The Author has been honoured with the following letters from His Holiness Pope Leo XIII., and from Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda :

Our Most Holy Lord Leo XIII. received the copy of the volume presented by you, in which you give in the English language the history of the ancient Sanctuary of the Virgin Mother of God, situated in the town of Genazzano, in the diocese of Palestrina, and which is venerated with the greatest piety by the faithful and by the constant concourse of devout pilgrims. As in this work the Holy Father perceives not only the evidence of your filial duty but also the affection of religious piety by which you study to advance the honour of God's Mother, he deems your counsel and service acceptable and pleasing, and desires that by this my letter you should receive a pledge of his paternal love and commendation. The Supreme Pontiff moreover hopes that the salutary fruits which at this time are so much to be desired, may respond to your wishes, and that those who read your writings may be moved to implore the protection of the Mother of God for the Church which, amidst the many adversities by which it is oppressed, places the utmost confidence in Her. Finally, granting your prayer, Our Most Holy Lord, in testimony of his paternal benevolence and in presage of all celestial graces, most lovingly in the Lord imparts to you the Apostolic Benediction.

While I rejoice to convey to you these tidings I willingly take the occasion offered me of professing to you the sincere esteem by which from my heart I am

Your devoted Servant,

CHARLES NOCELLA, Secretary for Latin Letters to Our Most Holy Lord Leo XIII.

Rome, May 27th, 1884.

Rome, May 17th, 1884.

Office of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda Fide.

I have received with particular satisfaction the book entitled, THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOOD COUNSEL, etc., which you, while constrained to repose for some time in order to re-establish your health impaired by your missionary labours, have written during your sojourn in Rome.

It is in every way worthy of a good ecclesiastic and of a zealous missionary to cultivate love for Most Holy Mary and to propagate devotion to Her, and as you have laboured for these ends by writing the history of one of the most celebrated Sanctuaries of Italy, I must rejoice with you in the result, and I hope that I shall have the pleasure of seeing your holy intentions happily crowned with success.

You have also added in an appendix to your work wise observations upon the Roman education of the clergy, and have referred opportunely to the institution of the Propaganda and its salutary influence over the entire world. This also has proved to me the excellent spirit with which you are animated, and I feel assured that the sentiments which you manifest will always serve to render yet closer the bonds which unite the faithful of all countries to the Roman See, the Mother and Mistress of all Churches.

Finally, I return you thanks for the gift which you have made me of this your admirable work, and I pray the Lord, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, whom you have desired to honour by its means, to grant you

His choicest benedictions

taries, and Superiors of Religious Orders in England, Ireland, Scotland, America, and Australia, have also, since the publication of the work, warmly congratulated the Author on its appearance, and promised to extend its circulation.

Notices and Reviews of it appeared also in many newspapers, periodicals, and reviews, amongst which were the following:

From "THE FREEMAN'S JOURNAL," January 16th, 1885. THIS deeply interesting work, which we mentioned recently, claims special attention by more than its utility as an aid to one of the most important, consolatory, and beautiful of Catholic devotions, and its authority as a learned and masterly contribution to the history of the Church, sent forth with the approval and the benediction of great prelates, and for a purpose in which Ireland is destined to have a conspicuous share. It is a delightful work from a purely literary point of view. The author, whose whole heart and soul are in his subject, has so studied it, so informed himself with the spirit of the time and place, entered so thoroughly into the life of the people whose great treasure is the miraculous picture of Our Lady of Good Counsel, and whose richest endowment is the ever-growing devotion of the ancient sanctuary that is so eloquent a witness before men against the spirit of the world, that the reader accompanies him as he might walk by the side of an accomplished expositor through a picture-gallery, seeing not only the works of art that clothe the walls, but the artist spirit that inspired them.

