excultus, but you have said of a man that he was Liberalibus disciplinis excultus; and it is this, I repeat, that is a painfully English idiom.

H. S.-Thrue for you, sir; so I did. Might I make so bould as to look at your dictionary there? White and Riddle's! Oh! see here! Undher Excolo; Ingenia discipliná exculta. In the Orator, xv. 48! And now I'll lave it to yerself. Isn't Ingenia discipliná exculta mighty like intirely what I said myself?

M. T. (smiling).-Unfortunately not. Cicero talks of Ingenia discipliná exculta, and he applies this epithet excultus to a man, and I cannot object to its having in one case as in the other discipliná as its complement. But I do object to its having Liberalibus disciplinis as its complement. This is painfully English.

H. S.-Arrah, is it the plural you're afraid of? Throth an' you needn't. Faix it's wan love an' liking the ould Romans had for Disciplina and Disciplinae, singular and plural. Little's the differ they made between them. Now of course in De Divinatione you'll find Disciplina et scientia Magorum. I don't know the exact place, but I'm sure you'll find it indicated nicely in Robertus Stephanus. But thin if you take up the very first of the Academicae Quaestiones, jist pass over the first chapter an' its three paragraphs, an' go on to the second chapter, an' afore you come into the second paragraph of that same second chapter you'll hit upon Artibus et disciplinis. Here's the very words, for I know more than that of the Academicals by heart myself: Sin a Graecorum artibus et disciplinis abhor erent. Aye, or go to the second book, De Finibus, chapter wan an' twenty. Afore you read three lines of the second paragraph there, an' that's paragraph sixtyeight of the book itself, I remember the number well, you'll find the words: Ab his philosophiam et omnes ingenuas disciplinas habemus.

M. T.-This is really too absurd. My young friend, you are confounding what should be most carefully distinguished. There is no doubt, whatever, that both Disciplina and Disciplinae are good Latin. But these words have primary and secondary senses. You will find them well defined in that admirable modern dictionary of White and Riddle which you have been so anxious to examine. The primary sense is Instruction, teaching; the secondary is the effect for the cause, All that is taught. In the first sense, the sense of Active Training, we find the word in the singular and joined to Excultus. In the second sense, the sense of Erudition, we find the word both in the singular and in the plural, and not joined to Excultus.

H. S.-Let me look at the book myself. Look here, in the first sense, Pueritiae disciplinae ! Doesn't that look like a plural ?

M. T. (laughing). That is unluckily a misquotation, surviving even in the third edition of this very valuable work. The true reading of the passage referred to, is, E ludo atque pueritiae discipliná.

H. S.-Thrue for you, an' so it is. I larned the passage by heart myself out of Wheeler's Anthon. But lave me the dictionary. Maybe I'll find out something better. Look here at Excolo. Here's Excultus doctriná given, and there's no mistake here. It's Tusc., 1, 2, 4. See now isn't that all right? Maybe there's something to be said against that. But we have in the Archias," vi. 12: Animos.

66

nostros doctrina excolamus. I know the passage. what you call the secondary sense of Disciplina. use Excultus with aither the wan or the other. M. T.-This is

There, Doctrina has
So you may safely

H. S. (interrupting)-By yer lave, if you plaze, a moment more. As there's a mistake in this iligant dictionary, I'll thry if there mightn't be another. That's all right. And now-Oh, by the powdhers of war!

M. T.-Don't swear, please.

H. S.-I umbly beg yir rivirince's pardon, indeed. But the long and the short, and the up and the down, and the fact of the whole matter is this, that Tully didn't say Ingenia discipliná exculta at all, but Disciplinis. Oh, more power to you, Cicero, for a man of taste! It's you that knew well that sorra a hair the ould Romans cared which they got, singular or plural discipline, when there was question of Excultus. Here's Tully talking of Ingenia and saying that they are Disciplinis exculta. Here's the whole passage for yer rivirince: Nihil enim est feracius ingeniis, iis praesertim quae disciplinis exculta sunt. There it is for you in Cicero's "Orator," chapter xv.; or if you like to count by paragraphs, number 48. There you have Excultus disciplinis jist in the sense in which the same Cicero applies Excultus to Tuditanus. Disciplinis excultus applied to a man must be all right, yer rivirince. And now I'll engage the dictionary is not wrong as you say it is. I'll engage the dictionary men read in the Manilian : E ludo atque pueritia disciplinis, and quote the passage shortly as authority for Pueritiae disciplinae. I'll engage that's their way.

M. T. (looking serious).-This is all beside the point. There's no use in running on in this very unnecessary, very uncalled for, very unusual, I was almost going to say, very foolish way. It is the word Liberalibus that is wrong.

