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belief will never be at peace until it has torn to shreds and patches the divine garment of Christ. Together with the edifice of society the temple of God must be rent in twain. "Must, then," asks a learned and gifted writer," "this mighty structure of Time be sacrificed in the end to patch up peace among those for whose quarrels it is not answerable? or to propitiate a faction whose day-dream of liberty is but of liberty to overthrow whatever acts as a check to the possible aberrations of reason, or to the unbridled indulgence of licentiousness?"

Let us listen to the voice of Mazzini and learn from the High-priest of the revolution what he has to tell about its aims and purposes, and the ways and means it makes use of to carry them into execution.

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Italy," says Mazzini, "is still what France was before the revolution; she wants, then, her Mirabeau, Lafayette, and others. A great lord may be held back by his material interests, but he may be taken by his vanity. Leave him the chief place whilst he will go with you. There are few who would go to the end. The essential thing is that the goal of the great revolution be unknown to them, let us never let them see more than the first step.". "Associate, associate," continues this apostle of ill, addressing the people of Italy, "everything is in that word. The secret societies give irresistible strength to the party that call upon them; do not fear to see them split, the more the better. The secret will often be violated, so much the better; a certain transparency is needed to inspire fire in the stationary. When a great number of associates shall be able to concert a movement they will find the old building pierced in every part, and falling, as if by a miracle, at the least breath of progress. They will be astonished themselves to see flying before the single power of opinion, kings, lords, the rich, the priests who formed the carcass of the old social edifice; courage, then, and perseverance."

But let it not be thought that the power of Mazzini belongs to the things of the past, nor that the secret societies, like moles labouring under ground, no longer pursue their work of destruction. A revolutionary committee is sitting to-day in Turin, watching over the" interests" of the kingdom of the two Sicilies. Lafarina is the name of the president. It has just issued a proclamation to the Papal and Neapolitan armies, which was soon smuggled into the Sicilian barracks. It is addressed to the soldiers of

*The Pastoral charge of Bishop Gillis.

the Bourbon of Naples and of the Pope. It tells them in following the example of Tuscany and the Duchies, they will remove the stain which rests on their honour. For you alone," it continues, "and not Austria, since the battles of Magenta and Solferino prevent Italy from taking the first rank among the nations. You have only to will it and Italy is free from the Alps to Trapani. This society that watches so busily over the welfare of Naples is a branch of the "Società Nazionale Italiana," which also has its head-quarters at Turin, and is the Grand Lodge for all Italy. While we write its workings are manifested by the piratical expedition of Garibaldi. The danger is imminent. Who shall save her? Where shall we look for the sword of the deliverer? Are the germs of regeneration in her own bosom, and after the long waste of winter, is her second spring at hand? Italy, in her great need, wants a second St. Charles Borromeo to denounce again vanity and spiritual sloth, to freshen the zeal of the clergy, and to quicken the faith of the people. But the quick step of anarchy is at her heels, and the scourge of the revolution is lifted over her head. Are the horrors and havoc of anarchy to be her lot and her punishment? If it be too late to avoid the punishment it is not too late to benefit by it. Let her disown the errors that have led her heart astray, and the evil advice that has darkened her judgment. The night of the revolution is not for ever. "For truth," Alison tells us again, "is strong, and will prevail. The reign of injustice is not eternal; no special interposition of Providence is required to arrest it, no avenging angel need descend to terminate its wrathful course. It destroys itself by its own violence; the counteracting force arises from its own iniquity; the avenging angel is found in the human heart.'

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When the avenging angel of the revolution has brought Italy to her senses, she will rise clean in heart from her baptism of blood, and purified in every limb. Her faith renewed in the fire of tribulation, will behold in joy, after the subsidence of the tempest, that the waves of the storm have beaten in vain against the base of the Rock of Peter, for the Ark of God will be discovered resting in triumphi on the Mount Ararat of the New Dispensation.

London:

ART. VII.-The Minister's Wooing. By H. Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Sunny Memories," &c. Sampson, Low, Son, and Co., 47, Ludgate Hill, 1859.

THERE is many a true word spoken in jest, and there is many a novel written in earnest. However historic the characters of "The Minister's Wooing," and however actual the facts which form the foundation of its leading events, both of which circumstances the Introduction asserts to belong to the story,-its main interest is derived from the mind which animates it, and the spirit which breathes through it. Like an old painting, it is not drawn for effect, it is a natural expression of the writer's soul; and we approach the consideration of it, therefore, with diffidence and respect; because it is not of a mere tale that we have to speak, nor yet is it a mere production of the imagination, nor yet a mere picture of the actual life the authoress seeks to portray, or of the historic personages she brings on the scene; our task is deeper, and higher, and more important; we have to deal with a high, and noble, and immortal being, whose life gives to the book its animation, and whose musical plaintiveness runs throughout it, mostly below the surface, but often openly betraying itself.

