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aged 29 years. His contributions to this volume are marked by the initial of his name, and they seem to be the best and the most striking.

V. The Last Monarch of Tara: A Tale of Ireland in the Sixth Century. By EBLANA. (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.)

THE above title and all the titles of chapters in this volume are repeated in Irish, and the three hundred pages are thickly studded with words and phrases correctly spelled in the same language. The accuracy of all such details is guaranteed by the statement that the work has been revised by Canon Ulick Bourke. Praiseworthy diligence has been exercised in the compilation of much antiquarian lore; but it would need a miracle of genius to make these dry bones live, and we fear that this miracle has not been wrought by "Eblana.”

VI. The Catechism of Perseverance. By MONSIGNOR GAUME. Translated from the Tenth French Edition. (M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.) It is enough to announce the publication of this second of the four volumes which will form the English edition of this well-known work, received with such general favour as "an historical, dogmatical, moral, liturgical, apologetical, philosophical and social exposition of religion." Not only priests and nuns and others engaged in the instruction of the young, but the laity for their own instruction, can use it with profit as a sort of practical dictionary of theology.

VII. Little Books of the Holy Ghost. Nos. 1 and 3. (London: Burns & Oates.)

DR. RAWES is bringing out this series as a companion to his "Library of the Holy Ghost." These two are translations of the Opuscula of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Lord's Prayer and on the Ten Commandments. It is needless to say that they are full of beauty and depth, though hardly suited for popular use in this form. The "Little Books" are brought out very neatly.

VIII. Other Books and Pamphlets.

In the current number of the Dublin Review a graceful and ingenious writer, wishing to discuss the very trite question of the Authorship of the "Imitation"—which he holds is by Thomas à Kempis after all— thinks it wiser to disguise his article under the title of "New Light on an Old Subject." Some such device might judiciously have been resorted to by Father J. D. Breen, O. S. B., author of "Anglican Orders Are they Valid?" He has published on this often-discussed question another "Letter to a Friend," entitled: "Anglican Jurisdiction: Is it Valid?" (London: Burns & Oates). It is solidly argued, learned and original in a high degree for so small and unpretending a

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tract. Many valuable extracts are not given at second hand, but taken from the Bodleian Library.

A new publishing firm (Cecil Brooks & Co., London) have issued a reprint of an article contributed by Cardinal Manning to the North American Review. It is only necessary to mention the name of the writer and then the subject which he treats-"The Catholic Church and Modern Society."

If there is none of Rabelais' wit in P. F. M.'s "Sketches, Humorous and Satirical" (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son), there is none of Rabelais' grossness; but one is disposed to move the previous question-were they worth reprinting, or printing?

Many readers will be glad to have the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception expounded so clearly and attractively as it has been by the Rev. William Hayden, S.J., in a Sermon preached on the last Feast in the Franciscan Church, Dublin, and since published by Messrs. Gill & Son.

An excellent series of copy-books published by Burns & Oates of London has the merit of teaching geography, and history, and other useful things. The marginal additions to the head-lines are useful for this purpose.

WINGED WORDS.

1. Work is at once a luxury and a necessity: no man can retain either health of mind or body without it. On the one hand it may be charitable to provide for some people lighter dinner and more work; for others it may be equally expedient to provide lighter work and more dinner.-John Ruskin.

2. Weak natures are distracted and broken by the conflicting claims of duty and inclination. They neglect their business, and yet neglect it in vain, going languidly and remorsefully to their self-chosen labours, because they are haunted by a shadow of the duties that for their sake they have put aside.-Sir Francis H. Doyle,

-De Maistre.

3. Nothing is so difficult as to be only one.—
4. Great works are the daughters of solitude. - Goethe.

5. The things that are bad are accepted because the things that are good do not come easily in our way. How many a miserable father reviles with bitterness of spirit the low tastes of his son, who has done nothing to provide that son with higher pleasures!-Anthony Trollope.

6. Evil thoughts are put to flight when the eye falls on the portrait of one in whose living presence one would have blushed to own them.-. Frederick Perthes.

7. Pain is the deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other.-Arthur Henry Hallan (the subject of In Memoriam.)

8. A mere "practical" manner of viewing life and dealing with it, always becomes cruel.-Anon.

9. There are no words or acts so eminently practical as those which tend to keep alive ideals.-Anon.

10. Let us always go beyond the duties marked out for us, and let us always stop short of the pleasures permitted.

11. No two persons have ever read the same book or gazed at the same picture.

12. If I were asked my idea of human happiness, I should answer: Heaven is to love in peace.

13. Forgive me, my God, and do what you will.

14. The inventory of my faith in this lower world is soon made: I believe in Him who created it.

15. What I value immediately after Eternity is Time.

16. It is piety that guards faith.

17. We must labour untiringly to make our piety reasonable and our reason pious.

18. Between late and too late there is, by God's grace, an immeasurable distance.

19. God has not been pleased to flatter our curiosity by any of his revelations. What He reveals to man is the end which He assigns to him and the means to attain that end.

