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SHORT NOTICES.

We have received some additional numbers of the splendid edition of Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, published by Messrs. Dunigan, New York (London, Dolman). Eleven numbers

are now out, and the work is to be completed in thirty-eight. It is, without exception, one of the handsomest and cheapest editions of the Bible we have ever seen.

The Life of Mrs. Eliza A. Seton, Foundress and first Superioress of the Sisters or Daughters of Charity in America, by the Rev. C. J. White, D.D. (Dunigan, New York; London, Dolman), is not only a most important contribution to American Catholic literature, but a very interesting work to all Catholics everywhere. It is seldom that one has an opportunity of studying so much in detail the progress of the work of grace in a soul that is being brought out of Protestantism into the one true fold. Mrs. Seton's habit of keeping a journal, and her very voluminous correspondence, have supplied her biographer with more abundant, as well as more interesting and more authentic materials for his work than usually fall to the lot of labourers in this portion of the field of literature. Some readers, perhaps, will be disposed to consider that the materials in this instance have been almost too abundant, or at least will wish that Dr. White had been more sparing in his use of them. Considering, however, the immense importance of the work which Mrs. Seton wrought for the Church in the United States, we cannot subscribe to this criticism. Neither can we regret the length or number of the extracts which Dr. White has given both from the letters, the diary, and the private devotions of his heroine during the many years that she was a Protestant, especially since we suspect that they are of a very different character from what many Catholics would have anticipated. Mrs. Seton was the second daughter of an eminent physician in New York, and was born in 1774, two years before the declaration of American independence. Her mother was the daughter of an Episcopalian clergyman, and she herself was brought up a member of that communion. She was remarkable, even in her youth, for the interest which she took in all religious matters, and the zeal with which she discharged her religious duties; not, however, altogether according to the most approved forms of Episcopalianism: for we are told that she used to wear a small crucifix about her person, and expressed her surprise that such a practice should not be more common among her coreligionists; and she regretted also that there were no Protestant nunneries." Moreover, she used to "sigh of a Sunday evening, and say, 'No more until next Sunday,' as she turned from the church-door which closed on her, unless a prayer-day was given out in the week ;" and on Sacrament-Sundays" she used to run from one church to another, that she might receive as often as she could! It was not to be expected that dispositions such as these should long be satisfied with the miserable empty husks that are to be found in Protestantism; and the merciful providence of God so disposed the order of events, that her marriage (at the age of 20) with an American merchant,-who had received a part of his mercantile education in a house at Leghorn, and who, after nine or ten years of married life (during which time Mrs. Seton became the mother of five children), was sent to Leghorn again for change of air, should be the means of introducing her to those blessed gifts and

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privileges which are the inheritance of the faithful. Her husband died almost immediately after their arrival in Italy; but his old friends the Filicchis, merchants, who were Catholics not in name only but in heart, and whose memory must ever be held in affectionate remembrance by the Sisters of Charity in America, were unremitting in their kindness towards the widow. In their company she visited some of the principal galleries and churches both in Florence and in Leghorn. Among the works of art, her attention seems to have been attracted only by those which treated of religious subjects; and in the churches, though she used diligently to repeat "her own service," as she calls it (meaning the Anglican form of daily prayer), yet she was sensibly struck by the numbers of "old men and old women, young women, and all sorts of people, kneeling promiscuously about the altar, so intent upon their prayers and rosary, that it is very immaterial what a stranger does." In entering a Catholic church she felt an impression of awe that she had never experienced in a Protestant place of worship; and on one occasion-in the celebrated sanctuary of our Blessed Lady at Monteno, near Leghorn-the profanity of a young Englishman who was present did much towards opening her eyes, and suggesting to her fruitful topics of meditation. This gentleman had selected the very moment of the elevation of the sacred Host as a fitting opportunity to scoff at " what they call their real presence."

