argument is pursued through the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul's Epistles. After this, the primacy of St. Peter is insisted upon as essentially involved in the very idea of Christ's Church, of its unity; and the remaining two chapters of the work are taken up with insisting upon the nature, multiplicity, and combined force of all the proof that has been thus brought together. Not the least valuable portion of the book is a most carefully arranged table of contents and an index, by means of which the student can have no difficulty in' finding whatever thread of the argument he may be in quest of; we can promise him that hewill find none wanting.

We have received the Catholic Directory and Ecclesiastical Register for 1853 (London: Jones, Richardson, Burns, &c.) In addition to its usual valuable information, it contains a very interesting memoir of the late Rev. J. Kirk, together with a striking likeness of that venerable ecclesiastic. The other contents of this useful publication, being the same as usual, are too well known to need recapitulation here.

The Metropolitan and Provincial Catholic Almanac (Booker, Dolman; London), on the contrary, is a new publication; and as far as neatness of typography and general appearance is concerned, it certainly has the advantage of its older contemporary. Its contents are, in the main, the same as those of the Directory; but a new feature is here introduced of a Catholic Peerage and Baronetage; as also a good deal of useful information for Catholics visiting the Holy City, &c. &c. On the other hand, we miss an important item, the hours of service in all the country missions; also the statistical summary of the number of priests, chapels, &c., which are so interesting and useful in the old Directory. This Almanac contains an admirable likeness of the lamented Mr. Pugin, together with a sketch of his life. If both these publications are persevered in no doubt each will improve, and the public will be the gainers.

We have been particularly struck with the moderate tone of the article in the recent Number of the Prospective Review (Chapman, London), on Uncle Tom's Cabin, which contrasts favourably with that of most other Protestant periodicals that have come across us. The article on Hartley Coleridge also is very interesting, and seems to flow from the pen of a kindred spirit. The first and last articles, on Lalor's Money and Morals, and Whewell's Lectures on Moral Philosophy, are such as one would expect in a magazine whose very title is intended "to express the desire and the attitude of progress," and which is professedly "devoted to a free theology!"

We are glad to see a second edition of Mr. Anderdon's Lectures on the Roman Catacombs (Burns and Lambert), containing some additional information both in the text and in the notes. It will be found a most useful and valuable manual for those who desire to gain an insight into the interesting Christian antiquities, without the trouble of personal research,

HYMN OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN AT THE CRADLE OF THE INFANT JESUS.

THOSE of our classical readers to whom the following medieval hymn is new, will need no apology for its introduction here at the present

season. We copy it from an article in the Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne for this month last year, by M. Combeguille.

SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF BOOKS SUITABLE FOR

CATHOLIC LENDING-LIBRARIES.

Caroline Chisholm: her Life and La- Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History.

Concise History of the Cistercian Order. Dr. Rock's Church of our Fathers.

The Rambler.

PART LXII.

CONTENTS.

THE PROTESTANT INQUISITION; OR CATHOLIC INTERESTS
BEFORE SELECT COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE OF COM-

A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN IRE

THE MODERN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS; OR THE HISTORY OF
PUSEYISM IN A DREAM

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE-CASE OF MR. KIRWAN
THE VILLAGE MONICA

PAGE

95

122

135

146

REVIEWS.-MRS. CHISHOLM AND EMIGRATION. The Story

of the Life of Mrs. Caroline Chisholm. Evidence
before the Committee of the House of Lords, 1847
and 1848

MONEY AND MORALS. Lalor's Money and Morals, a
Book for the Times
TENNYSON'S ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF
WELLINGTON

148

166

173

SHORT NOTICES.-Dr. Weedall upon the late Earl of
Shrewsbury. The Dublin Review.-Meditations on
the Holy Childhood of our Blessed Lord.-The Clifton
Tracts: The Church and the Bible, how are they
related to one another?-Lady Bird, a Tale, by Lady
Georgiana Fullerton. - Bertha, or the Pope and the
Emperor

TITLE AND Index.

176

To Correspondents.

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We cannot undertake to return rejected communications.

All communications must be postpaid. Communications respecting Advertisements must be addressed to the publishers, Messrs. BURNS and LAMBERT; but communications intended for the Editor himself should be addressed to the care of Mr. READER, 9 Park Street, Bristol.

WE read in the reign of Charles II., in the time of Titus Oates, when the ancestor of the Earl of Shaftesbury-whose hereditary hatred of Catholicism clings to him like a cursewas employing every means, however wicked or malignant, to keep up the No-Popery fury, one of the chief instruments which he used was the reports of Select Committees. Thus we are told that when the cry of the "plot" was raised, he contrived that the pretended "inquiry" into it should be managed by himself and a committee of the House of Lords; and it is stated, "the popular delirium had given to his party an ascendency in the two Houses which they could not otherwise have acquired; and that he might keep this alive and direct it in accordance with his own views, he cared little to what perjuries he might give occasion or what blood he might cause to be shed." On another occasion, in order to carry his favourite scheme of the Exclusion Bill, he procured a report from a Select Committee, stating to the House some absurd story of an attempt on the part of the Papists to promote the ascendency of Popery and arbitrary power.† Again, we find his party once inflamed the House by a long report from the Committee on Religion, which had discovered that the laws which gave the estates of "Popish recusants" to the crown were often evaded by means of secret trusts and conveyances."

Political parallels are curious and striking, and often instructive; and few could be more so than the remarkable resemblance between the unscrupulous Select Committees of Shaftesbury, who strove to keep up the excitement about pretended Popish plots, and the equally unscrupulous Committees of the last two years, which sought to sustain the detestable agitation about so-called Papal aggression, and by * Dr. Lingard's History, vol. xiii. ch. v. p. 85. † Ibid. ch. vi. p. 145.