marriages. The view of the Church is fixed abhorrence, and the expression of it is so absolute and trenchant, that there is some superficial difficulty in understanding how dispensations are allowed, even in extreme cases. "Unlawful," "pernicious," "hateful," and "sacrilegious," are some of the deliberate utterances of the Church on the character of these marriages, and "the learned canonist Cardinal Pitra has not hesitated to say, after other distinguished canonists, that, as a general rule, more danger hangs over the marriage of a Catholic with a heretic, than over the marriage of a Catholic with a heathen" (p. 64).

The purpose of the whole instruction is, that greater care must be observed by all who are instrumental in obtaining or granting dispensations, and that the faithful be better instructed in the evils of such marriages and thereby cease to seek them. There is little that is very effective in such conclusions, many may think; and, especially poor priests, who, scruple-tossed and overwhelmed by the multitude of mixed marriages, wish to have some rule of guidance as definite as yea or nay. It is true such conclusions are unsatisfactory, but it cannot be helped; and we find nothing more precise, even in the instruction issued by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda in 1868. We believe, having given the matter some consideration, and having conferred with some who are authorities on such important questions, that under existing circumstances there is no stable point between the present miserable state of things and the refusal of dispensations altogether-we hardly know if the latter would occasion greater evils,—and the only practical rule is, as the learned prelate teaches, unceasing effort to educate Catholics into a healthier state of opinion. It is worthy of note, however, that in reading the catena of authority before us, we may see, at once, three points of difference between Catholic Society in ages past and the state of Catholics as it exists now, and they explain in great measure the change of discipline. First, we know that parents have little influence at present in the matter of their children's marriages: of old, for the supposition runs through the canons, they had more to do with the question than the children, and were the chief objects of the pains and penalties inflicted for the violation of ecclesiastical discipline. A second difference is the numerical proportions of Catholics and heretics. In England, Catholics being comparatively few, there is not the restraint of Catholic public opinion, nor is there the means of punishing the contumacious. In Ireland, where Catholics are the nation, mixed marriages are almost unknown. And the third difference is important. In earlier ages heresy was to a greater extent than at the present time formal and aggressive. No doubt the hostile spirit of heresy often manifests itself in our days, and even when the Church has granted a dispensation on the usual conditions; but still we are inclined to think that, in most cases, indifference to faith is the chief characteristic of non-Catholics who are united to Catholics in marriage.

We can assure our readers that they will find many interesting questions powerfully and sagaciously treated in this work, and we commend it to their attention, with the highest appreciation of its worth. Every one of the discourses is "rich in utterance"; and, although they are

memorials of events extended over a score of years, in the first will be found the same fulness of learning that is in the last, and in the last the same vigour of style that marks the first.

The Discipline of Drink: an Historical Inquiry into the Principles and Practice of the Catholic Church regarding the Use, Abuse, and Disuse of Alcoholic Liquors, especially in England, Ireland, and Scotland, from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century. By the Rev. T. E. BRIDGETT, of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. With an Introductory Letter to the Author by his Eminence Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns & Oates. 1876.

THIS

HIS comprehensive title is a fair epitome of the work as it presents itself to the author's mind; and our readers will have a satisfactory idea of it, if we add that the treatment of the subject is practical, and aims to draw from the treasures of the past, wisdom to guide us in the great difficulties, with which the vice of drunkenness has involved us at the present day. We are struggling almost hopelessly in the depths of a widespread evil and can touch bottom nowhere. Every means therefore suggested, if it really be a help and not a delusion, must be deemed valuable; and we have sufficient knowledge of the wisdom and experience of the author of "The Discipline of Drink," to assure us that his effort will be valuable indeed. The fact that we have before us, probably collected for the first time, copious extracts from Councils, Fathers, and medieval writers on the use and abuse of intoxicating drink, is a matter of much moment for all who have an interest in the subject. Any one who has looked into Scaramelli, Rodriguez, or other well-known spiritual writers, knows that they are valueless on the point. They lived in countries in which drunkenness was almost unknown. Even in the writings of S. Peter Damian, or S. Bernardine of Siena, as Father Bridgett testifies, there is scarcely a passing mention of the vice. Still later, we find S. Leonard of Port Maurice, and S. Paul of the Cross, silent on the subject; and it does not even find a place among the grave sins denounced by S. Alphonsus in his sermon on "The Four Gates of Hell."

