her simple and beautiful thoughts will inspire many a loving meditation. II. The Secret of the Green Vase. By Frances Cooke. Benziger, New York. (Price 4s.) This is the only story to which we have seen Miss Cooke's name attached. She seems to be one of those American ladies who leave the male sex far behind in literary activity. This is a clever and entertaining story; the characters are well developed, the incidents follow one another pretty naturally, and the interest is well kept up, but the plot is a little too melodramatic for my taste. 12. The Education of Our Girls. By Thomas Edward Shields, Ph.D. Benziger, New York. (Price 4s.) Dr. Shields is Associate Professor of Psychology in the Catholic University of America. An earlier book of his bears this title, The Making and Unmaking of a Dullard. Anyone who reads this pleasant work will be anxious to read its predecessor. Even the valuable preface in which Cardinal Gibbons recommends it, did not prepare us for so entertaining and illuminating a book. It is planned somewhat on the lines of Mallock's New Republic. The leaf before chapter I gives a list of names like the Dramatis Personae before a play-four men and three women. whose profession and position are described in a single line. Miss Geddes indeed has "co-ed" after her name, and this puzzled us till we read the chapter on "Co-education and Marriage." That mysterious affix meant that Miss Geddes had been "co-educated"-studied along with men in the University of Michigan. These people meet week after week, discussing very cleverly various questions about the higher education of women and other cognate subjects. Social conditions in the United States are different from ours; but a great deal of Dr. Shield's book is of practical interest for us also. It is well worth reading, and it is not hard to read it attentively. 13. The Christmas Number of Donohoe's Magazine (18, Boyleston Street, Boston), is even beyond its high standard of attractiveness. There are stories by two of our most gifted writers on each side of the Atlantic-Katharine Tynan and Grace Keon, who is worthy of such juxtaposition-and there are solid and deeply edifying articles by the Rev. Hugh Blunt and the Rev. Francis Cunningham. But the wealth of illustration is simply amazing; admirably reproduced portraits and pictures by the hundred. Some of these illustrate an account of Sister Mary Stanislaus, O.S.D., daughter of the poet, Denis Florence MacCarthy, whose convent (Sion Hill, Blackrock) is set before us here by the photographer and artist from many points of view. Equally beautiful are the illustrations which brighten The Aurora (November, 1907), recording the consecration of the convent church of St. Mary of the Woods, Indiana, U.S.A., and the Centenary of the Sisters of Providence. The unsigned Centenary Ode is a noble one, and very original. GOOD THINGS WELL SAID I. There is nothing of the sneak, nothing of the cynic, nothing boorish or cowardly about genuine humility.-Father Joseph Rickaby, S.J. 2. Have a fine professional horror of slovenly, ill-executed work. The Same. 3. Nature is no vain parade, no unmeaning show, no idiot's dream-as it would be, were it not the work of a personal God.— The Same. 4. There is no place like home, and therefore no place like Heaven, our true and everlasting home.-The Same. 5. Hobbies are a solace, and prevent people being bored or depressed.-Rev. George Angus. 6. Personally, I am too indolent to take the trouble to dislike any one.-The Same. 7. Some people find laughing a fatiguing operation, and prefer a quiet smile, like the laughter of St. John Berchmans, which was rather seen than heard.-M. R. 8. I have so much work to do of the common sacerdotal kind, that, if I did not cut off all literature and news, I should not get time for prayer, and so be damned.-Father F. W. Faber. 9. False ideas may be refuted, indeed, by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled.-Cardinal Newman. 10. The virtue of prosperity is temperance, of adversity fortitude, which in morals is the most heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour.-Bacon. II. I never turn a beggar unrelieved from my door, for fear of offending the beautiful angel that guided his footsteps to it. -Mrs. Sigourney. 12. Give to all, lest he to whom you do not give should be Christ Himself.-St. Augustine. SERMONS IN STONE POPULARITY is like a man's shadow: it is close by him when he walks in the sunshine of prosperity; but when the clouds of adversity come over him, it quickly disappears. No motherbird can detect danger for her brood more quickly or more surely than our souls can know the insidious voice of the tempter. "I will be like unto God' was the proud cry that cast Lucifer into the abyss of hell. Yet it is likeness unto Christ that brings the Saints to the heights of heaven. Such a difference is there between pride and humility in the philosophy of life. Have the daring of a great man if you have a great man's ambitions. The ribbon-seller needs only a few inches for his measuring rule; but the yard-stick of the astronomer is 100,000,000 miles long. Perseverance can pierce any barrier