ROMAN IMPERIALISM, AND OTHER LECTURES AND ESSAYS. By J. R. Seelye, M.D., Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. (Author of "Ecce Homo.") Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1871.
These essays are cleverly and agreeably written. Their topics are very miscellaneous, but all of them important and interesting. Those on "Liberal Education in Universities," "English in Schools," "The Church as a Teacher of Morality," and the "Teaching of Politics," are especially worthy of attention. Some of the writers of the "Broad Church," to which Prof. Seelye belongs, are quite remarkable for their honorable candor, largeness of mind, originality of thought, and, in certain respects, approximation to Catholic views. We like to read them better than most other Protestant writers, and often find their writings instructive. We have seldom seen a book written by a Protestant in which a Catholic can find so many things to approve of and be pleased with, and so few in which he is obliged to differ from the author, as the present volume.
LIFE AND SELECT WRITINGS OF THE VEN. LOUIS MARIE GRIGNON DE MONTFORT. Translated from the French by a Secular Priest. London: Richardson. 1870.
The Ven. Grignon de Montfort was a priest of noble birth, who lived and labored in France as a missionary, and became the founder of two religious congregations, during the eighteenth century. He was a person of great individuality of character and many peculiar gifts and traits, which made his life quite a salient one, if we may be allowed the expression. His talents for poetry, music, and the arts of design, and a marked poetic fervor in his temperament, gave a certain zest and raciness to his career as a missionary, and were a great help to his success. His character was chivalrous and daring, and his sanctity shows a kind of exaltation, a sort of gay mockery of danger, contempt, privation, and suffering, which it almost takes one's breath away to contemplate. His life was very short, but his labors, persecutions, and services were very great. He is best known in modern times by his extraordinary devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It is altogether probable that ere long the process of his canonization will be completed, and a decree of the Vicar of Christ enroll his name among the saints. Those who are capable of profiting by an example, and by writings of such sublime spirituality, will find something in this book seldom to be met with even in the Lives of Saints.