to it know by experience."

ANNIVERSARY

THE Common's purple with heather,
Heather and ling.

Dear, when we were together,
Life was a pleasant thing.

Gathered the hay and the clover,
Ripe is the wheat.

Dear, in the days that are over
The sad Autumn was sweet.

I take the path by the coppice
Dark with its trees.
Other fields, other poppies,
Rise and wither in these.

Other trees, other meadows,
Call me to come

Back to the long hill-shadows

And the kind winds of home.

Sure, why would I be coming?
There is such change.

Dear, in the dew and the gloaming,
Your fields, are they not strange ?

Now for your dear sake only

Coppice and brake,

The fields of the Autumn are lonely,

Lonely and sad for your sake.

KATHARINE TYNAN.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS

1. The Story of Ellen. By Rosa Mulholland (Lady Gilbert). London: Burns and Oates. (Price 5s.)

The Autumn publishing season has added two to the long list of pure and beautiful tales with which Lady Gilbert has for many years entertained and instructed a wide circle of readers. The Return of Mary O'Murrough (London: Sands & Co.) has not yet come into our hands. The thick, handsome volume named at the beginning of this paragraph has been brought out by the publishers in a very agreeable form, with large, clear type. By the way, we notice that on the title-page they link with the author's name, only those three novels of which they are themselves the publishers-namely, The Wicked Woods, The Squire's Grand-daughters, and The Wild Birds of Killeevy -three delightful books, indeed, with which The Story of Ellen is worthy of being joined. It is a most interesting story, very eloquent at times and full of enthusiasm for art and for everything high and good. Many readers will be puzzled by the dedication, "To the Memory of my Mother, my First Book; but those who have seen The Story of Ellen under another name will read it with renewed pleasure in its new form.

2. Lisheen; or, The Test of the Spirits. By the Very Rev. Canon P. A. Sheehan, D.D. London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. (Price 6s.)

Besides Lady Gilbert's two volumes we have new novels from "M. E. Francis" (whose comedy "Fiander's Widow" is having a brilliant run at the Garrick Theatre), and from Mrs. Hinkson, who is also beginning a serial in the Weekly Edition of the London Times. Both of these gifted Irishwomen have such uncommon versatility and fertility that it must be hard for the most diligent novel-reader to keep pace with them. Canon Sheehan has not yet gone far beyond the half dozen. His new novel turns chiefly on the characteristics of the Irish nature as contrasted with that of certain typical Englishmen. It is a novel with a purpose, but the purpose is sufficiently hidden by an interesting plot, a little vivid description, and a great deal of lively conversation. We shall be curious to see what rank the critics will assign to Lisheen in the hierarchy of Canon Sheehan's works. It will hardly be translated into as many languages as My New Curate; but there is the same charm

of style, with many à flash of wit and burst of eloquence. We shall watch with interest and duly report the estimates of the reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic.

3. For Christ and His Kingdom. Lyrics and Sonnets. By Michael Watson, S.J. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son. (Price IS. net.)

This particularly neat volume is divided (like omnis Gallia) into three parts, "The King," "The King's Mother," "Some of the King's Friends"-that is, Jesus, His Mother, and His Saints. Every line might be read as a prayer before the altar; but Father Watson, unlike some writers of devotional verse, has thought it right to be as careful about rhyme and rhythm as the most sensitive of secular poets. The Marian section is perhaps the most poetical of the three. The only saints commemorated in Part 3 are The Baptist, St. Agnes, St. Pancras, St. Polycarp, St. Francis Xavier, and Father Damien. The book ends with three poems about that Apostle of Molokai, whose life and death are true themes for poetry. We hope it may find its way into very many convents and pious homes.

4. The Fathers of the Desert. Translated from the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn by Emily F. Bowden. London: Burns and Oates.

It has taken forty years to bring this fine work to a second edition. More shame for our Catholic public! It would have been a pity to let it remain out of print. The Countess HahnHahn was a brilliant writer, and her accounts of St. Simon Stylites and many others of those old saints are fuller and more interesting than any to be found elsewhere in English. Her work was admirably translated by Miss Emily Bowden; and it was made much more valuable by an introduction of some eighty pages on the spiritual life of the first six centuries by the Oratorian Father Dalgairns, who was, of all the famous converts of the middle nineteenth century the most gifted writer after Newman and Faber. Eight shillings is a moderate price for two such large volumes as these.

5. Back Slum Idylls. By Olive Katharine Parr. London: R. & T. Washbourne. (Price 2s.)

This is a clever and good book, written from actual experience in the slums and prisons of London. God bless all such brave and devoted ladies as the one who seems to have got her title from the Acts of the Apostles-"Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Perhaps the picture would be the better for a few brighter and tenderer touches such as even this grade of London social life must furnish. The "Saviour of Souls" seems to have deferred his own conversion to the very last-too like