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of the executive veto in our plan of government, and incidentally to lay open and defend that plan itself. The writer of this is no political theorist; he is an American, and an American conservative, both from principle and from inclination, and is opposed alike to innovations in the system of government established, and to the experimental legislation which has become so much the rage. He believes that the Constitution is too little studied, and that the real character of our institutions is too little understood and appreciated. If what he has said shall excite any of our gifted and learned young men to a more diligent study of the American Constitution, his purpose will have been answered, and he will not have written in vain.

ART. VI.

LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

-The History of the Old and New Testament, interspersed with Moral and Instructive Reflections, chiefly taken from the Holy Fathers. From the French. By Rev. J. REEVE. BOSton: Donahoe. 1849. 12mo. pp. 478.

THIS work is too well known, and too highly appreciated by the Catholic public, to render any notice of it at our hands at all necessary. It is an admirable compend of sacred history, and compresses within a small compass a great amount of most useful and interesting information, together with highly important and edifying moral reflections. It should be in the hands of every Catholic family.

2.- Preparation for Death; or Considerations on the Eternal Maxims. Useful for all as a Book of Meditations, &c. By ST. ALPHONSUS M. LIGUORI. Translated from the Italian, by a Catholic Clergyman. 2d Edition. Boston: Sweeney. 1850. 18mo. pp. 396.

THIS work is commended to the faithful by the Right Reverend the Bishop of Boston, and, like all the ascetic works of the illustrious St. Alphonsus, is a valuable aid to every one seeking Christian perfection. It is, no doubt, faithfully translated, but we cannot help feeling, as in the case of all the ascetic works of the same author translated into our language, that the translator has failed utterly to preserve any thing of the life and unction of the original. There is a coldness, an abruptness, a crispiness, in the translator's style, that belongs to the style of no Saint, and which is almost unpardonable

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in the translation of the works of such a Saint as St. Alphonsus de Liguori. Setting aside this consideration, this little work is most excellent, and if used daily as a book of meditations, can hardly fail to prove a real "preparation for death."

3.- The Key of Heaven, or Manual of Prayer. By the Right Reverend J. MILNER, D. D. A new Edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged. By Rev. JAMES FITTON. Boston: Sweeney. 1849. 32mo. pp. 422.

THIS is a very neat and convenient edition of a well-known manual of prayer. In addition to the devotions contained in other editions, the present contains an explanation of the priest's vestments, the ornaments and ceremonies used at Mass, an abridgment of Christian doctrine, a prayer for the souls in purgatory, another for one's confessor, Vespers for the Festival of the Blessed Virgin, Devotion for the Scapular, and several hymns. Among the hymns, we are sorry to see included some three or four from the heretical Watts.

4.

The Devout Manual or a Collection of Prayers, tending to direct and promote the Practice of Solid Piety. New York : Dunigan & Brother. 1850. 32mo.

pp. 384.

THIS is, we believe, a new manual. It is published with the approbation of the Right Reverend the Bishop of New York, in the Messrs. Dunigan's best style, and is a very judicious collection of prayers. It will, no doubt, take a high rank among the many excellent manuals of devotion in circulation, and prove quite a favorite.

5. The Spiritual Consoler, or Instructions to enlighten Pious Souls in their Doubts, and to allay their Fears. Written origi nally in Italian. By FATHER QUADRUPANI, Barnabite. First American Edition. Boston: Joseph A. Copes. 1850. 18mo. Pp. 136.

THE fact that this little work is in great part made up of selec tions from the all but inspired writings of the illustrious Bishop of Geneva, St. Francis de Sales, is itself a sufficient guaranty of its excellence, and the following approbation by the Right Reverend the Bishop of Boston leaves nothing for us to say. "The English translation of Father Quadrupani's little work, entitled The Spiritual Consoler, has appeared to us, after due examination, sound in doctrine, and full of instruction and counsel, most useful to souls seeking advancement in piety and Christian perfection. We have,

therefore, approved its publication, and recommend the use of it to. the faithful." We can add nothing, and it would be impertinence on our part to attempt to add any thing, after this. We will only say, that we have found it one of the very best works of the sort we are acquainted with. Mr. Copes has done well in selecting it for his first publication.

6.

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Remarks of Mr. Charles C. Kelly, in the Convention, on the Native American Question. A. G. Hodges & Co., Printers.

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IN what convention, when or where held, these remarks were made, we are not told; and of Mr. Charles C. Kelly himself we know nothing, except that he tells us that he is "the son of an Irishman," is "a Catholic in faith, though not a member of the Catholic Church," that "he would die sooner than yield " his faith, and that he has "contributed more to the support of Protestant churches than to the support of Catholic ones. From the fact that the pamphlet has been sent to us by a friend in Kentucky, we presume the convention intended in the title was the convention recently held in that State for the purpose of amending its constitution, and we should conjecture, from the character he gives of himself, that Mr. Kelly is a real Kentuckian, of "the half-horse, half-alligator, with a spice of the snapping-turtle," breed. He does not appear to lack volubility, or "a gude conceit o' himsel'," and probably he has, as he professes, really meant to defend the Catholic Church, and to strike a death-blow at the Native American party; but his speech seems to us admirably adapted to render the Church ridicu lous in the eyes of intelligent heretics, and to create a distrust of the class of persons he wishes to vindicate. He is far too ignorant of Catholicity to be able to speak of it with credit to himself, and the arguments he urges against the silly and fanatical Native American movement are just such as are calculated to induce the mass of the American people, this side the Alleghanies at least, to think favorably of it. It is such men as he that have created the greatest part of the hostility of the American people to the naturalization of foreigners, and it is such miserable defenders of Catholicity that have made many persons believe that a Catholic never regards truth where his Church is concerned. We would not speak harshly of this poor man, but we would tell him, that the demagogical spirit is the farthest removed possible from the Catholic spirit, and that a nominal Catholic turned demagogue is an animal of those unclean habits which disgust, not only all good Catholics, but even heretics themselves. The man who is not incapable of pandering to the prejudices of the mob, be they prejudices of what sort they may, lacks the essential ingredient of a

