F. Scaramelli, happily, here follows S. Thomas, according to his custom But he commences a paragraph in his first article thus: "The holy fathers, when speaking of Christian perfection, do not agree in laying down what its substance is; for some of them seem to place it wholly in one virtue, others in a different one." Now it is surely impossible even to suppose that the holy Fathers can disagree as to what it is that a man ought to aim at in this life in order to save his soul. Their expressions may differ, but the meaning and the substantial teaching must be the same in all. And the really satisfactory way, it seems to us, of laying the foundation of an ascetical system would be to compare and analyze these varying expressions of the Fathers, and, by showing their agreement, explain their different points of view. For instance, charity and union with God are the same thing, except that charity denotes rather the active side; union with God, the state. Again, union of God is the same as purity of heart; for union with God means God alone, purity of heart means no creature. Some of the Fathers speak as if humility were perfection; and so it is, for humility means no self, which is the correlative, or rather the complement of God alone. To start with the idea that there can be any reasonable doubt as to what perfection consists in is to start with an admission that the scientific part of your treatise may be all a mistake, for the nature of the means depends entirely upon the analysis of the ultimate end.

F. Scaramelli, however, starts with the true view, as we have said. Indeed, no one can suppose that he thought any other view possible. But, this being the case, it would perhaps have been better to have said so.

This reserve made, there is little to do but praise. An orderly, calm book like this is a great and permanent boon. We are not badly off now for spiritual reading in English. But most of our spiritual books begin in the middle of things, and leave off there also. This one, on the other hand, lays down the lines of Christian progress from the beginning up to that point where the ordinary ways are superseded by the extraordinary. It is a book that makes one realize the phrase, "Work out your salvation." S. Paul's favourite simile of the athlete of the ancient games is translated in these pages. The Christian is bidden to weigh what perfection is, to look well at it and see if it be not desirable, and the only thing that is desirable. He is told that if he would be perfect he must seek out a master or director. He is introduced to the reading of spiritual books, and advised how to profit by them. He is instructed in the right use of meditation. He is taught how to pray. Then he is brought into the atmosphere of God's "Presence." To purify his heart he is led to the tribunal of penance, and to give him strength he is taken to the Holy table. His eye is taught the difficult art of searching the recesses of his own conscience, that he may know himself. And finally he is recommended to Holy Mary and the Saints.

F. Scaramelli's language is clear, simple, and flowing, with a not unpleasing tendency to diffuseness, such as we find in many eloquent writers and speakers. It is a grateful duty to say that the translation, which we have tested with some severity, is admirable, both with respect to accuracy and to idiom. The copious quotations from the Fathers, a valuable feature in the work, are all translated in the text, whilst the original is given in a foot-note.

The author's examples are no less conspicuous than his citations, and not by any means so praiseworthy. Cæsarius of Heisterbach has a little led him astray here. Still, a lively example is considered by many readers of spiritual books as a pleasing feature, and many of the stories of the old novice-master of the twelfth century are striking enough not to be quickly forgotten. And therefore it is, perhaps, just as well that the editor has let them stand, instead of omitting them. He need not, however, have been so economical of space in some of his references. Most people, for instance, are not much the better for knowing that the author of a fact is "Theod. de Apoll.," or " Joan. Junior. Dominic."

There cannot be two ideas about the value of this work, the first part of which is now offered for the first time in an English translation. No reader need be troubled by noticing that it is ostensibly addressed to confessors. The greater portion of the book is not even formally directed to them; and the practical admonitions at the end of each chapter, though they are thus addressed, contain little that is not quite as useful to everybody. If any anxious person is afraid that such a "spiritual guide" as this will make penitents as wise as their directors, all we can say is, that the directors must look to that.

Inaugural Address delivered before the "Literary, Historical, and Esthetical Society of the Catholic University of Ireland." By WILLIAM DILLON, Auditor. Session 1869-70. Dublin: Browne & Nolan.

THI

HIS little pamphlet contains more than it promises,-Mr. Dillon's address, and in addition, an account of the proceedings at the meeting of the Society in which it was delivered. That Society, one of the offshoots of the Catholic University, is intended to practise the students both in thinking and in expressing their thoughts, by weekly meetings, in which papers are read and debates held, in alternate meetings. The address before us is on a subject always interesting to us,--the Men of the Middle Ages.