To make known as widely as possible the wonderful history of the ancient sanctuary at Genazzano; to spread the efficacious devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel, of which it is the seat and centre; to make his fellow-Catholics in Ireland, in England, and in the Australian Colonies, which are the scenes of his own labours (Monsignor Dillon describes himself as "a visitor from Sydney to the Shrine "), aware of the faith and fervour that still survive in Italy, under a system which he describes in a comprehensive sentence-such are the objects of the author's laborious and admirably executed task. He came to Italy to find rest and recreation after twenty years of missionary labour in Australia, and he was prepared "to see a great decay of religion in a nation where the most formidable atheism the world has ever seen was, with supreme political power in its hands, astutely planning the eradication of Christianity from the social, political, and even individual life of the people." What did he see? A nation, nine-tenths of whom are earnest, practical Catholics, who oppose to all attempts upon their religion a passive but determined resistance, which no effort of the infidels has been able to shake. In general, family life amongst them equals the purity and innocence of the farm homes of Ireland, They live, in truth, by faith. But above all, that which, in the eyes of the writer, most distinguishes them is their intense and universal devotion to the Virgin Mother of God."

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The twenty-third chapter of this work, which is an exposition of the devotion of the Italian people, is full of pathetic interest and of edification, as well as being an eminently picturesque sketch; but it is not. upon this aspect of Monsignor Dillon's book, "sympatico" though it be, that we ought to dwell in the brief space which we may claim wherein to direct the attention of the reader to a great store of knowledge and beauty. It is to his history of the famous Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel at Genazzano, with its introductory chapters upon the nature and origin of the devotion, the translation of the

Miraculous Image, and the "Pious Union," in which the Irish Augustinians in Rome are deeply interested; to his vivid and pictorial sketch of Latium, whence tradition has it, that from the summit of its mountain, where the church and village of Castel San Pietro now stand, the Prince of the Apostles took his first view of mighty Rome; to his marvellous account of the change from paganism to Christianity, and the reasons that exist for believing the modern Genazzano to be the actual historic scene of the too-famous games annually carried on by ordinance published in the "Calendar of Palestrina," which may now be inspected at the Vidoni Palace in Rome; of Christian Genazzano, in 1467, and the miraculous translation of the Image of Our Lady from Albania to the Shrine where it still remains an object of the deepest veneration to the inhabitants, and of incessant and innumerable pilgrimages from all parts of Italy. Proofs of the apparition of the picture, and subsequently of its translation, are largely supplied by Monsignor Dillon, and although it is not "of faith" that the beautiful and consolatory history is to be received unhesitatingly, we do not think it can fail to convey assurance to the minds of all who are inside the Church, who have "tasted of the graciousness of God," who being of the Household of Faith are accustomed to its divine administration in all things, and in ways which, however wonderful, are not "hard" to the "little children" of the Kingdom, though to the wisest of outsiders they be "foolishness," as was Jesus Christ to the learned Greeks when preached to them by St. Paul.

The author's description of the picture-copied innumerable times, yet never reproduced-is very beautiful, and deeply affecting. We can but urge our readers to acquaint themselves with it, and with the details of the active, vital, and vitalising devotion of which the sacred Shrine at Genazzano is the centre. The book which records these things is a rich contribution to general knowledge of Italy and its people as well, and we hope that the great desire of its author may be realised by the spread throughout Catholic Ireland, tried, tortured, persecuted, and tempted, even as Italy, but like her, faithful still, of that same beautiful devotion. The Mother of God reigns over the Island of Saints as over the Land of the Popes; let the people of the one join with the people of the other in giving her increased honour, and resorting to her with fresh confidence in the communion of the "Pious Union," which invokes "Our Lady of Good Counsel," at that marvellous meeting-place of souls, the Shrine of the Miraculous Image of Genazzano.

From "THE TABLET," August 30th, 1884.

