Mr. Paul, who takes up the cudgels for Froude, finds that Freeman's enmity sprang from jealousy of his rival's literary superiority, a jealousy which descended to personal hatred; that his "belaboring of Froude" was not prompted by love for historical truth; that he had acknowledged privately that he was "profoundly ignorant of the sixteenth century," and that finally, "if anyone wishes to form a correct judgment of Froude, as an historian, he can scarcely begin better than by reversing every statement that Freeman felt it his duty to make."

Mr. Paul's own turn comes next. The Spectator of February 24th, speaking of his first utterances in Parliament, says: "Mr. Paul's contribution to the debate was a bundle of brilliant and witty epigrams, but was unhappily marred by its foolish acrimony," and in the Month for January, Paul is set down as "making up occurrences of his own imagination; bringing accusations without a vestige of proof, and indulging in paradoxes which are unredeemed by their stupidity."

Another writer in the Spectator of March 4th wishes that "he could persuade Mr. Paul to write more slowly. His 'History of Modern England' is brilliant, but is not history. The haste with which he writes probably accounts for some extravagances in judgment and for some inaccuracies in facts. It would have been infinitely better if he had devoted some more years to research and some more days to revision."

Mr. Frederick Harrison assures the readers of the new Liberal paper, The Tribune, that even "Mr. Paul has little idea of the extent of Froude's blunders."

Finally, Athenæum says: "We know by this time pretty much what to expect from Mr. Paul. Whether he calls his books history, criticism, or biography, the method and the substance will be very much the same. Bright and rapid writing, with little suggestion of anything subtle or profound; obiter dicta, terse, epigrammatic and frequently acrid, which displays the author's mind on most conceivable topics; a certain intellectual hardness which approaches intolerance of all that seems to him obscurantist, clerical, or stupid; a style lucid as cleverness can make it, and fluent as the most speedy reporter could desire-in a word, the impressions of a journalist, above all things up to date, informed by the telephone rather than by thought, are what we anticipate."

What are we to think of Freeman, Froude and Paul?

EDUCATION.

A large number of thoughtless people in England, some High Churchmen among them, are deluding themselves with the fancy that a certain kind of religion can be taught in the schools without denominationalism. We must have that, they say, or secularism. The delusion ought to be dispelled by a glance at how the terms are understood in the English dependencies. In New South Wales, "secular" instruction, and "undenominational instruction" are synonymous; whereas in Victoria the definition of secular " was left to the discretion of successive Ministers of Education, with the result that a wholesale expurgation of school books was carried out. Everything relating to Christianity was deleted, and so far did this eviscerating process go that even Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night" was mutilated; the "Wreck of the Hesperus" was shorn of the stanza describing "how the maiden

thought of Christ who stilled the waves on the Sea of Galilee"! and the "Christian mother" of the poet became the "frantic mother" of the secular pedant. Years after, the Victorian Parliament directed the restoration of the expurgated passages, but this has not yet been done.

One would expect such manifestations of hatred among the French Freemasons; but here are our broad-minded Englishmen doing the same thing.

The Spectator of February 24, 1906, "hopes that it may be possible for the present government to do the work which ought to have been done by the late government, and to solve the question of university education in Ireland by establishing a university with a Roman Catholic atmosphere which shall fully satisfy the demands of the Roman Church."

A contributor to the New York Sun sends the official figures of the results of a written examination held in all the New York Public Schools on February 19th, the figures showing the average percentage attained by the pupils in the districts named:

The writer asks for full reports of all the districts, and requests, also, to have printed under them the annual expense for education: $30,000,000.

66

Commissioner Draper has issued a pamphlet on illiteracy in the State of New York," says the Educational Review of March, 1906, "which reveals some facts that are new and others that are startling." To begin with, New York has not reduced the percentage of illiteracy in the last thirty years. The worst spot in the State, and the worst in the United States, is to be found in the Adirondack region. The counties of Essex, St. Lawrence, Franklin and Clinton have 71, 72, 146 and 179 illiterates per 1,000 respectively. Moreover, it appears that the foreign born appreciate the privileges offered by the public schools more highly than do the native born; for the percentage of illiterates born of foreign parents in this country is only about half the percentage of illiterate children of native-born parents.