We do not find that the author has anywhere entered into the subject of the extent of drunkenness at the present day. We fear that some who read the book will, on that account, think it incomplete and not practical. In the public correspondence which the work has directly or indirectly called forth, this fault has been assumed by one of the most temperate writers. He said, as far as we remember, that Father Bridgett would have accomplished more for the Catholic body by teaching what should be done now, than he has done by investigating the disciplinary means of ages long passed. The writer somewhat misconceived the scope of the work. It is a contribution to the knowledge of a large subject, of which a part— the present extent of the evil-can be known from other available sources, and another part-the best means of uprooting the evil-is so beset with

difficulties, that the author, no doubt judged it prudent not to say too much. At the same time it must be remembered that the grave and even critical state to which the people of the British Islands have been brought by the use of intoxicating drink, is the strongest plea put forward for some resolute action in the matter. The following are the kind of facts coming under our notice daily. The first is from an account of an inquest held in Dublin on two bodies taken up from the river Liffey :

"The Coroner said the witness who found the body was too drunk to give evidence. He (the Coroner) had been obliged to dispense with a juror because he was drunk. The man on whom they had been just holding an inquest had died drunk; and there was grave suspicion that the unfortunate woman was also drunk."*

Again :

"There were 116 prisoners in the Court to-day, 60 of whom were charged with drunkenness." +

It is computed that £140,000,000 is expended annually in the drink traffic of these islands. We do not suppose that there is no beneficial result from the-we can hardly call it circulation, but-transfer of such a vast amount of money; but we must affirm that there is no business, from which as little profit accrues to the community, and none that so immensely outweighs its benefit by the evil it occasions. Figures hardly convey their adequate meaning when they mount up to millions; and it will help us to grasp the meaning of £140,000,000 by remembering that the total expenditure for our army and navy falls short of £25,000,000 annually. This shameful waste, however, is tolerable compared with other evils, for a knowledge of which we refer our readers to the report of the Committee of the House of Commons (July, 1854). To that Report his Eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster assigns the credit of having opened his eyes to the enormity of the evil. He said at Preston (January, 1874) :

"One of the great obstacles to success is not the indulgence of men, not the love of drink, but it is the dead-the entire--ignorance of a vast number of educated men to the extent of this evil. .... I bought and read the evidence taken before Mr. Villiers' committee in the years 1854-55, and then for the first time I knew what is the meaning of the drink traffic. . . . I would ask you to obtain that report, and to make yourselves masters of the facts. I can only say for myself that it opened my eyes as if I had found myself in a house full of all manner of evilas if I had found myself in a hospital full of all forms of disease, and the most hideous forms of death. The revelations of that evidence were such that I can say nothing has ever shocked me so much in all the days of my life."

It is plain that the social evil of drunkenness is forcing itself on the attention of wise men, and especially of Catholics, whose interest in the question is not the least. In all cases, when zeal is exceptionally aroused, and the danger is extreme, opinions will vary for awhile, and be not

* "Freeman's Journal," August 3rd.

+ Ibid. September 5th.

always temperately expressed. And it is a fact that Catholics need, at present, a larger amount of generosity than they have shown hitherto in their view of the temperance question from one side or the other. Many whose voice and example have weight with us, are content still to rely on the ordinary means of repressing drunkenness; while many counsel total abstinence as the only adequate remedy. Father Bridgett certainly holds the former opinion, and for that very reason, we may assume, has devoted the largest portion of his work to the reproduction of the teaching of Fathers, Councils, &c. But he is generous and wide enough in his sympathies to praise new forms of warfare against an enemy growing in strength, and even welcomes modern crusades against drunkenness, "as St. Bernard welcomed the outburst of Christian chivalry in his day." He says admirably

"Was there anything in Catholic antiquity like the modern system of administering the pledge? I reply that we must distinguish between the substance and the form. If by administering the pledge' we understand a popular or public enrolment of multitudes in societies, having as their special object to promote sobriety, then it is a novelty in the history of the Church. But if by taking the pledge we mean abstaining from the use of intoxicating drinks, either as a work of perfection, or a penance, then it is by no means a novelty, but has been well known in all ages and countries" (p. 53).

