people under the sun love it; who, in all that removes the condition of the Catholics of Ireland from their state under the penal laws, have always fought the battle, and never sought the spoil. It is possible, it is easy, it is easier than anything else to lower the alien Church, and plant the peasant in his own soil at the same stroke. Give the landlord the tithe rentcharge with one hand; but with the other, abolish at once and for ever, tenancy at will as a base tenure, contrary to the spirit of the law of England, and incompatible at once with the proper practice of the industry of agriculture and with the personal liberty of the subject of a free state,

Notices of Books.

Concilii Plenarii Baltimoriensis II. Acta et Decreta. Baltimore: excudebat

WE

JOANNES MURPHY.

E have received this very interesting volume, through the courtesy of Archbishop Spalding; and we ought perhaps to take some blame on ourselves, for not immediately noticing it in detail. But the whole circumstances, present condition, and past history of the Catholic Church in America, are so profoundly interesting both to English and also to Irish Catholics, that we have thought it better to delay, until we could devote an article to the entire subject. Meanwhile we heartily recommend a perusal of these Acts, to those who would appreciate the very important position now occupied by the Church in the United States, and the use which she is likely to make there of that position.

Some able articles have recently appeared in the Tablet, on the same general subject; but with particular reference to the general confidence reposed in American Catholics, by their fellow-countrymen of all denominations, as instructors of youth.

We may add, that the American translation of M. Darras's invaluable Church history, brought out under the patronage of the illustrious Archbishop of Baltimore, contains a most full and interesting appendix on "the Catholic Church in the United States." That Church "now counts," we are told, "seven archbishoprics, thirty-six bishoprics, and four apostolic vicariates." The names, subscribed to the Acts, are those of seven archbishops, thirty-seven bishops, and four others.

Daily Meditations. By his Eminence the late CARDINAL WISEMAN. Dublin: James Duffy, 15, Wellington Quay.

TH

HE name of its author renders any recommendation on our part of this volume superfluous. "It consists," says the Archbishop's preface "of meditations written by his Eminence the late Cardinal Wiseman in early life, when he entered upon his first responsible office, as Rector of the English College in Rome. They were intended to form the habit of mental prayer in the youth committed to his charge, and to infuse into the rising priesthood of England a spirit of personal

piety. In them we still recognize the voice we knew so well. Some will yet remember the days, sweet to memory, when these meditations were read in the venerable College, and will welcome them as a memorial of one to whom, under God, they owe perhaps the vocation which is their highest blessing."

The reader cannot, we think, fail to be struck with the exceeding simplicity and plain earnestness of these early productions of a mind so full and an imagination so exuberant as distinguished our great Cardinal even in sickness and old age. We select the following passages, from meditations on the divine mysteries nearest to his heart, and the prevalent devotion to which, in England, is so largely due to his words and example : the love of Jesus in the blessed Eucharist, and Mary's maternal rclation to all the souls redeemed by her Divine Son :

"Greater love than this no man hath, that a man should lay down his life for his friends. Although a mere man can have no demonstration of love to give beyond this, we may truly say that the God-man has found a degree of charity and a demonstration of it that goes much further. For, not content with having laid down His life for us, He has given us Himself to be our food, and to be most intimately united to us. Had He only died for us, immense, nay, infinite as the blessing and the favour would have been, there would have been an imperfection necessarily in the mode of applying to us individually the benefits of His passion. For had our affections alone been left to perform this important work, it must have contracted all their imperfections, and must have been coldly and languidly done. He willed, therefore, to employ an instrument, a channel for the transmission of His mercy equal, as it were, to the mercy itself. What could this be but Himself, who formed the very essence of the other? Such, then, was His institution of the Blessed Eucharist, wherein He gave Himself again to us, that the love exhibited by His death may not, through our misery be in vain. This, therefore, is a repetition of the immense charity and affection shown forth in His passion and bitter death. Reflect, further, how the tendency of all love is to procure the closest intimacy and familiarity between the persons who love; they would were their love perfect, deprive themselves, in a manner, of their individuality, and have but one soul, one heart. But the love of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament has carried love far beyond this imaginary point. For as nothing can be considered so thoroughly incorporated with us as the food and nourishment which we take, inasmuch as it actually becomes a part of ourselves, so Jesus took this form of communication with us, becoming our spiritual food, but received under species material and palpable. But then, as He is the far nobler, the mightier, the more energizing of the two, it follows that instead of His being incorporated with us, we, in a manner, are rather incorporated with Him, so as to become, according to the expression of the fathers, concorporei,' having a common body with Him. What can be conceived beyond this manifestation of love? Still, to appreciate it further, if, on our part, the union be a most dignified and sublime one, what is it on His? He comes, then, into a frail earthen vessel, a mere tabernacle of perishable clay, into the body of this death, into a heart full of vanity, pride, folly, and dissipation. He comes into a body defiled with a thousand iniquities, and unworthy of the smallest visitation of His mercy; a body that shortly will become the food of worms. Here is love, indeed, and what love! to overcome His natural repugnance to so much that is

corrupt and odious in His sight, that He may satisfy His affection for us."