Andrew Carnegie, with Professor Brander Matthews and others, has entered upon a crusade for a spelling reform. The old ironmaster supplies the money. The proposal is in line with that already carried out in the Educational Review of Columbia College, in whose pages one meets such words as "thru," "thoroly," etc. The announcement has set the literary world of England ablaze. Swinburne denounces the project as "a monstrous, barbarous absurdity." Rider Haggard says: "The language of the translators of the Bible is good enough." Conan Doyle is of the opinion that "such a change might be universal, but it would cease to be the English language," and Bernard Shaw informs us that "our spelling is already damnable."

SCRIPTURE.

Three recent books on Sacred Scripture deserve the attention of every Catholic reader; the first is in German, the second in English, the third in Latin; the first considers the controversy about Biblical inerrancy as carried on during the period of the last twenty-five years, the second deals with the tradition of Scripture, and the third investigates its inspiration. Father Fonck is the author of the first (Der Kampf um die Wahrheit der h. Schrift seit 25 Jahren; Innsbruck, 1905, Rauch), Father Barry of the second (The Tradition of Scripture: Its Origin, Authority and Interpretation. By Rev. William Barry, D.D. New York, London, and Bombay, 1906, Longmans, Green & Co.), and Father Pesch of the third (De Inspiratione Sacræ Scriptura; Freiburg, 1906, Herder). The first is a duodecimo of 216 pages, the second a small duodecimo of 278 pages, the third an octavo of 654 pages. The three books differ considerably in their make-up; but each is so attractive in its own way that a book lover will be at a loss to which of the three to give the preference.

And the excellence of these three books is not confined to their outside; their contents deserve the serious attention of every Bible student. Father Fonck divides his book into two parts, the first of which considers the history of the Biblical Question, while the second deals with the value of modern exegesis. And what are the main parts of the historical question? After a retrospect covering the teaching of the Fathers, the Popes, and the Councils, the author successively treats of the period between the Vatican Council and the Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, of the Encyclical itself, and finally of the time after the Encyclical. In the second part of the work he offers us a critique of modern exegesis in the light of the Church's teaching concerning Biblical inerrancy. The method of this work is so natural and at the same time so broad-minded, that it would be difficult to take any exception to it.

Father Barry endeavors to cover a wider field than Father Fonck has done; while the latter studies the single subject of Biblical inerrancy, the former deals with a great many of the introductory questions: Origins, authors, and canon of the Old Testament; canon of the New Testament; authority and interpretation of Holy Writ, are the three main sections of Dr. Barry's work. Each of the three sections embraces a number of chapters which, in spite of their brevity and conciseness, necessarily touch upon a vast variety of subjects. Is there any valid tradition concerning the authorship of the sacred books? What are we to think of the literary analysis of the Pentateuch-or is it to be called the Hexateuch? What truth is there in the chronology of the Bible even in the time of Kings? These are only a few samples of problems ably discussed by Dr. Barry. Not as if we agreed with the author in all his conclusions; yet we admire him for crowding so much matter into such a brief space, and for remaining clear in spite of his conciseness.

Father Pesch confines himself to a study of Biblical inspiration, but we find that the limits of this subject are extremely wide. Its history must be considered as well as its dogma, and thus the author's work is naturally divided into two books. And what an amount of erudition he shows in each. The Jews, the Fathers, the Scholastics, the Protestant writers, the theologians living after the Council of Trent, the writers living after the Vatican Council, one and all of these classes of men had their own peculiar

ideas concerning Biblical inspiration, and all these views we find tabulated in Father Pesch's recent work. And the dogmatic side of the question is not less arduous; for it requires as much erudition as, and more acumen than, the historical side. The fact of inspiration must be established, its nature investigated, its extent determined, its consequences, i. e., inerrancy, the literal sense, and the typical sense, logically and theologically inferred, and its criteria proved. We are not afraid to maintain that whoever wishes in future to treat of Biblical inspiration will have to reckon with Father Pesch's work.

A twenty-five years' controversy about Biblical inerrancy, the introductory questions of Bible study, and Biblical inspiration do not seem to have much in common; still, they have enough in common to justify our placing them under a common heading. Not to insist on minor points, these three books cross one another on the questions of inspiration, of implied or tacit quotations, and of apparently historical passages or books of the Bible. Do they agree on these points? Yes and no; they agree perhaps substantially, but differ modally, or they agree only partially. Generally speaking, Father Fonck is conservative, Father Barry is rather progressive, Father Pesch tries to adhere to the golden mean.