freeman, and the louder he screams in behalf of democracy, the louder and more unequivocally he proclaims his slavery. He who dares not be true to his God, who calumniates the fearless and unswerving friends of his Church, in order to gain the momentary applause of its enemies, is incapable of giving any guaranty that he will be true to his country and faithful to her institutions. The man who will betray his religion to obtain political promotion, will betray his country the moment he fancies it for his interest to do So. If we had had in this country no political demagogues of foreign birth or descent, we should never have heard of a "Native American Party." Let Catholics be good Catholics, let them fear God, and show, as they should, that they are incapable of fearing any one else; let them adhere firmly to their faith, and to the practice of their religion, without apology, and without asking any man's permission, and there will be no Native Americanism to disturb them. But multiply such orators as Charles C. Kelly, and such papers as The Truth-Teller and The Nation, and you will have Native Americanism, and more than you will be able to manage. There are demagogues, radicals, and infidels enough of native growth, without any importation from abroad. The distrust of the Catholic population arises chiefly from the facility with which they suffer themselves to be imposed upon by such orators and papers as these we mention, and the American people will never have any confidence in them, so long as they suffer themselves to be preyed upon, as they heretofore have been, by a set of political harpies, whether native-born or foreign-born, whether sailing under the Catholic flag or that of heresy. No man is our friend who wishes merely to use us for his own selfish purposes; no man should be trusted by us who places the state before the Church, a political theory before Catholic faith, or his passions before his religion. Let every such man be marked and avoided. Trust no man who seeks to conform his religion to the age or the country, who has the impudence to apologize for his Church, or to express his regret for deeds she has approved, and boasts of his having done what she forbids. He who believes himself wiser than his Church betrays his folly or his hypocrisy, and the less you have to do with him the better. Can one touch pitch and not be defiled?

7.The Seaside and the Fireside. Boston Ticknor, Reed, & Fields.

By H. W. Longfellow. 1850. 16mo. pp. 141.

WE have so lately spoken of Mr. Longfellow as a poet, and at so great length, that it is not necessary for us to enter here into any consideration of his merits. We have always esteemed him more highly than we have found him esteemed by our literary friends.

He is not in our judgment a great poet, but he has a truly poetic temperament, and, if there is seldom a thought in his writings that recurs to the memory, there is a melody in his verse that charms us, and recurs to our hearts as the half-forgotten strains we loved in the remote days of childhood and youth. We like him because he always brings back to us our young feelings, mellowed by time and distance, and pleases us in our manhood, as Mother Goose did in our childhood, without demanding too much intellectual labor. The Building of the Ship is a pleasing poem, half an allegory, conveying a very useful moral just now.

The translation of The Blind Girl of Castèl-Cuillè, from the Gascon of Jasmin, strikes us as very happy, and pleases us far better than the original, — perhaps because the Gascon is to us pretty much an unknown tongue; but we cannot award the poem itself so high a rank as the critics generally seem disposed to assign it. The attempted suicide at the close offends us, and we have no patience with the poet who makes a well-instructed Catholic girl express a hope that God will pardon suicide under any circumstances, and certainly not for killing herself because deserted by a faithless swain. Piety would have taught her resignation, and made her thankful that she had escaped being wedded to one undeserving; never would it have led her to commit the horrible crime of selfmurder. The conceit of the interposition of the guardian angel is idle; for though the poor girl does not actually kill herself, she dies with the intention of doing so, and therefore is really a self-murderer before God. Is it any consolation to think that the poor girl escaped her earthly sufferings by plunging herself into the eternal tortures of hell? But why talk of such things to men who have no faith, and no religion, but whimpering sentimentalism? The volume, however, upon the whole, has pleased us as much as any of the author's volumes that we have seen, and, if it does not add to his reputation, it certainly will not diminish it.

8.- Der Deutsche Kirchenfreund. Organ für die gemeinsamen Interessen der Americanisch-deutschen Kirchen. Herausgegeben von PHILIPP SCHAFF, Professor der Theologie zu Mercersburg, Pa. Mercersburg. 1849. Zweiter Jahrgang. 8vo. pp. 464.

THIS is a monthly periodical, published at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, by Professor Schaff, of the Mercersburg Theological Seminary. Its aim is to be a central organ for the theological and moral interests of the American-German Church, Lutheran, Reformed, and United Confession; and to contain, among other matters, leading articles on the questions of the day, with special reference to the wants of the American-German Church, ecclesias

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