that stands in the way of a strong will, just as the sun's rays, when properly focussed, can go through a glass of ice-cold water and light a fire on the other side. Bear up manfully when the tide of fortune is running low -even to the shoals of despair; and remember that it is often with life as with the ocean-the highest tides follow those that are the lowest. Planets have only borrowed light; yet, like men of superficial knowledge, they shine in the early evening, before the great stars of night take their mighty places in the heavens. Geologists may show us that the earth has lost the monster beasts of long ago; but no historian can tell us that the human heart has lost its tendency to bestial vices. MICHAEL EARLS, S.J. ERIN'S PRAYER * Он, spare Thy children, Saviour sweet! JOHN HANNON. Parce, * From the Church's prayer on the first Thursday in Lent: Domine, parce populo tuo," etc. THE IRISH MONTHLY FEBRUARY, 1908 L LONENESS-NOT LONELINESS AMARTINE tells us that solitude always helped to make him a better man and to draw him closer to God. All through his variegated career he felt this, and even when he was living with the most agreeable people and moving in entirely congenial society, he felt the need of finding that complete solitude which from his childhood had been one of life's necessities. "Nothing is worth an hour's quiet communing with oneself," he declares. "It was in the country that I sought and found it. There was not much beauty there certainly, but it was solitary; there were not many fine trees or beautiful flowers, but there was God and His works, and that was enough." Over and over again in his fascinating memoirs does he return to this theme, thus proving that the wise and true words just quoted were not the outcome of a passing mood but the expression of a settled and consistent taste. "No sooner did I find myself alone than I became better; it has always been thus with me through life. I am astonished that ascetic books have not dwelt more on the advantages of solitude. Happy those who are alone-when the thoughts of their mother come to help them!" Circumstances undoubtedly gave him the opportunity of tasting the sweets of solitude, and it would seem that the more complete was his "aloneness" the greater was his content, and the more ardently he desired its continuance. Certainly many young men would have found the life at Narnier very trying; for Lamartine says that it was the most perfect realization of a dream of solitude that any mortal could well imagine. Yet he avows that his happiness was complete, VOL. XXXVI.-No. 416. 5 and that during the whole course of his life he never enjoyed anything comparable with it. The strange thing is that he loved society, was beloved of it, and had a genius for friendship. How may these facts be reconciled? It must never be forgotten that no man can esteem solitude who is not self-dependent, who is not a thinker, and who is not devout. Now the number of really resourceful people is not large. Uncultured folk depend solely upon others for their distractions and amusements. For thousands of people there is no sort of recreation apart from theatres, music-halls and public sports of various kinds. Take away these and their life is a blank. To them their mind is not a kingdom. Most worthy forms of recreation bore them; but the one thing they cannot endure is their own society. Literature and art are dead letters to them; hence, an hour spent in solitude is a hateful penance. And in order to be really congenial to such unfortunates, even the society they enjoy must be like unto themselves creature-comfort-loving and uncultured. These are the unhappy ones who find solitude impossible, for that they are wholly without internal resources. Then, alas! how comparatively few have "the thoughts of their mother to help them." The recorded reflections of Madame de Lamartine are striking and helpful; but much of her teaching that was never put on paper remained in the mind of her brilliant and affectionate son-pearls of wisdom safely locked in the stronghold of his heart. Yet he did well to give so much of her journal to the world-a world that was and is still in sore need of teaching such as Madame de Staël with all her wisdom could not impart. In the recently published Diary of William Allingham we find him, a typical man of the world, expressing the opinion that "at its best, the theatre is a hollow, unwholesome, and unsatisfying excitement." It is interesting to compare the judgment of such a man with that of Madame de Lamartine. At the opera, she says, "I neither felt the astonishment nor the wild delight which everyone had told me of beforehand. On the contrary, I was moved by a sort of pity for the world in general, and said to myself: This then is the acme of all that human art and human taste can produce this is what everyone raves about.' Is this all? It is only a little more exciting than the marionnettes of our childhood. But to come to facts devils and fireworks with spirits of wine, dropscenes and machinery of which one sees the works-that is all. Oh, poor humanity! how narrow-minded it is even in its pleasures! |
