and your Hegels, your Coleridges and your Wordsworths. Nothing is more frivolous than nearly all modern poetry, and nearly all modern art; and they will sink lower and lower, if we do not return to the theology of the Church and the philosophy taught us by the Fathers and the great Scholastics. An age which is unable to see truth and beauty in the Summa Theologica, will never rival Dante or the old cathedrals of Europe. The most it can do will be to copy the old masters, and excel in petty details. We must be men, strong men, living men, before we can be artists.

ART. VI.-1. The Poor Scholar, and other Tales of Irish Life. By WILLIAM CARLETON. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1854. 24mo. pp. 322.

2. New Lights, or Life in Galway. A Tale. By Mrs. J. SADLIER. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1853. 24mo. pp. 443.

WE complain very gravely of Messrs. Sadlier & Co. that they did not send us a copy of The Poor Scholar by Carleton. We never read it till a day or two since, but we are so well pleased with it, that we give our friends the publishers a gratuitous notice of it. It is the best thing that we have seen from Carleton, and is a deeply interesting and touching story. It is one that we can read without offence to our better feelings and our graver judgment. It paints in vivid but truthful colors the domestic virtues and affections of the Irish peasantry, without neutralizing them by placing in contrast an exaggerated picture of the vices and defects of the Irish character, of which we have heard more than enough. He is not as favorable to the Irish character as he might be, and omits many noble traits which he might have added; but he evidently has not intended to depreciate his countrymen, and upon the whole he makes one love and respect them.

New Lights, or Life in Galway, we briefly noticed on its first appearance. It is lively, brilliant, interesting, bearing

the traces of a fine and cultivated mind, as do all that we have read of Mrs. Sadlier's writings. Mrs. Sadlier is an Irish lady, with a strong and lively attachment to her country and her race, for which we honor her, - a most inflexible Catholic, and a very interesting and agreeable lady. We could hardly be severe upon any one of her works, however objectionable it might be to us if written by another. As a critic, we aim to be impartial and just, but we are not exempt from human frailty, and a personal friend is likely to find us less inexorable than an enemy. We can see many beauties in a work written by one we love and esteem, which we might not be able to discover in the work of an author we dislike, or to whom we are indifferent. This we suppose is the case with every literary critic, though not every one will own it, and many a fault has been detected in our own writings by some of our journalists, when they would have seen only a merit if they had not taken a sort of personal aversion to us, perhaps because they had little personal acquaintance with us. But however personally prejudiced we may be in Mrs. Sadlier's favor, we think we hazard nothing in saying that she is one of our very best popular writers, and by her original stories and her translations from the French is making valuable contributions to our still scanty literature.

This Life in Galway is designed to depict the character of what is called the New Reformation in Ireland, of which we have heard so much during the last few years, and shows that the number of conversions boasted of has been greatly exaggerated, and that the conversions themselves are not such as the proselyters have much reason to be proud of, for they are in no instance the result of sincere conviction, and are effected by means alike dishonorable and unchristian, - by taking advantage of the poverty and helpless condition of the people. The poor people are destitute of the means of subsistence; they see their children starving before their eyes; and they have no way of obtaining subsistence by their own exertions. To these poor people, half distracted by the pangs of hunger, the sleek Evangelical presents himself, and proffers relief on condition that the parents will let him have their children for his proselyting school, and go themselves to the Protestant meeting, or, as they say in Ireland, to church

instead of chapel. This is offering a premium on hypocrisy, giving a bribe for dishonesty, and employing a force infinitely more detestable than that of the sword. We are unable to conceive anything more dishonorable, or more immoral and corrupting. This mode of proselyting is of itself sufficient to stamp Evangelicalism as from below, and to prove that its spirit is infernal, not supernal. True religion is never divorced from morality, and it can never consent to advance itself by immoral, dishonorable, or even ungenerous means. Its spirit is always free, noble, magnanimous.