H. S.-Well now, that word's right any way. I'll make bould and jist peep again into yer iligant dictionary. Oh, now, look here! Just listen, agra! (reads). "Liberalis II. Meton:" here's "Artes liberales C. Inv.," aye, and doctrinae too. "Liberales doctrinae atque ingenuae.. C. de Or. aye; and more, even "de artificiis et quaestibus qui liberales habendi ;" aye, and “Liberalissimis studiis, C. Arch." Now, sure any adjective that suits Artes and Studia, Artificia and Doctrinal might pass for Disciplinae too. Sure Cicero used to string Artes and Disciplinae together like two cockleshells. Besides what I already said, we have in "Archias:" Italia plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum. And do you tell me that a man may put Liberalibus with Artibus, Studiis, Artificiis, Doctrinis, and not with Disciplinis?

M. T. (brightening up).--Precisely so. That's exactly my point. We find the adjective with the four first mentioned words, but not with the last. Here we find it a painfully English idiom.

H. S.-Begorra, after this I'll never put any adjective beside a noun, until I find that Tully did the same afore me. Ah, thin it's you that's the sharp an' able critic!

M. T.-My dear sir, scholarship is now-a-days acute and widespread, and, I will add, popular. Look at this number of the London

journal, The Academy. Its date is last Christmas. It appears that a Mr. Mahony, whose biography is there reviewed, made the same blunder as you in using the words, Liberalibus disciplinis excultus. And the reviewer condemns it as I have done, calling it, as I have called it, "a painfully English idiom," while he moreover explains very interestingly how Mr. Mahony, a man otherwise of education and quite capable of writing as good an article as any in The Academy, came to commit himself in so very extraordinary a manner. He got his first taste for the classics, as the reviewer well remarks, "probably" from one of "the hedge schoolmasters of Ireland, who had wonderful, ill-assorted stores of knowledge in their minds, were almost always ridiculous pedants, and were generally the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood," yet, for all that, "discovered and fostered literary genius among the Irish peasants." But he most certainly, as the reviewer tells us positively, acquired in later years with regard to Latin "a frequent habit of speaking it at the Jesuit College of Amiens. But the very habit of constantly speaking Latin," continues the reviewer, "the familiarity with monkish terms and idioms marred the really classical flavour of his compositions." Verily those French colleges, and that Gallican or rather that Ultramontane training, are evil things in every point of view.

H. S.-I believe indeed 'tis the London newspapers we must go to for larning afther all.

M. T.-The reviewer, my dear young_friend, notices a still more extraordinary slip of the writer of whom I speak. In some Latin of Mr. Mahony's, after blandus is found the word comus, though this word, as the reviewer well observes, "will in vain be sought, not merely in Facciolati, but in the infamous Latinity of Ducange."

H. S.-Well now, that bates! Ah, come now, don't be purtendin'. Sure you know as well as me that comus is a misprint or a "lapsus calami" for comis. Sure a baby in arms would be able to tell you that, if it had only the laste taste in life of Latin schooling.

M. T.-On the contrary, the article regards comus as evidently a blundering formation from comiter, which was clearly in Mr. Mahony's head.

H. S.-Well now, to think of that! Arrah, why should the man be thinking more of comiter than of comis? Sure it was comis was in the man's head; aye, and in his handwriting too, I'll engage. And to think that the London newspaper was hunting for comus in Fashullatty and Jew Cange! Oh, wasn't that a purty innocent!

M. T.-No, no, my young friend; we must take these things strictly.

H. S.-Faith 'en, yer rivirince, you must be a regular slasher. It's yerself can give hard measure whin you like. May good betide the poor young men that have to go up to you to be examined. It's you that's able to settle them. (Is going, but pauses). What's this? A Stephanus ! Poor ould Robert! Well to be sure! Av coorse those ancients is no good now-a-days. But jist for ould acquaintance sake I'll look at it if you plaze Och, murdher in Irish! This is too

bad, intirely!

M. T.-What is the matter?

H. S.-What's the matther? Wait till you hear what is undher Ingenuus! (reads) Artes Ingenuae sive Disciplinae i. e. Liberales. There's the painfully English idiom itself. Oh, Roberte Stephane, after that

I give you up!

M. T.-No doubt, Robert Etienne was not what would be considered a finished scholar now-a days.

H. S.-Oh, thin indeed he wasn't. Etienne, indeed! I don't believe he was a Frinchman at all. He was an Englishman, and his name was Steevens. He called himself Stephanus to consale his country (good rayson he had to be ashamed of it), but you see you've the intarior evidence of his nationality in his painfully English idiom.