A few days afterwards she re-embarked for America, scarcely having spent more than a month in Italy; but a storm, and damages done to the vessel by a collision, obliged her to return on shore the very next day. The day following, her child (the only one she had taken with her) proved to have the scarlet fever; and the captain could not, of course, receive her again on board to infect the other passengers. This detained them for three weeks in the Filicchi's house; then, as soon as the child recovered, the mother sickened with the same complaint and for the same period. During the whole of this time, "the patience and more than human kindness" of the Filicchis made a deep impression on Mrs. Seton. "You would say," she writes to a friend, "that it was our Saviour Himself they received in his poor and sick strangers." Nor was their kindness confined to a care for her bodily wants; they were still more zealous for the conversion of her soul; and being as intelligent in mind as they were edifying in conduct, and Mrs. S. having a most earnest desire to know and embrace the truth, she became tho. roughly convinced, at the end of three months' sojourn in Leghorn, that Protestantism is a religion of man, and that only the Catholic faith comes from God. Unfortunately, however, according to a practice only too common in such cases, it was determined that God's call should not be obeyed without the consent and advice of friends. Mrs. S. was allowed to return to America without having been received into the Church, there to submit her determination to the judgment of people who could not possibly be expected to do otherwise than oppose it. Of course the usual consequences followed. Friends, relatives, acquaintances, minis. ters of the gospel, one and all set upon the unhappy lady with various instruments of suasion, threats and promises, arguments and denunciations; and if they did not succeed in convincing, at least they sufficed to create doubts and uncertainties, to disturb and make her very uneasy. Month after month passed away in this state; sometimes she could not make up her mind to go to any church at all; then to church, but not to (so-called) communion; and lastly, by a desperate effort, to communion also in one of the Protestant churches of New York. But this last was too much for her; she found she had not the least faith in any

thing the Protestant Church could give her, and she determined never to go there again. Still four months more of miserable uncertainty; and at last, just about a twelvemonth after her mind had first been made up, she submitted to Holy Church. For the history of her subsequent career, we must refer our readers to the volume itself: how she experienced the lot of all converts in the shape of neglect or persecution from the hands of her former friends and associates; how this cup of trial was sweetened by the consolations allowed to some, of seeing a few of her nearest and dearest relatives become partakers of the same happiness with herself; and the interesting course of events whereby she eventually became the foundress of an Institute of Charity, at first formed upon the model of that followed by the children of St. Vincent of Paul, and now actually incorporated with it, and which, beginning about forty years ago in Mrs. Seton and two other ladies, now numbers no less than 420 Sisters, and presides over 38 different establishments in the United States. We think we have said enough to interest our readers in the narrative, and to satisfy them that the volume in which it is contained (and which is very handsomely "got up,") will be a very welcome addition to any Catholic reading-room or library.

We do not precisely see what practical purpose is aimed at by the republication of the Rev. P. Green's Letters on the Catholic Oath (London, Jones, Richardson, &c.). It was well enough that the merits of that oath should be publicly and generally discussed while yet it was in posse; but, after twenty years' practical experience, we think it may safely be left to those whom it more immediately concerns; more especially since the author does not seem to have any thing new to say about it.

It is too late for us to recommend an abridgment of Father Segneri's Devout Servant of Mary (Manchester, Stutter; London, Dolman) for distribution among the poor during the month of May. It will be useful, however, at all times, as a cheap and simple manual for instructing those Catholics who have not access to larger works, in the truest and most acceptable means of serving their heavenly Mother.

We have always considered the Catholic Poor-School Committee the most important human institution that we have in England for the preservation and extension of the Catholic faith throughout the country. We are very glad, therefore, to learn from the Fifth Annual Report (London, sold by all Catholic booksellers), that its income during the year 1852 exceeded that of the preceding year by more than 500Z.; though it must be acknowledged that it is far too small for the crying needs which it is called upon to supply. The present Report, however, is very encouraging, more especially as to the progress that has been made in that most important of all their undertakings, the establishment of a training-school for schoolmasters at St. Mary's, Hammersmith.

Mr. R. Raby has deserved the best thanks of all English Catholics for presenting us with the invaluable work of Blessed Henry Suso, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, in English (Richardson and Sou). The work itself we could not presume to eulogise; "it speaks," as the translator justly says, "too eloquently for itself." We venture to anticipate that, when once known, this little work will be the inseparable companion of many an inmate of our religious houses, as well as of the devout in every state. Mr. Raby appears to have succeeded in his difficult task wonderfully well, on the whole; the spirit of the original is far better preserved by him in our cognate language than in the existing French and Italian translations, which indeed convey no idea of the work,

either as it is in the original German or in Susius's admirable Latin translation. It would be invidious to call attention to defects in a translation which we welcome so heartily; otherwise it would not have been difficult, perhaps, to point out some passages that are left needlessly obscure, and others that do not appear to us quite to convey the sense of the author as we have been used to understand him. Certain expressions also that can hardly be called genuine English, as the frequently recurring Oh woe! instead of Alas! as the translation of Oh weh! Before giving the explanation of the word venia in the preface, after the German editor, Mr. Raby would have done well to consult some one of the Order to which Blessed Henry Suso belonged; from whom he would have learnt that the venia is a manner of prostration quite as much in use with the Dominicans of the present day as with those of the middle ages; and that it does not consist in kueeling and kissing the ground, but in prostrating at full-length on the right side. We sincerely hope that the reception of this Book of Eternal Wisdom will be such as to induce Mr. Raby to fulfil his promise of giving to the public a translation of the very beautiful and touching life of its author.