Let us speak the word boldly. The writer of this story is, unconsciously it may be, but nevertheless really, athirst after what alone can satisfy her, but which as yet, to judge from this book, she knows not as it is-the Catholic religion! This alone can satisfy the longings and slake the drought of the poor human heart, mercifully condemned to be ever yearning, ever pining, till it finds the only spring and the only stream which can ever satisfy it,-God, and God's grace, flowing through His one true Church! If this meets the eye of the fair authoress, let her not think us presumptuous; we presume not in ourselves to use these words; we use them not as claiming any natural right to instruct one we acknowledge as more highly gifted; we use them not from ourselves, we use them because they are what God has revealed; and, if we may add it, because we have practical experience that they are true, and from God. The heart which guided the hand and the head in writing" The Minister's Wooing" has need of them; it has not yet found its home. It is a noble heart, it is a

deep and a tender and a true heart. God, in His mercy, guide that heart aright, and enlighten it, and exalt it by His supernatural light and grace!

This story is none of our every day sickly sentimental unrealities; on the contrary, its very reality and freshness constitute its charm; and it is full of bright and cleverly-drawn scenes. It opens with a tea party at Widow Katy Scudder's, whose sailor husband was struck down by yellow fever under the line, after whom followed to eternity two sons and a daughter, leaving the mother with one fair girl, Mary, the heroine of the story. Mr. Scudder was an earnest, thoughtful, religious, conscientious soul, and his widow's religious impressions were deepened by his death and the memory of his goodness:

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"As she grew older, her energy of character, her vigour and good judgment, caused her to be regarded as a mother in Israel; the minister boarded at her house, and it was she who was first to be consulted in all matters relating to the well-being of the church. No woman could more manfully breast a long sermon, or bring a more determined faith to the reception of a difficult doctrine. say the truth, there lay at the bottom of her doctrinal system this stable corner-stone, Mr. Scudder used to believe it, I will.' And after all that is said about independent thought, isn't the fact that a just and good soul has thus or thus believed, a more respectable argument than many that often are adduced? If it be not, more's the pity,-since two-thirds of the faith in the world is built on no better foundation."—p. 6.

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This is a candid avowal, and we fear a true one as regards those externally separated from the Church. That there are among them cases of invincible ignorance as to the sin of that external separation we anxiously hope and trust; and among these cases there may doubtless be many who possess faith in those truths necessary to salvation; but we believe, alas! that we might almost say the vast majority, or in the words we have quoted, two-thirds of the so-called faith, in this world, outside the Church, rests on no better foundation than human opinion, human prejudice, and human respect. How few ask themselves why they are Christians! or believe the essential Christian truths because God has revealed them! and yet as every Catholic knows this is the very ground and essence of faith. If faith, then, be essential to salvation,-and "without

faith it is impossible to please God,"*-how can we overrate the importance of such a remark as we have quoted above, which evidently is no slip of the pen?

To proceed with our agreeable task, we must pass over a pleasant description of a tidy New England kitchen, and come to the person of our heroine. We will give the whole passage, which affords also an insight into that most important personage "the Minister," and his doctrines, as well as of no less important an individual in the person of a gallant young sailor, whose being filled rather more than a corner of our good little Mary's heart. As to Mary,―

"She could not waltz or polk, or speak bad French, or sing Italian songs,......but she could both read and write fluently in the mothertongue. She could spin both on the little and the great wheel, and there were numberless towels, napkins, sheets, and pillow-cases in the household store that could attest the skill of her pretty fingers. She had worked several samplers of such rare merit, that they hung framed in different rooms of the house, exhibiting every variety and style of possible letter in the best marking-stitch. She was skilful in all sewing and embroidery, in all shaping and cutting, with a quiet and deft handiness that constantly surprised her energetic mother, who could not conceive that so much could be done with so little noise. In fact, in all household lore she was a veritable good fairy; her knowledge seemed unerring and intuitive and whether she washed or ironed, or moulded biscuit or conserved plums, her gentle beauty seemed to turn to poetry all the prose of life.

"There was something in Mary, however, which divided her as by an appreciable line from ordinary girls of her age. From her father she had inherited a deep and thoughtful nature, predisposed to moral and religious exaltation. Had she been born in Italy, under the dissolving influences of that sunny, dreamy clime, beneath the shadow of cathedrals, and where pictured saints and angels smiled in clouds of painting from every arch and altar, she might, like fair St. Catherine of Siena, have seen beatific visions in the sunset skies, and a silver dove descending upon her as she prayed; but, unfolding in the clear, keen, cold New England clime, and nurtured in its abstract and positive theologies, her religious faculties took other forms. Instead of lying entranced in mysterious raptures at the foot of altars, she read and pondered treatises on the Will, and listened in rapt attention while her spiritual guide, the venerated Dr. H., unfolded to her the theories of the great

* Heb. xi. 6.

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