NEW BOOKS.

I. Life of Pius VII. By MARY H. ALLIES. (London: Burns and Oates.)

THIS is the last of the four volumes which the year 1875 added to the Quarterly Series which for the last four years has appeared under the general editorship of Father Coleridge, and which thus consists already of sixteen original works varying in price from four to ten shillings. We are delighted to perceive that some of the earlier volumes have reached a third edition. The successful management of this enterprise is perhaps the greatest of many services which Father Coleridge has conferred on Catholic literature. His own "Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier" and the great "Life of our Lord," of which the third and fourth volumes are announced for next year, are by far the most valuable of the series. This new volume is worthy even of such companionship. Anyone recalling the outline of the Pontificate of the Seventh Pius will be prepared for the almost dramatic interest of the story told very gracefully in these pages by one who seems to have inherited more than the name of the author of the "Formation of Christendom." Mr. Allies has prefaced his daughter's work with a few very vigorous pages which point the moral of the story very aptly by referring to the sufferings of another Pius who is still dearer to Catholic hearts.

An amicable controversy has lately been maintained by the correspondents of a Catholic newspaper as to the "Great Want of Catholic Literature." In our opinion the great want of Catholic literature is buyers. Catholic books, as well as other books, are like the Newcastle razors-"made to sell." Do these correspondents who make so many complaints and propose so many improvements, buy many Catholic books and subscribe to Catholic periodicals? Let them show their zeal for Catholic literature by subscribing (for instance) to this Quarterly Series which is eminently worthy of the warmest encouragement.

II. The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for the United States, for the Year 1876. (New York: Catholic Publication Society.) THERE is quite a wonderful amount of interesting matter crammed into this book which is very prettily got out. The place that "Ireland of the dispersion" holds in the American Church is indicated by the number of Irish items that are here served up, such as the sketch of Eugene O'Curry, and the picture and description of the ruins of St. Colman's Church, Innisboffin. The compilers have not mentioned that Mr. Aubrey de Vere's exquisite poem, "Pastor Æternus," is taken from the pages of the IRISH MONTHLY. Even for the Irish at home-and God grant that they may be able to stay at home-there is deep interest in all that concerns the Church in America. President Grant would do well to study in these pages or elsewhere the address of the American Catholics to Washington and Washington's reply. We extract a few remarkable statistics from "Then and Now -a Contrast:"

"The population of the thirteen colonies in 1775, at the outbreak of the Revolution, was about 2,800,000 (one and a half millions less than that of New York State in 1870.) The population of the United States in 1870 was 38,555,983, of which 5,566,546 were foreign born. The ten principal cities possessed the following populations in 1870: New York, 942,292, of which 202,000 were Irish; Philadelphia, 674,022, Irish, 96,698; Brooklyn, 376,099, Irish, 73,985; St. Louis, 310,864, Irish, 32.239; Chicago, 298,977, Irish, 40,000; Baltimore, 267,354, Irish, 15,223; Boston, 250,526, Irish, 56,900; Cincinnati, 216,239, Irish, 18,624; New Orleans, 191,418, Irish, 14,693; San Francisco, 149,473, Irish, 25,864. Of persons born in Ireland, there were residing in the United States in 1870, 1,855,779, of which 528,806 resided in the State of New York. When, in 1784, Father John Carroll, S.J., was consecrated in England first bishop for the United States, there were not above six Catholic churches in the country. In 1874 there were 6,920 churches, chapels, and stations. In 1785 Bishop Carroll estimated (doubtless too low) the Catholic population "in Maryland at 16,000, in Pennsylvania over 7,000, and, as far as information could be obtained, in other States about 15,000." In 1875 the Catholic population was over 6,000,000. On December 7, 1800, was consecrated the first bishop in the United States-Right Rev. Leonard Neale. In 1875 the American hierarchy numbered one cardinal-archbishop, ten archbishops, and fifty-six bishoprics, and vicariates-apostolic. On May 25, 1793, was ordained the first priest in the United States-Rev. Stephen T. Badin. In 1874 there were 4,873 priests."

III. Burning Questions. By WILLIAM MOLITOR. (London: Burns and Oates.)

THIS is a cleverly executed translation of a German work written with great ability and in an excellent spirit. The questions brulantes of contemporary controversy, those especially which regard Church and State, are discussed with liveliness, and at the same time with solidity, in a series of conversations between some friends, representatives of various nationalities, who chance to be gathered together in a countryhouse on the border of one of the Italian lakes. There may be some doubt, as the author confesses, about the judiciousness of the form in which the work is cast; but as to the excellence and opportuneness of the work itself there can be no doubt whatever.