Correspondence.

INSPECTION OF CONVENTS.

To the Editor of the Rambler.

SIR,-In drawing the attention of your readers to a Bill now before Parliament which has for its object the inspection and visitation of convents, I may possibly be thought somewhat premature, as the measure is still in its earliest stage, and the details are but imperfectly known. There are cases, however, in which we are permitted to repel even the first proposal of a violation of rights; and that promptly, and without much parley concerning details. Thus, were it understood that leave had been granted to bring in a Bill for the visitation of every Englishnian's private home, by commissioners who should have the power to examine his wife and children as to his private treatment of them, to regulate his expenses, and to put down all family abuses, I think we should none of us stand much on the forms of the House, or consider ourselves bound to wait for the second reading, before we ventured to make our indig nation known. Nay, were the proposed measure of a less inquisitorial nature, and, with only an over-zeal in the cause of public morality, to propose means for reducing our gin-palaces and public-houses, or the utter abolition of "penny gaffs" and other places of theatrical amusement, we can imagine how quickly the storm of popular resentment would be raised. What a cry from the vested interests of the maltsters and distillers! what a flutter of public sympathy for the danseuse and genteel comedian, in their banishment from the green-room of the Opera and Olympic! How speedily would they be raised to that dignity suffering and oppressed patriotism which we have seen successively filled by Kossuth, Achilli, and the Madiai! Surely every Catholic must see in the measure we have alluded to, an infraction of rights at least as sacred as these; and an impetuosity of indignation which would cer tainly be pardoned in their case may, we trust, be as readily excused in

ours.

of

Hitherto the very notion of any kind of inquisitorial power has had in it something so repugnant to English feeling, that it has been sufficient for such a character to attach, though but in the remotest degree, to any measure, to render it unpopular amongst us. The Income Tax owes the opposition it annually meets with less to our indisposition to part with our money, than to an instinctive feeling that it is a grievance for any State-officer to be able to enter our houses and ask us questions. There is not a doubt that the passport system, so universally submitted to in other countries, would not be tolerated for a moment in our own. We are ready to pay any money which is demanded, but we cannot bear the tyranny of answering questions concerning our trade and the colour of our hair. If this be so, one would think it could only be some great and crying evil which could induce any member of the Legislature to propose a measure of this proverbially odious character. Great and crying evils are, unhappily, not unknown in England. Amid the swarming population of our town and factory districts, where crime and ignorance have ripened into alarming luxuriance, we can imagine many cases where the most liberal Legislature might feel it necessary to depart from the usual course, and to adopt measures a little at variance with the forms of a constitutional government. It would not be unnatural if some of those accidental revelations of the corruption lying under the polished surface of English society, which are given us at intervals, were to startle us into an unwilling severity. Some Blue-book or Parliamentary return, whose facts were too bad to be disregarded; some narrative, like Mr. Mayhew's, of what a man has seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears,-might set us about the Augean task of cleansing out, and visiting, and suppressing some of those haunts of infamy and heathenism, where living souls have hitherto been suffered to sink to the lowest depth of degradation undisturbed, because we are accustomed to believe that the permission of licentiousness is a less evil than any arbitrary interference with private rights.

And such a moment has, it would seem, come at last. At last the English Parliament has found time to be moral. At last, relieved from those interminable discussions on the price of corn and of sugar, English legislators are beginning to turn their attention to the social abuses of their country. And we feel curious to imagine how it will read in future histories of this age, that at a time when one-half of the English population was unbaptised, and ignorant of the being of a God; when vice of all kinds had assumed so unblushing a form, that you might read in one of its gravest public journals of schools where thieving and lying were taught like other sciences, at so much a head; at a time when two counties have gained the enviable title of the "poisoning counties," on account of the number of secret murders committed in them; when, in many a mine and colliery, and dark neglected alley of our great towns, human beings live and die, and sin, and neither the world nor the law takes cognisance of their crimes or their existence,-at such a time, Parliament, roused at last to the necessity of Christian legislation, selects for the first object of its newly-found and virtuous indignationthe Catholic convents. The State, like a wise physician, stands over the fainting form of its leprosy-struck child. No wonder there is a talk of cautery and amputation; for one-half of the body is already mortified. But-incomprehensible wonder!-it is not to the blackened limbs, the open wounds which terrify us only to look at, that the first glance of the physician is directed; it is to that hand which the disease has not yet reached. It is to search carefully if by chance there should happen to be there some possible pin-scratch, because we are gravely told, though such things are rare, yet cases have been known, in other coun