We may best judge of its merits, as delivered, by the testimony of the eminent men, Protestant as well as Catholic, who heard it. Some of them were evidently hardly able to sympathize with the enthusiasm with which the speaker looked back to the "Ages of Faith." But they felt what was expressed by one of them, Isaac Butt, Q.C. ::- "In the noble address they had heard to-night-it was noble because it was thoughtful, and noble because it was the working out of a man's own thought-they had the strongest proof that the very highest control of religion over the intellect did not restrain thought." This is a rather amusing, but really an encouraging specimen of the judgment which able and thoughtful Protestants are likely to form of a Catholic University which vindicates its right to the name. They have been bred up to believe, what Lord Russell wrote (in a letter which, we suspect, he would now very gladly forget) that the Catholic religion cripples the intellect and confines the soul. As they see the working

of the men whom it produces, they will be obliged to admit that this is not exactly the case; that, at any rate, good Catholics can think, and think with power and originality; and although, not in the least understanding their first principles, they are likely enough to be puzzled at many of their conclusions, they will be forced to admit that they are conclusions worked out by the free use of vigorous intellects, held with deep and earnest conviction, and that there is in them much that exactly meets the greatest moral and social wants of our own times.

The address itself eloquently and earnestly describes the "Middle Ages' as "showing what Christianity can accomplish when it takes hold of a people in its barbarous infancy, trains it through the struggles of its unruly youth, and at length develops the full dignity and beauty of Christian manhood." He complains that in our days "it is the fashion to look upon success as the end of life. Some say Mammon-worship is the besetting sin of our age; I think it is the worship of success." The characteristic of the Middle Ages, which he contrasts to this, is the prevalence of faith and most justly. For wherever men accustom themselves to think that the things seen, not the things unseen, are the great object to be desired, success in one form or other is sure to usurp the place in the heart which ought to be occupied by God alone. He ends:

6

"We live in an age of great commercial activity, and in, or, if you will, under, a great commercial nation. Commerce and honour are plants that do not flourish kindly in the same soil. * * Shall we not then occasionally withdraw ourselves from the hard realities around us, and by living for a time in the company of the noble dead, keep alive and sensitive within us that high and keen sense of honour which was their dearest treasure, and should be ours? That Faith which was the animating principle, the life-giving inspiration of the Middle Ages, we still possess. Ireland, while losing all else, has has ever carefully guarded it, though her manuscripts were burned, her men scattered, her churches closed, her monuments of civilization razed; her Faith, like the lamps of old in the places of death, burned on in the heart of Ireland unwatched and unfed, and now that the free air is admitted, diffuses itself through her frame; and when she shall stand forth strong and free, it will be the heart of the old isle, animating a frame of greater sinew, proportion, and beauty.' So wrote an illustrious Irishman. Let us, especially in this Irish Catholic University, strive to realize it. It is by cherishing our Faith, by a truer comprehension of its spirit, a fuller insight into its teaching, a deeper and more heartfelt love of its truth and holiness, that we may best hope to become 'simple, earnest, brave, and faithful,' loyal sons of Ireland, and worthy imitators of the great men of the Middle Ages."

The whole address is that of a very young man sincerely captivated with the beauty of the "Ages of Faith." We are glad to see indications (though we wish they were more developed) that the speaker is not a mere "laudator temporis acti"; for we are fully convinced that each age has its own good as well as evil qualities, and are sometimes inclined to doubt whether any, except Him Who knows all things, can justly weigh age against age. An age is so far like an individual, that it has excellences and defects, and these so greatly differ in different ages, as in different men, that from the difference of their nature they hardly admit of comparison. It is a common saying with regard

to men, that the last Day will be the great day of canonization, because then only will it truly appear how many there have been among those by whom we are surrounded, in whom Faith, Hope, and Charity, and the other virtues, have attained to heroic proportions. The difficulty is still greater when we try to compare things so complex as different nations, still more, different ages of the world. Still it is most certain that there are periods in which particular virtues are strong and triumphant, and others in which the same virtues are weak; and therefore we cannot do amiss when we set before ourselves the example of ages which were strong exactly where our own is most weak. And unquestionably the chief characteristic of our own time is the weakness of Faith, the dimness which clouds and obscures men's eyes when they would gaze upon the world unseen; while, on the contrary, the best and most striking characteristic of the Middle Ages was that, of all principles of action, the most powerful and the most universally prevalent was faith in things not seen. It is this impression which is left on our mind by reading the address before us; and if we feel in it a certain want of order and arrangement, and are inclined to doubt why each beautiful picture or narrative comes exactly where it does, this is no more than was to be expected from the work of a very young man, whose soul is kindled by the beauty of past times; and the most severe criticism which any one could make upon it is that, it in some respects reminds us of the characteristic defects of one of the most beautiful works of our own times,-the "Mores Catholici" of Mr. Kenelm Digby.

