incongruity in this combination. The condition of a subject of one particular king does not consort well with that of Spiritual Ruler of the vast body of Christians who are subjects of the Pontiff, and with whom he has to deal as such. The incongruity, the unfitness of the thing, becomes more obvious if we consider some of the details, as I propose to do.

one.

WINGED WORDS.

XIV.

1. A thoroughly unselfish spirit is always a happy and a bright It is self-love wounded, or vexed, or disappointed, that causes the greatest amount of misery and melancholy in the world; if we could kill this aching nerve, the chill blasts of life would lose their power to give us pain.-Dr. Grant, Bishop of Southwark.

2. The Gospel, while it proclaims a reward to those who give up the endearments of home, has certainly not depreciated, but highly exalted, the ties of natural affection; and, if we knew more of the souls of men, we might find that those saints who have quitted their homes for the service of God, are precisely those whom God has rewarded by greater measures of his grace for their self-denying love in the bosom of their families.-Puseyite life of St. Richard.

3. I will and I won't do not dwell in this house.—St. Ignatius. 4. Vague, injurious reports are no men's lies, but all men's carelessness.-Anon.

5. Praise makes a wise man modest, a fool arrogant.—Anon. 6. When you have anything to say, say it; when you have nothing to say, say it.—Anon.

7. Always be doing something, but let that something be something, and not an idle loss of time upon nothing.-Dodd.

8. There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.-Anon.

9. No man is ever written down except by himself.—Bentley.

10. It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.-Agathon.

11. Public gossip is sometimes the best security for the due completion of private arrangements.-Edward Lord Lytton.

12. Too much reading and too little meditation produce the effect of a lamp inverted, which is extinguished by an excess of the very element that is meant to feed it.-Anon.

13. Quarrelling is the most foolish thing a man can do-especially with his own relations.-Anthony Trollope.

NEW BOOKS.

I. The First Christmas for our dear Little Ones. By ROSA MULHOLLAND. With Fifteen Pictures by L. Diefenbach, executed in Xylography by H. Knoefler. Pustet: Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati. (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son.)

A CHRISTMAS Book already! We feel the less startled ourselves at this phenomenon, as for us also the coming Christmas "casts its shadow before," or rather we feel beforehand the light and warmth of the genial Christmastide. Although for the world at large two months have still to be gone through before those bells are set a-going which ring the old year out and the new year in; nevertheless, as our faithful subscribers are aware, it has seemed good to those who guide the destinies of the IRISH MONTHLY to close its yearly volumes, not with the December but with the November number of the Magazine. One of the reasons for this arrangement is the desire to have our portly tome decked out in its Christmas suit of green and gold in full time for the festive season which begins long before the Twenty-fifth of December. The same wish has brought the wellknown Ratisbon firm first into the field with "The First Christmas." Good old Father Christmas has put his best foot foremost. We defy him, in all the multitudinous hosts of Christmas-boxes which are preparing to swoop down upon us, to invent anything more beautiful or more Christmaslike than these pictures and poems. The pictures are very attractive specimens of the Munich school of painting, each of them, a friend of ours remarks, so good as to deserve to be framed on its own account. We plead guilty to having consulted Liddell and Scott in vain for some recondite meaning for xylography, the process by which these pictures in all the freshness of their artistic colouring have been transferred to paper for so many thousands of eyes. But though it is "all the same in the Greek" as wood-engraving, it must mean technically something else. The process has, at all events, been very successfully executed, and in this respect the book is fit to lie on the drawing-room table, the only objection being that the cover is so pretty and so delicate a picture as itself to deserve and need a covering.

These spirited German publishers, with all their wide-spread connections among the English-speaking races of America, did wisely in coming to Ireland for the illustrative verses of a volume on which they have evidently expended their best artistic resources. No one who has read "The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil" will need to be told that the writer of such prose is a true poet also; and any habitué of magazine-literature for some years back must have been attracted by two well-known initials to many a page of tender and thoughtful music, inspiring some of the happiest efforts of Millais" pencil in the Cornhill Magazine, Good Words, and other monthlies.

As we desire to leave to the poems in the dainty quarto before us

all the charms of novelty, we shall take none of them as our sample of this graceful muse, but in their stead a tender little lyric contributed to Good Words, under the title of "My Treasure." We wish we could transfer to our pages at the same time the very charming picture which these lines suggested to the painter, Mr. Houghton:

"I have a treasure. What is it, say,

O lady fair, O lady fair?

Is it a mirror to shine all day,

Or pearls to braid my brown, brown hair?

"A diamond buckle to clasp my shoon?
A satin robe-like the glistening crest
Of the lake that ripples under the moon-
Zoned with rubies beneath my breast?

"Is it a castle with broad, fair lands?
A magic purse of caged red gold,
Whose swelling meshes within my hands
Exhaustless store of riches hold?

"Is it some wondrous beauty-charm,
To steep my lips in brilliant dyes,
To mantle my neck in tresses warm,
And tint my cheek and light my eyes?

"Is it a crown and a throne of state,

And a wand to wave o'er subjects leal,
With mailed guards at my palace-gate,
And a royal will to say and seal?

"I tell thee, no: it is none of these,
O lady fair, O lady fair!

But a little babe upon my knees,

To toss and pull my brown, brown hair."

We have not chosen this specimen at random, but because some of this human tenderness of the mother's heart for her little child must mingle with the love divine which every Christian heart cherishes towards the Babe of Bethlehem who was born for us on the First Christmas Day.

