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size, should be at pains to eliminate all matter, even though it be related, that does not bear immediately upon the subject which, defined and qualified, he announces on the title-page. In so doing, he would be able to avoid the gaps in the lines of thinking which no author is justified in calling upon his readers continually to supply.

A PERPETUAL CALENDAR.
By Fr. Woodman.

This is a pamphlet of 17 pages, written by Father Woodman, C.S.P. It contains in popular form a large fund of information about calendars and dates. By simple inspection of three tables, the dates of the principal feasts of the Christian year may be readily ascertained from the year i to the year 5,000. Rules and formulas are given to carry on the process indefinitely. The dates given in the tables are those of: Ash Wednesday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday, and Advent Sunday.

One has only to look in one table for a number, in another for a letter, and in a third (by combination of number and letter) for the dates desired.

Besides this there is a table for telling the day of the week on which any date falls, and there are also rules for determining the same without tables.

The pamphlet contains a mass of information about calendars in general, which must have taken great pains to get together, and which is presented in a a very popular, readable, and understandable way.

STURMSEE.

In Sturmseet the author attempts to teach a number of social truths under the form of fiction. Phi

losophy and sentiment, business management and love, cooperation and competition are woven into a narrative that is interesting enough, if at times taxing. Some well-selected types, notably the settlement worker, the employer, the reformer, the rich young man, the high-minded politician, are placed before the reader in faithful portrait; and a number of events, typical of our social conflicts, are introduced, among A Perpetual Ecclesiastical Calendar. By Clarence E. Woodman, C.S.P. New York: Columbus Press. Price 25 cents postpaid.

↑ Sturmsee: Man and Man. By the author of Calmire. New York: The Macmillan Company.

VOL. LXXXII.-27

them, the strike, the failure of a co-operative business venture, an assassination, a benevolent employer's plan of betterment for his workmen who later kill him.

There is too much social philosophy in the book to interest the general reader of fiction-and possibly too much fiction in it to suit the serious student. Yet, on the whole, Sturmsee abounds in lessons of healthy conservatism and conveys much social information. Those who wish to get the whole import of the work, will find in the epilogue a summary of the greater number of lessons which it teaches.

LOURDES.
By Bertrin.

This work which, though not yet

a year old, has reached a third edition, was composed at the request of the Bishop of Tarbes, in order that he might present it, in the name of the diocese in which Lourdes is situated, to the Marial Congress that assembled in Rome last December for the jubilee of the definition of the Immaculate Conception. The history of the miraculous manifestations at Lourdes has already been written by three pens that have proved not unworthy of the grand theme. The narrative of M. Estrade, relating mainly his own personal experiences and observations, and Dr. Bossaraire's collection of remarkable cures wrought at the shrine, are less known outside of France than the book of M. Henri Lasserre. The present volume demonstrates that there was room for yet another of a more critical character than any of its predecessors, that should vindicate the supernatural character of the visions and the cures against the objections which have been invented to attack the evidence that supports it.

The present writer first relates simply, in charming French, the history of the apparitions, and exposes the futility of the various attempts made to reduce them to the hallucination of a child, or merely natural events distorted by a vivid imagination or exaggerated by hearsay. He afterwards selects, from recent years, some well-chosen cases in which the palpable nature of the maladies, their aggravated character and their notoriety, are beyond dispute, while, at the same time, the restoration of

Histoire Critique des Événements de Lourdes. Apparitions et Guérisons. Par Georges Bertrin. Paris: V. Lecoffre.

the patients to health absolutely refuses to be explained by the theories of suggestion, unknown forces, etc.

Three or four of the cases have been taken from those that occurred about the time when Zola visited Lourdes to obtain material for his book. One of the persons whose cure is related, Marie Lamarchand, is the Elize Rouquet of Zola's pages. M. Bertrin convicts him of having falsified the evidences of what occurred under his own eyes. A voluminous appendix contains, besides a chronological list of all the miraculous interventions that have taken place at Lourdes, a statistical table of the diseases involved, a large mass of authenticated medical testimony attesting the supernatural character of the cures.