To be more concrete, let us take up the question of verbal inspiration. Father Fonck maintains that the pronouncements of some of the Fathers advanced in favor of verbal inspiration do not prove the point, and if they touch the question at all, they do not represent the common teaching of the Fathers. Father Barry informs us that about the time of Cardinal Mazzella's writing, verbal inspiration was commonly rejected. But has not the opinion revived again in more recent times? Is it not advocated on the right hand and on the left by both conservative and progressive writers of our own day? Father Barry well says: "Since the phrase 'verbal inspiration' is ambiguous-for it tends to signify mechanical dictation-it had better be laid aside. Plenary' is all that its latter-day advocates would insist upon." This point is well taken, and if properly understood will remove a great many misunderstandings. The verbal inspiration rejected by the theologions of the past few centuries is the theory which is now called verbal dictation; against this theory they defended the system of limited inspiration, granting the inspired writer a supernatural assistance in the choice of his words, but denying that God's supernatural influence determined every word in particular. And what do our most recent advocates of verbal inspiration advance when they rise up with a flourish of trumpets against the opponents of verbal inspiration? First, they, too, deny verbal dictation, and thus far are at one with their opponents; secondly, they substitute for the divine assistance granted to the inspired writer in the choice of his words a divine influence such as flows from the principal cause into the instrument.

To be more concrete still, we may take Cardinal Franzelin as a representative opponent of verbal inspiration in the former sense of the phrase, and Father Lagrange as a representative patron of verbal inspiration in the most recent sense of the expression. Both Franzelin and Lagrange reject verbal dictation, and in this sense both reject verbal inspiration; both Franzelin and Lagrange deny that inspiration determines every word of the inspired writer in particular, and in this sense both adhere to a limited inspiration; both Franzelin and Lagrange reject the theory of those who restrict inspiration to certain parts of the Bible, to matters of faith and morals, e. g., and in this sense both reject partial inspiration; both Franzelin

and Lagrange maintain that God's inspiring influence extends to the choice of the inspired words, and in this sense both adhere to the plenary inspiration.

What then is the opposition between Franzelin and Lagrange? Father Lagrange himself is rather cautious in urging such an opposition; he states expressly that the reaction against Franzelin has been perhaps too great. And in the question of inspiration he hesitates about designing God's influence on the inspired words by the name "verbal inspiration." At the same time, it cannot be denied that several of Father Lagrange's admirers write and speak as if there were an impassable chasm between Franzelin's idea of inspiration and that of Lagrange. All this may be mere want of reflection, or enthusiasm, or ignorance; but whatever be the cause of the confusion, let us hope that Father Barry's book will bring out clearly the point that there is an opposition between verbal inspiration and limited inspiration; again, between plenary inspiration and partial inspiration, but that there is no opposition between limited inspiration and plenary inspiration, between Franzelin and Lagrange.

And still, there is a difference between them. Franzelin tells us that the supernatural influence on the choice of the inspired words consists in God's assistance of the inspired writers; Lagrange explains the same influence as that of the principal cause on its instrument. The inspired writer, he argues, is the instrument of God; but the instrument does nothing except through the influence of the principal cause. Father Barry does not help us out in the solution of this argument, but Fr. Pesch steps in at this point. The inspired writer, he tells us, is really one, but equivalently manifold, seeing that he possesses several spiritual faculties. Hence the statement the inspired writer is the instrument of God," may be true, without necessarily implying that all the inspired writer's faculties are God's instruments. Unless it be proved, therefore, either from reason or revelation-and it cannot be proved from either source that the inspired writer's power of choosing his words is taken up by God as his instrument, Fr. Lagrange's contention remains a mere theory.

SCIENCE.

The Jubilee of the Aniline Colors.-Aniline, a colorless, oily-looking liquid boiling at 182 degrees Cent., was first formed by Unverborden in 1826 by destructively distilling indigo; this oily product he called crystalline. Runge, in 1835, separated this same compound, under the name Kyanol, from the oil of coal-tar. In 1840, under the different names, aniline and benzidam (amidobenzine), it was independently rediscovered by two investigators. Shortly after that date Hofmann showed that the four products were one, and the name aniline was retained.

It was well known that in certain of its reactions aniline produced brilliant colors, but nothing was done commercially till 1856, when Dr. W. H. Perkin (who still lives) patented a dye-stuff directly derived from aniline, called mauve, or Perkin's purple. The aniline colors, therefore, celebrate their jubilee this year.

Many of the colors termed aniline are not derived from that substance at all, and their generic name should be coal-tar colors. Aniline oil, which exists only in small amount in coal-tar oil, is nowadays prepared from benzene (not benzine), a coal-tar product, as a starting point. The