He returns to the question in the last chapter of the work, and shows, in accordance with the maxim Non nova, sed novè, that the modern movement against drunkenness, although novel, is not un-Catholic.

"I am distinctly of opinion that the evil of intemperance is now so deep-rooted and wide-spread, and its occasions so frequent, that precautions are now generally required, which in other days may have been superfluous. Again, owing to the use of ardent spirits, cases which in old theologians might have been discussed as extraordinary and almost monstrous, have become of frequent occurrence, and remedies which were extreme may now be usual and almost necessary. For these, then, and other reasons which I need not mention, the pledge, though little known to history or to theology, has grown into a legitimate and most beneficial discipline" (p. 208).

The foregoing extract is an impartial statement of the reasons that justify the modern practice of "administering the pledge." It contains also, we believe, the germ of the argument put forward by the advocates of total abstinence for a wide-spread adoption of their own views. The bulk of our Catholic population are poor, perhaps, we may say, chained in habits of intemperance, surrounded with urgent and manifold temptations to the vice, and, as a result, negligent, to the utmost degree, of Mass, the Sacraments, and the training of their children. An exceptional evil demands exceptional efforts and sacrifices, and perhaps the law of Christian charity throws the claim of effort and sacrifice even on those whose word and example are powerful with the poor. On this point we will not say more, but refer our readers to the "Introductory Letter" of the CardinalArchbishop, with which the work is enriched. It says much for the book

that his Eminence could find in it-briefly indeed, yet in it-the texts, as it were, from which he develops his own well-known and more ascetic views; and we congratulate the author that he has so well realized the idea of a "Scribe instructed in the kingdom of God," for he has brought forth "out of his treasure new things and old," encouraging new efforts against a terrible evil, and, at the same time, pointing out the old and stable principles of necessity, penance, and perfection, by which those efforts are justified and should be guided.

Rome and Italy: a Letter to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, E.M. By the Right Rev. Mgr. J. L. PATTERSON. London: Longmans, Green,

& Co.

M

1876.

GR. PATTERSON, on returning to England after a recent visit to Rome, was asked by the Duke of Norfolk what were his impressions of the Eternal City under its new rulers. His reply is embodied in the present pamphlet. It does not pretend to be merely a political brochure, it is a record of what the writer saw and heard in Italy. It deals of course with more than one political question, but this is not its primary object. It was written to supply facts, to tell what the Piedmontese rule has done for Rome and Italy. Such a work should be, above all, clear, concise, and written in a calm judicial spirit. All this may be said of Mgr. Patterson's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. It may be placed side by side with Mgr. Dupanloup's two "Letters" to Signor Minghetti, with this difference, that we have far more of individual testimony and of the results of personal observation in Mgr. Pattersen's pamphlet than in those of the Bishop of Orleans, who, ranging over a wider field, had necessarily to make use chiefly of the observations and testimony of others.

At this moment it is extremely satisfactory to see Catholic writers turning their attention to the affairs of Rome and Italy. A few years ago, those who wrote or spoke upon the subject in a Catholic sense, and who protested against the wholesale robbery and violence carried on in the name of the revolutionary monarchy of Italy, had their voices drowned in the general outcry against the old governments of the Peninsula which the Liberal press had succeeded in raising in England, and in the equally senseless applause of the new régime which was to be heard on all sides. But now men's minds are a little more ready to receive the truth about Italy. They cannot close their eyes to the fact that all the fine promises of Cavour and his fellow "liberators" have not been realized, and the disappointment as to the results of the "unification" of Italy has naturally begotten a spirit of inquiry as to what is the real state of that unfortunate country under the rule of the Subalpine monarchy. From time to time unwonted admissions appear even in the Liberal press, and there are occasional comparisons between the old state of affairs and the