Unhappily, Evangelicalism has no greatness of soul, no tenderness of heart, no sense of honor or justice. It has never been able to propagate itself by moral means, and has always relied on low cunning, corrupting appeals, or the employment of force of some sort. It has not even the manly spirit of the ancient Græco-Roman Gentilism. To it all means are fair, are honorable, are just, that will detach people from the Church, and make them non-Catholics, although hypocrites or infidels. The dragonades of Louis the Fourteenth, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, even as represented by the Protestants, were highminded and praiseworthy in comparison with_the_daily practices of Evangelicals in the West of Ireland, and even in some of our Atlantic cities. Evangelicalism reverses all the precepts of the Gospel, and makes converts only by arguments addressed to the body, the flesh, the animal man, instead of arguments addressed to the soul, to reason, and conscience. It cannot be generous even in its benevolence, and it will give a morsel of bread to the famishing only in exchange for conscience. It would assist us in our poverty from its abundance to educate and provide for our children, but only on condition that it can rear them up in its own evil ways, that it can make them Evangelicals, and twofold more the children of hell than its own adherents. If we have the spirit to refuse its assistance on such terms, it turns round and accuses us of being opposed to education, as loving ignorance, and as having no regard for the welfare of our children. If we exert ourselves, and from our scanty means, after paying our tax for the support of the public schools, provide schools of our own for our children, it raises the hue and cry against us, denies us the right to educate

our own children as we see proper, charges us with a premeditated design to break down the Common School system of the country, and of delivering over the poor innocent Protestant people body and soul to the Pope.

England under Evangelical influence has never consented to treat Catholic Ireland as having either the natural or the civil right to be Catholic, and for three hundred. years has labored in all her intercourse with her to force her to turn Protestant. Her legislation, her administration, her beneficence even, has had this end, and this end only, in view. Hence the reason why Ireland has never been a happy and contented member of the British empire. If she had respected the religion of the Irish, and been contented to govern her according to the principles of common justice, we should never have heard of rebellion as the chronic disease of Ireland. But the Irish people chose to adhere to the religion of their fathers, and hence the Evangelical government of England has felt that it has the right to treat them as brutes, to trample on all their natural rights as subjects, to outrage their dearest and most sacred affections as men, and to make sport of their noblest qualities and their sublimest virtues as Christians. Evangelicalism is laboring with all its might to do the same thing here. There is no hostility in this country to the Irish, simply as such. The hostility to the Irish, which is so general and so deplorable, is hostility to the Catholic Irish, and springs from the Evangelical hatred of Catholicity. The Evangelical finds a brother in the Orangeman, and loves his "rich brogue," if brogue he have. It is the Catholic, not the Irishman, that he regards as an enemy, and he hates the American-born Catholic even more than the foreign-born. All his measures against foreigners, all his Native Americanism, all his pretended love of republicanism, all his talk against the Irish, and about Americans governing America, are directed solely against Catholics, and have for their end to force Catholics to become Evangelicals. The appeal to the Native American sentiment is a device of Satan, and proceeds from no love of true Americanism, but solely from hatred to Catholicity.

Here is a point which we wish such writers as Mr. T. D. McGee would consider. They make a mistake, and defend the Irishman, when it is not the Irishman, but the

Catholic, they should defend; for it is only for the sake of the Catholic that the Irishman is really attacked. Their defence of the Irishman, not of the Catholic, or of the Catholic mainly because he is an Irishman, tends to excite a national feeling against the Irish as Irish, and to enlist against them non-Evangelical, as well as Evangelical Americans; whereas, if they would defend the Catholic alone, or the Irishman only because a Catholic, they would have for their opponents only the Evangelicals, not yet a majority of the American people. The Irish themselves in this country need no special defence, and are best defended, not as Irish, but as Catholics, in common with the whole Catholic population of the country. That Catholic population is made up of native Americans, natives of Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Russia, Turkey, and they all have one common enemy, one common interest, and one common defence, and it is bad policy for them to attempt to draw any lines of division among themselves. They all stand on the same platform before God and the country, and should never in their defence separate themselves one from another. The only fault we find with the writers we allude to is, that they defend themselves on national instead of Catholic grounds, and thus do what they can to compel Catholics to divide among themselves according to their several nationalities, or to seek union by making themselves Irishmen. They would give the hegemony among the Catholics to the Irish, which is unjust to the other nationalities.

We say not this because we are unfriendly to the Irish, or because we do not love and respect them as much as we do our own race or nation. We have no great respect for Irish politicians, whether foreign-born or American-born; that is, a class of men with little solid talent, but great volubility, who regard the portion of our population born in Ireland or of Irish parents as their stock in trade, and seek to render themselves politically important by having it believed that they can command the "Irish vote." These men, commonly regarded as representing the Irish body, we hold in no high esteem, and we seldom fail to let them know it, because their influence, as far as influence they have, is injurious to the country. But it is a great mistake to suppose that these