20. My God, make me do something which you may be able to reward.

21. If one looks at it carefully, on this earth where God seems so much forgotten, it is yet for Him, after all, that the truest and most faithful love is felt.

22. Pantheism which confounds the divine and the human has no more formidable adversary than the dogma of the Incarnation which unites them for union excludes identity.

23. To write with a pencil is like speaking under one's breath.

24. We do not always lose our time in doing nothing; but in doing carelessly what we do we most certainly lose our time. It is labour without profit.

25. Nowadays people read everything, except books.

[The last fifteen thoughts are from Madame Swetchine.]

BRACTON; OR, SUB SIGILLO.

A TALE OF 1812.

BY OLIVER SLOANE.

CHAPTER XV.

EMILY TO HELEN.

"I HAD intended, dearest Helen, to answer your affectionate letter in the same style, and send you a gossiping account of myself, my proceedings, and my belongings; 'be the same more or less,' as my husband says. And why not? you will ask. Because, meanwhile, I have something of greater moment to impart to you. But now, do not look so grave, as I imagine you to do on reading the words. It is momentous, but certainly not 'lugubrious,' as Mr. Vaux would say. Nothing has gone wrong, nor is likely to do, I hope. It has no reference to the sadder portions of your own letter. Dear me, it is only what most young ladies would jump at, and few would be found to decline. Plainly, then, it is an offer of marriage, which I am commissioned to lay at your feet. There!

"Is my own dear Helen one of the uncloistered vestals, who have determined to walk through life, in maiden meditation, fancy-free? That was the first question I asked myself, on being made (as I have been) ambassadress plenipotentiary in this high negotiation. I know you, I think, intimately, Helen, and love you-you well know how dearly. And yet, strange to say, I cannot remember any one time, in all our girlish confidences, when the subject has come up between us, on which most girls-many, at least―are ready to pour a volume of anticipations, hopes, and fears into the sympathising ear of a friend. At our convent school (oh! how New Hall rose up before me at your slight sketch in half a dozen words) we discussed a thousand other things, grave and gay; but our talk had as little of this kind of sentiment in it, as Dr. Johnson's Rasselas-the only novel, you remember, we were allowed to read. Novel! to call that collection of ponderous epigrams and solemnly balanced antitheses a novel! But now to the point.

"Enter my hero. We will reverse the scene at Belmont, and give Portia her choice, at least her guess. Who shall he be? Emperor of Morocco, Prince of Arragon, or the poor gentleman Bassanio? Will she open the right casket? Shall it be 'gold, silver, or base lead?' I am trifling; for, to say the honest truth, I am so deeply interested in my commission, that it flutters and confuses me, and I am forced to write VOL. VIII., No. 84, June, 1880.

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nonsense to escape having a good cry, and blotting the paper, from sheer anxiety as to the result.

"But prepare yourself to wonder. If there was ever one who, with all engaging qualities in a high degree, could hardly be associated with the faintest idea of marriage-a man too fastidious to be pleased with anyone, almost, however refined or gifted, up to the high and permanent degree of liking, without which marriage (to him) would be a fated and pledged disappointment-a man too penetrating, with too extensive knowledge of life and character, not to unmask by a glance the little hypocrisies in which we poor women are said to be so adroit— too severely critical of himself, moreover, to be a likely victim of delusion as to his own inexorable standard-it is precisely the gentleman who now, through my intervention, goes down on one knee, places his hand on his heart, and gracefully solicits the honour of possessing

yours.

"George Eustace! Guilty, upon my honour! This hyperdifficult, extra-fastidious man of talent and of high society-he is as unmistakably the one as he is recognised to be the other-has descended from his lofty pedestal, and is now a suitor-yes, suitor for the hand of Helen Bracton.

"After that one astonishing fact, details seem unimportant by comparison; besides, you may probably know them sufficiently. He is heir presumptive to the earldom of Riversdale, with nobody between but a paralytic cousin-a fortune to match, and everything about his future estates (so says Mr. Vaux) in high order. Rental, I don't know how much, but something very large. Riversdale Park in Huntingdonshire, ivy-grown castle with broad acres in Ireland, charming villa somewhere near London, fine old family mansion in Berkeley-square— you will think I have turned auctioneer and appraiser, if I go on in this way. But I have, of course, studiously learned all details from my husband.

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"Such things are the makeweight in the balance; they will not weigh much with you, my Helen, though to so many they are all important. They would make scores of fine ladies set their caps at the future Earl of Riversdale, even if he were a barber's block in a shop window.' This is Mr. Vaux's dictum, who adds that George Eustace would be a superb fortune in himself, if by a freak of imagination he could be supposed to be the barber's apprentice, or an ironmonger's journeyman, instead of what he is. Observe, Miss, that I have spoken to my husband upon these latter points without betraying Mr. Eustace's confidence; I have merely talked him over, generally, with Mr. Vaux; for he-Eustace-has put me under strict obligation, as if I were a father confessor. He is much too proud a man-no one could at all know him, and doubt it—to wear the willow contentedly; he, who must have faced with a good deal of effort the notion of marrying at all. I

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