II. Miscellanies: From the Oxford Sermons and other writings of John Henry Newman, D. D. Second Edition. (Daldy, Isbister & Co.) To those who cannot possess the complete works of Dr. Newman, any volume of selections from his writings will always be a welcome boon. The volume now before us, which consists chiefly of extracts from the famous Oxford sermons and earlier works of the illustrious Oratorian, has been compiled, under his special sanction, by an anonymous editor, who expresses a hope, in which we heartily unite, that "the passages chosen will, in some degree, contribute to make still better known one of the deepest thinkers and most eloquent writers of the present time."

III. St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. Who he was-Where he came from-What he taught. An answer to certain Protestant Clergymen. By a Layman. (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son.)

THE author of this brochure has displayed very considerable industry and learning of a peculiar kind in refuting the attempt of two Protestant clergymen, Messrs Gubbins and Olden, to claim St. Patrick as a Protestant, forsooth. Which of the thousand-and-one conflicting sects of Protestantism the saint belonged to they wisely refrain from specifying. Surely this is an anachronism vastly more outrageous, and therefore more diverting, than that of the flippant ballad about

"St. Patrick was a gentleman,
And came of dacent people-

He built a church in Dublin town,
And on it put a steeple."

When similar pretensions were put forward in a more learned and plausible way by Dr. Todd, they were met triumphantly by the bishop of Ossory. Mr. Gubbins professes to confine himself to the "earliest authentic and admitted writings of the saint himself." On such terms it would be hard to prove the Catholicity of many Catholic writers and many Catholic bishops of the present day. St. Patrick, like the Church herself, did not write but preach. He has left no controversial works. But the very instincts of history revolt against this insolent absurdity; and it does not need the minute disquisitions of this layman's pamphlet to prove that the beloved apostle, whose very name has become identified with the children of Catholic Ireland, belonged to the same Church as his spiritual children. Learned men who rise above the narrow and ignorant prejudices of the Cromwellian Church in Ireland, and who, rejecting the Christian revelation, are unhappily but too impartial with regard to the claims of the Catholic Church, laugh to scorn the silly theories of Messrs Gubbins and Olden, and confess that not only in St. Patrick's day but (as the Westminster Review states in 1873) "at the date of the publication of the Fourth Gospel the prevalent teaching was distinctively Roman Catholic."

That is a very sensible observation of the little English girl in Sundays at Lovel Audley:" "Oh! mamma, what a great saint St. Patrick must have been to have made the Irish for ever such good Catholics."

"What patron-saint

E'er did his work so well?”

IV. The Threshold of the Catholic Church. A Course of Plain Instructions for those entering her Communion. By the Rev. JOHN B. BAGSHAWE. With a preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor CAPEL. Fourth Thousand. (London: R. Washbourne. 1876.)

THE Volume of which this is a new edition will be of use to many besides those for whom it is specially intended. A recent correspondence in the public journals allowed us to know that this was the

book which an experienced Father of the Oratory placed in the hands of Earl Nelson's son when he presented himself for instruction in the Catholic faith. It seems excellently adapted for its purpose. Its tone is not so much polemical as expository, furnishing within. moderate compass, as Monsignor Capel says, an intelligent and systematic explanation of the chief doctrines and practices of the Church. Catholics who are brought into relation with sincere and candid Protestants will find it useful to have these clear and solid instructions to refer to; and for these and other Catholics it will serve as a sort of Catechisme de Persévérance, reminding them of what they are apt to forget, and inducing them to refresh and develop that catechetical knowledge which they acquired in childhood as the foundation of a superstructure which too often is never built.

V. The Love of Jesus: or Visits to the Blessed Sacrament for Every Day in the Month. By the Very Rev. D. Canon GILBERT. (London: Burns & Oates.)

THE recent issue of a twelfth edition may be allowed to bring Dr. Gilbert's book into the category of "New Books." It has already helped many thousands of pious souls to spend many an hour with delight and profit before the altar. These "Visits" have a tone of simplicity and sincerity which particularly fits them for practical use. Numerous as the editions of the "Love of Jesus" have been, it may still be a stranger to some readers of this notice. We advise them not only to form its acquaintance but to make it a familiar friend.

Another useful book of devotions is "The Soul united to Jesus in the Adorable Sacrament" (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son), which contains an excellent collection of prayers and pious exercises before and after Communion and at other times.

VI. Spiritual Exercises according to the Method of St. Ignatius of Loyola. By Father ALOYSIUS BELLECIO, of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the Italian Version of Father ANTHONY BRESCIANI of the same society. By WILLIAM HUTCH, D. D., Professor in St. Colman's College, Fermoy, Author of "Nano Nagle: Her Life, her Labours, and their Fruits." (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, 50, Upper Sackville-street. 1876.)

DR. HUTCH, the biographer of "Nano Nagle," has made another valuable addition to our religious literature by the work of which we have above transcribed the title at full length, as being in itself an ample guarantee of the merits of the book. Dr. Hutch gives two satisfactory reasons for having translated from the Italian version of Father Bresciani rather than from the original Latin of Father Bellecius. He has fulfilled the functions of translator very carefully and very well; and the publishers have produced the book in a very convenient and readable form. The original is well known as one of the best and most complete expositions of the Exercitia Spiritualia of St. Ignatius; and in its present shape will be welcome to the holy inmates of our convents and to many of the pious faithful living in the world.