The Origin, Persecutions, and Doctrines of the Waldenses, from Documents, many now for the first time collected and edited. By PIUS MELIA, D.D. London: Toovey. 1870.

THE

HE "Daily Telegraph" is rather an amusing sort of paper, and never more so, to our thinking, than when it becomes oracular on questions of theology or Church history. "Is Saul among the prophets?" we cannot help asking. How is it that the great authority on such subjects as balls at the Tuileries, races at Baden, and the betting-ring generally, has become enlightened and enlightening on religious questions? Our faith is a little shaken by being told, for instance, as we were some time ago, that Thaddeus is a Sclavonic name. Not that we know anything of Sclavonic (in which language the "Daily Telegraph" is, no doubt, profoundly versed), but we have an impression that one of the Apostles was called Thaddeus, and we have never heard any argument to prove that he was a Sclavonian. The "Daily Telegraph" was in one of its dogmatic moods on the 30th of April, 1868. It was telling that ignorant world which it is its sacred mission to instruct all about the Waldenses. "For sixteen hundred years, at least," said the "Daily Telegraph," "the Waldenses have guarded the pure and primitive Christianity of the Apostles. . . . No one knows when or how the faith was first delivered to these mountaineers. . . . Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons in the second

century found them a church. . . . These gallant hill-men have kept the tradition of the Gospel committed to them, as pure and inviolate as the snow upon their own Alps. . . . No bloodier cruelty disgraces the records of the Papacy than the persecutions endured by the ancestors of the twenty thousand Waldenses now surviving," &c. &c. &c.

This article happened to come under the notice of a learned Italian ecclesiastic, resident in London, who read it with astonishment. He thought he knew something about the Waldenses, but what he knew was very different from what was told him here. If he had heard of the Sclavonian Thaddeus, he might have put down their "pure and primitive Christianity" to the credit of that apocryphal Apostle; but he knew very well that the sect was very far short of sixteen hundred years old. He knew very well that there were no such people in Lyons in the second century, or for ten centuries after. Perhaps he did not know that John Milton had written a sonnet about the alleged persecution of the Waldenses of Piedmont in his time, calling on the Lord to avenge His "slaughtered saints," and denouncing the "triple tyrant" and the "Babylonian woe." But with regard to this assumed blot on the "records of the Papacy," Dr. Melia had a knowledge of historical facts probably unknown to Milton, and presumably unknown (if we may dare to say so) to the "Daily Telegraph" itself. The occasion seemed to him to call for an authoritative refutation of such statements, and accordingly he has since devoted himself with most commendable diligence to exploring all the original documents connected with the subject. The result of his researches is comprised in the volume before us; and we will now state briefly what it is that he seems to have established satisfactorily.

It is proved from unquestionable evidence that the Waldenses had their origin at Lyons, in or about the year 1170. They were called after Peter of Vaud* (Valdum), a merchant of Lyons, who, being moved by the sudden death of one of his friends to distribute his wealth amongst the poor, gathered numbers of that class around him, and began to expound the Gospel to them. A religious movement, somewhat resembling Methodism, was the issue of his proceedings, but the unauthorized missioners whom it called into action were speedily inhibited by ecclesiastical authority, and, disregarding it, were excommunicated. At the outset, there was nothing heterodox in their tenets; but as it is the inevitable tendency of schism to grow into heresy, and of heresy to become more heretical, what has happened ́in all similar cases happened in theirs also. It is worthy of remark, however, that even up to the early part of the sixteenth century they retained most articles of the Catholic faith. They admitted all the books of the Bible as received by the Catholic Church; they did not deny the doctrine of the Real Presence; they honoured (though they did not invoke) our Blessed Lady and the Saints; they even approved of Religious Celibacy, Auricular Confession, Vows of Poverty, and other distinctive Catholic practices. With their previous predisposition to the infection, they did not escape the influence of the heresies of the sixteenth century. They oscillated between Lutheranism

* A village near Lyons.