THIS interesting and remarkable volume has already been noticed in our Roman correspondence. Since then the Holy Father has been pleased to approve of it in a special letter to the author. Cardinal Simeoni, prefect of the Propaganda, by whose permission the book was printed at the famous Polyglot Stamperia of that Sacred Congregation, calls the work in another warmly commendatory letter "admirable.' It is moreover dedicated by permission to Cardinal Martinelli, Prefect of the Index; and, as we gather from the dedication itself, is the only work which that saintly and learned Cardinal permitted to be so dedicated. The theologians deputed to examine it on behalf of the Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace, were Dr. Martinelli, Regent of the Studies of the Irish Augustinians and Consultor to the Congregation of Rites, and Monsignor Carbery, at present Bishop of Hamilton in Canada, then Assistant General of the Dominican Order in Rome. These learned theologians not only gave it the usual nihil obstat, but speak in laudatory terms of its contents. The work, therefore, comes before the Catholic public well guaranteed as to the safety and soundness of its doctrine. We believe the erudite author did well to have it so fortified. It treats largely, not merely of the supernatural, but of the supernatural with which English-speaking Catholics are not generally acquainted, and, therefore, in many instances not inclined to receive without considerable preparation. A history of Loreto, or of any sanctuary which circumstances have rendered familiar, would meet with less difficulty. But miraculous events, which, however well known to others, are new to us, require to be told with care. Living in an atmosphere unfriendly to the miraculous because it is Protestant, and

hostile to all that concerns the supernatural, since it has become impregnated with modern naturalism, we become cautious, if not suspicious of everything new to us. We laugh, indeed, at the philosophy which, while disdainfully rejecting all miraculous occurrences as absurd, ends in accepting with childish credulity the ludicrous absurdities of mediums and spirit rappers. But we go often into the extreme of caution in receiving such supernatural facts as are continually repeated in the inward life of the Church. Where the atmosphere is wholly Catholic, belief in the existence of miracles is not so difficult. They are tested, like other facts, and if favourably recognised by ecclesiastical authority are admitted. In this way our forefathers received without hesitation the statement of St. Simon Stock, their countryman, regarding his reception of the scapular as from the hands of the Mother of God; and, in the hope of obtaining miraculous favours, millions of them made pilgrimages, not only to the shrine of St. Thomas and other national sanctuaries, but passed beyond the seas to visit the tombs of the apostles in Rome, and the great sanctuaries of Mary there and elsewhere. They were, perhaps, the most remarkable people for pilgrimages during the ages of faith. It is a very beautiful manifestation of the kind of devotion they so much loved, that Mgr. Dillon brings now under the notice of English-speaking Catholics everywhere. The sanctuary of which he writes is, as Cardinal Simeoni terms it, "one of the most celebrated in Italy." It is, as the Holy Father states in his letter to the author, "venerated with the greatest piety by the faithful and by the constant concourse of devout pilgrims." Moreover, the peculiar and beautiful devotion to the Mother of God, of which it is the source, may be spread everywhere. The wonders worked at the shrine are even surpassed by those which have been wrought through copies of the original in Italy and other countries. It was a copy of it that was so loved and so tenaciously held to old age by St. Liguori. It was a copy from which Our Lady spoke so frequently and fondly to St. Aloysius at Madrid. It was a copy which saved Genoa and restored Calabria to fervour. The image, whether in the original or in well executed copies, has certainly great devotional power over all beholders. It increases fervour, and powerfully excites the petitioner to confidence in seeking graces through Mary, especially the gift which may be said to contain all others, and which is so much needed in our days, the gift of good counsel.

The history before us is a very exhaustive one, both of the shrine and the devotion. In his Introduction the author says of the latter:

"It sprang up, as will be seen, almost at the same time with the rise of Christianity upon the ruins of Paganism in the Roman Empire. The very spot where the beautiful Image of Mary and Jesus now reposes, was once the scene of the foulest rites of idol worship in honour of Venus. There, every April for centuries, came from far and near the men and the women of Latium for the Robigal Games. There, year after year they abandoned themselves to all the abominations not only tolerated, but prescribed, by the Pagan Jus Pontificium of the Romans. No civilised nation of antiquity that we know of, had rites more demoralising than these proud masters of the world; and nowhere, not even in the Flavian Amphitheatre, do the same rites seem to have been carried to greater excess, than near the site of the present temple of the Madonna in the borough of Genazzano, where, when the worship of idols had given place to that of the one true God, the statue of the foulest Goddess of heathendom fell to make way for the Shrine and the sway of the Purest of God's creatures, His Virgin Mother. It was meet and, no doubt, was so arranged by a merciful and wise Providence, that the mother and synonyme of a vice which, with other dark and sorrowful characters, has folly emphatically stamped upon it, should be succeeded, when faith shed its light upon Latium, by the Mother and Synonyme of purity and supernal wisdom, the Mother of fair love' and of 'holy hope,' of consolation and of Counsel."