"The Church of God has always believed that when Jesus upon the cross recommended John to his dear mother, as her son, it was not merely that disciple individually, but every one of us whom He had in view. For certain it is that, from the earliest times, Mary has been considered not only as the mother of Christ, but also the mother of all those that love Him-the mother of all the faithful. If she is said in Scripture to have laid up and preserved in her heart those first words of her son's ministry, when found at twelve years of age in the Temple, can we imagine she did less for His last dying words, His legacy on the Cross?.... But Jesus did not content Himself with procuring to us this adoption with this single address to His mother. He took care again and again to call us His brethren, and to treat us as such, so that it should seem but natural that we should have the same mother. For before His Passion He was content to call His disciples friends. Jam non dicam vos servos. . . vos amici mei estis. But immediately after His blessed passion, He calls them His brethren, Nuntiate fratribus meis.' (Mat. xxviii. 10; John xx. 17.) Now, although the primary and inestimable right obtained by us through this acknowledgment, is that of being called and oeing sons of God, through the adoption above the cross, yet does it not less secure to us all other rights of fraternity with us, and, among the greatest, the adoption which was made of us beneath the cross, in the heart of Mary. And as Jesus has a Father in heaven but no Mother, and chose similarly to have a mother on earth but no father, so that we may be like Him in all things, having given us His Father to be ours, though he be from us in nature most disjoined, He could not withhold from us the same Mother, who is of our flesh and blood, and whose tenderness and love for His brethren must be so great. Nay, how could the kind and benevolent heart of Mary have brooked that her parental interests should alone have been excluded from the circumstances and conditions of our obtaining His brotherhood ?"

We add a most interesting testimony from the Tablet, of Dec. 12, evidently written by an intimate friend of the Cardinal. It is very far more significant in his case than it would be in almost any other, because he was so singularly devoid of all religious ostentation and pretence. He was indeed careless to a fault about giving what is called "edification;" and was indeed too indifferent to the good opinion of others, considering how greatly it forwards the Church's influence that the excellence of her princes should be duly appreciated.

"Dr. Wiseman was but a youth when he became Rector of the English College in Rome. His first religious instinct was to educate his students to a spirit of piety. He burned himself with zeal for the conversion of England; and though in a singular manner his charity was enlarged to such an extent as to make him long for the conversion of heathen nations, and to determine to establish in England a college for this very purpose, yet his chief mission was to England; and this was unmistakably indicated to him by the Vicar of our Lord, in making him Rector of the English College in the Via de Monserrato. How often it happens that God enlarges the heart in His own Divine way and by His secret influences, only in order the more effectively to concentrate the strength of a heart that has expanded under large and generous influences upon that particular field of work which his Vicar points out! We have known

6

more than one instance of this Divine training. And so it happened with Dr. Wiseman that his special mission was to England; and he set about it as soon as he became Rector, by preparing the souls no less than the minds, of the future English priesthood for the work before them. In meditatione meâ exardescit ignis. This is the motto of the saints. This he illustrated as soon as he assumed the responsibility of Rector. Every morning he himself rose before 4 o'clock, and spent an hour in a meditation, which he wrote, and then had read to the students when they came down to the chapel at 5.30 a.m. Those who fed upon this food morning after morning will not have forgotten its savour even now, though the maturity of life, or even old age, may have overtaken them. We well remember the Cardinal's retreats to students and to the clergy, and certain of his sermons on the Passion and Life of our Lord. They were drawn chiefly from these very' Meditations,' which, he more than once told the writer of these lines, were the stock-in-trade' which he had laid up for life in the tranquillity and stillness of those early mornings in the Collegio Inglese, before his struggles with the world had begun, before even the streets of Rome were awakened to their daily life. No doubt the Cardinal's retreats, and those more spiritual sermons to which we refer, did not earn for him, while yet alive, the reputation which welcomed him to the learned societies before whom he used to delight to lecture. This was natural; for they were not submitted to a critical audience, nor did they become the theme of public journals. They were addressed to persons who came to be edified in the sense of being built up; they were the action of the priest or the bishop direct upon the soul They belonged to the inner life and to the mysteries of grace; and therefore they lay hidden from the world and from public comment. We may add, that they were the least laboured, the most spontaneous, and therefore the most effective, of his public discourses. But there was a certain coyness, or rather, we should say, a certain simple humility in the Cardinal, which used to lead him to throw a veil over his more intimate acquaintance with the interior life of the soul. He passed among those who did not know him as a somewhat worldly, difficult, and unspiritual man. But there was an interior life within, which he kept strictly private-secretum meum mihi. To give only one instance. We had occasion once to speak to him upon the subject of ejaculatory prayer, and the sanctification of the daily routine or turmoil, whichever it may be, of life. Well,' he said, 'I'll give you my prayer. I have used it for over thirty years, and I may say it is scarcely ever out of my thoughts when I am at work. When engaged upon anything anxious, or even pausing in a letter, the words came up to me again and again. Here they are: I'll write them down for you, and you may try them: Deus meus, Deus meus, nihil sum sed Tuus sum. They help me through everything.' We narrate this little fact, not only for what it is worth in itself, and because it alone is a true picture of that deeper life of the Cardinal which remains as yet unknown, but because it may serve as a key to the soul which consecrated to meditation so many hours of life. Indeed, if it were necessary to examine the Cardinal's fitness to treat of the spiritual life, it would be enough to produce the testimony of the late General of the Jesuits, Father Roothan, who said of Dr. Wiseman's preface to an English edition of the Spiritual Exercises,' that he knew of no preface which had entered more scientifically into them."

A small part however of the preceding account was corrected by the following letter, which appeared in the next number of the Tablet :

"SIR,-I hope the reviewer of Cardinal Wiseman's 'Meditations' will