Though the piety and the faith of the author are obvious, M. Bertrin keeps the personal and emotional well under restraint; for his main purpose is rather to convince the sceptic than to edify the believer. But believers, too, will be pleased at finding the events established by proof that is prepared to meet the most rigid scientific scrutiny. And when God speaks, as he does at Lourdes, those who undertake to disseminate the message abroad by their pens best fulfil the task by effacing themselves as much as possible.

The Tablet (14 Oct.): The Rev. F. M. Clancy recently delivered, in Birmingham, an elaborate address on the Education Question. Therein he endeavors to show the injustice under which English Catholics suffer, and advances theories calculated to safeguard educational rights and to insure the peaceful progress of general education. He contends that the Unionist government "has played the fool with Catholics." A leader takes exception to the Father's extreme views, and considers it a strange proceeding, to bring the above charge against a government manifestly anxious to conciliate both parties, as the Act of 1902, abolishing favoritism and inequality, and granting to all public elementary schools an equal claim for their maintenance, abundantly proves. Above all, says the leader, let us have a respite from unauthorized programmes, and all sorts of oratorical excursions and alarms.

(21 Oct.): The Roman Correspondent notes the remarkable success of the American students in the Propaganda examinations. Special affection seems to be shown them by the Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State. (28 Oct.): The Archbishop of Paris has received a letter from the Pope in which the French Catholics are encouraged to face without fear the ever-increasing difficulties, and to seek, by fervent prayer, the light and help which God alone can give.

The Month (Nov.): A review of Archbishop Healy's Life of St. Patrick by Fr. Thurston has the first place in this issue. The quality of the work which most impressed the reviewer is its completeness. The review is devoted almost exclusively to a consideration of the chapter on Croagh Patrick-the spot where the Apostle of Ireland prayed and fasted for forty days, and, according to Dr. Bury, the scene of the saint's six years' enslavement. Fr. Thurston expresses his surprise at the readiness with which the author receives the tradition of St. Patrick's great age of one hundred and twenty years, simply because it is stated by all biographers."The Wilds of Limerick" is the title under which M. F. Quinlan gives

an exceedingly clever account of a trip to Bruff —Fr. Gerard offers some adverse criticisms on the second and revised edition of Pallard's Henry VIII. On the whole the work has been much improved by revision, and is far less objectionable to Catholic readers than in its original form. Yet there are some points on which Fr. Gerard is compelled to take issue with the author; as, for instance, the "Rood of Grace" and the execution of More and

Fisher.

The Dublin Review (Oct.): Under the title "Universals and the Illative Sense," Rev. Francis Aveling, D.D., postulates that, throughout the Grammar of Assent there runs a something curiously unfamiliar, an unusual restlessness, and that there we do not find the familiar touch of Newman. The writer then offers as an explanation of this and also of the fruitful controversies to which the Grammar has given rise, the fact that there is in this work of Cardinal Newman a "conscious or unconscious omission of the theory of universals," or "a substitution of some other for the true teaching of the schools." He also adds that: "Had Father Newman written the Grammar of Assent alone, and then laid aside his busy pen, I question whether he would live at all to-day in his writing."The Rev. Dom Birt, O.S.B., gives the third instalment of his article on "Religious Influences in London," in which he reviews a work of Charles Booth under a similar title, and finds that the non-Catholic religious influences in London are being diverted from their proper end and thereby greatly weakened, thus leaving the Catholic Church as the only organization which can do effectual work in reclaiming the London masses.--Disposing in a few paragraphs of Professor Haeckel's explanation of the source of duty, A. B. Sharpe, M.A., in an article on the "Conscience of Rationalism," endeavors to show "how the authority of conscience may probably be able to assert itself when the idea of God, on which it ultimately depends, is ignored or rejected."

-Miss J. M. Stone contributes an article on "Joseph Goerres: His Work and His Friends," in which we are afforded an interesting glimpse of that nineteenth century convert and brilliant writer. It is to be regretted that

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