He continues:

"To make the contrast here indicated more clear, the writer has thought it of use to give a sketch of the history and locality of Genazzano. This cannot fail from its classical as well as Christian recollections to interest the Englishspeaking visitor to Rome, who can get but scant, and, in a Catholic sense, almost no reliable information from the guide-books published in his language; and,

to enable the reader at a distance to realise the full meaning of the devotion, it is necessary. It will serve to show to all, that, though confined to one locality, the devotion existed from a very early period. When God willed its extension it was by means of a most striking and significant miracle. A beautiful image of His Mother holding the Divine infant in her sacred arms, passed from a land just taken by the Turks to the very spot where the Virgin Mother of Good Counsel had been honoured for over a thousand years. The translation of this image was effected without human interference and amidst many prodigies. It naturally created a wide-spread and deep impression at the time. On a festival, it appeared amidst a multitude in the public square, and rested near the wall of the church where it still remains. The fervour it created amongst the people of God, the graces, the consolations, and the miraculous favours obtained at its shrine, continue to this day. It has thus become the fountain of devotion to the Mother of Good Counsel for all the faithful of Christ, in all the lands which own the sway of His Vicar on earth."

In fulfilment of the promise made in this extract, the author has given some very interesting chapters on Latium, Genazzano, Pagan and Christian, and upon Albania, the land from which the miraculous image was miraculously translated, and its last great King, George Castriota, or, as he is better known by his Turkish appellation, Scanderberg. The following description of the physical features of Latium will give an idea of the author's style in treating of these subjects:

"All this expanse of country may be seen on a clear day from the Tiber's bank outside Rome, or better, from the dome of St. Peter's. Thrilling memories of the past are connected with almost every spot of it. Taking a central stand, say, on the summit of Mount Artimisio, a hundred scenes of world-wide celebrity at once come under view. In Velletri at your feet, Augustus the first Roman Emperor was born. Near it is Civita Lavinia, the ancient Lanuvium, the site of the great temple of Juno, the birthplace of Milo, of Antoninus Pius, of Marcus Aurelius, of Commodus, and, in more modern times, of Mark Antony Colonna, the hero of Lepanto. Far in the opposite direction is seen Anagni, the ancient capital of the Ernici, which gave to the Christian world four Popes. amongst whom towers the majestic figure of Innocent the Third. Between these two points, the eye passes over Cori, Segni, Sacro Porto, the valley of the Sacco-the Latin Valley-Artena, and other places famous in the early warfare of the Latin tribes. In front the long sea coast is visible, from the Circaean Promontory still protecting Antium, at present Porto d'Anzio, from the miasma of the Pontine Marshes, to Ostia at the Tiber's mouth. Dotting the dark bosom of the hills beneath, are seen Genzano, Ariccia, Albano, Castel Gandolfo, Frascati, and other celebrated suburban retreats of the Rome of to-day as well as of the Rome of antiquity.

"Turning to the Sabines, Palestrina, the ancient Praeneste, is seen standing out upon the mid-declivity of its mountain. Near it are Zagarolo, Gallicano, and then a wide plain encirling the hills which run towards Tivoli. Higher up than Artemisio, is the summit of the Alban range, Monte Cavo, where stood that great altar of Jupiter to which all Latium yearly repaired for sacrifice and prayer. A monastery in the keeping of the Passionate Fathers now takes the place of the Pagan temple and altar. It was built, strange to say, by the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuart Princes, who had much love for the fine scenery of these hills upon which his bishopric was situated.

"The memories connected with almost every mile of this territory makes it one of the most interesting in the world. But there is much more to be said of it. There is not on the earth a country of the same extent more beautiful to look upon.

The traveller leaving Rome does not first realise this. The flat campagna which expands before him on leaving any of the southern gates of the city, looks dreary and uninviting enough when not diversified by some interesting ruin. This dreariness becomes all the more intense when the imagination travels back to the period when the vast plain bloomed like a garden under the assiduous care of the husbandman."

After giving a history of the miraculous apparition and translation of the sacred image, the author gives several chapters in proof of the facts he brings