in the era of the past civilization, as Dr. Newman and his friends hope now to prepare the way for the brighter and wider morn which our children's children shall behold. No patriot can doubt that this spot must be sought in Ireland.

"There are those who, having felt the influence of this ancient school [Oxford] and being smit with its splendour and its sweetness, ask wistfully if never again it is to be Catholic, or whether, at least, some footing for Catholicity may not be found there. All honour and merit to the charitable and zealous hearts who so inquire! Nor can we dare to tell what in time to come may be the inscrutable purposes of that grace which is ever more comprehensive than human hope and aspiration. But for me, from the day I left its walls, I never, for good or bad, have had anticipation of its future; and never for a moment have I had a wish to see again a place which I have never ceased to love, and where I lived for nearly thirty years. Nay, looking at the general state of things at this day, I desiderate for a school of the Church, if an additional school is to be granted to us, a more central position than Oxford has to show. Since the age of Alfred and of the first Henry, the world has grown from the west and south of Europe, into four or five continents and I look for a city less inland than that old sanctuary, and a country closer upon the highway of the seas. I look towards a land both old and young; old in its Christianity, young in the promise of its future: a nation which received grace before the Saxon came to Britain, and which has never quenched it; a Church which comprehends in its history the rise and fall of Canterbury and York, which Augustine and Paulinus founded, and Pole and Fisher left behind them. I contemplate a people which has led a long night, and will have an inevitable day. I am turning my eyes towards a hundred years to come, and I dimly see the island I am gazing on become the road of passage and union between two hemispheres, and the centre of the world. I see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populousness, France in vigour, and Spain in enthusiasm; and I see England taught by advancing years to exercise in its behalf that good sense which is her characteristic towards every one else. The capital of that prosperous and hopeful land is situate in a beautiful bay, and near a romantic region; and in it I see a flourishing University, which for a while had to struggle with fortune, but which, when its first founders and servants were dead and gone, had successes far exceeding their anxieties. Thither, as to a sacred soil, the home of their fathers, and the fountain-head of their Christianity, students are flocking from east and west and south; from America, and Australia, and India; from Egypt and Asia Minor, with the ease and rapidity of a locomotion not yet discovered, and last, though not least, from England, all speaking one tongue-all owning one faith-all eager for one large trae wisdom; and thence, when their stay is over, going back again to carry peace to men of goodwill over all the earth."-Pp. 45-48.

Turn we now to another page of our book. We long to know what is the estimate which the inaugurator of this magnificent future really takes of his own powers. He knows that his readers must feel curious on this matter. Even in an anonymous publica

tion, the author will speak of himself with reserve.

To affect modesty, however, would be to mar the plot of the design. On the present occasion, he is a confessed ventriloquist, and in such a position he need not fear the censure which his own voice awakes from the corner of his stage, nor need he blush to speak his own praises in the alien accents of a separated personality.

"[My friend] looked at me with a laughing expression in his eye, and was for a moment silent: then he began again:

"You must think yourself a great genius,' he said, 'to fancy that place is not a condition of capacity. You are an Englishman; your mind, your habits are English; you have hitherto been acting only upon Englishmen, with Englishmen. Do you really anticipate that you will be able to walk into a new world and to do any good service there, because you have done it here? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. I would as soon believe that you could shoot your soul into a new body, according to the Eastern tale, and make it your own.'

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"You seem to know a great deal more about it here, than I do in Ireland,' I answered: 'I have not heard this, but still, I suppose in former times, when men were called from one country to another for a similar purpose, as Peter from Ireland to Naples, and John of Melrose to Paris, they did, in fact, go alone.'

"Modest man!' he cried, 'to compare yourself to the sages and doctors of the middle ages.

''-P. 100.

We cannot give the conversation at length, but it is an exquisite dramatic scene. It apologises to the Irish for the interference of a foreigner, by making his position amongst them the natural result of the glories which their own intellectual energies were achieving through a series of centuries, and in a world-wide sphere. Whilst he wanders about in discussion of this subject, he finds himself at last alone in the centre of the edifice which he has called up, and takes the throne of supremacy as a mere matter of inheritance, because his lecture upon the works of his ancestors is now complete. He then speaks of another more recent past of which he was himself pars magna, although he speaks with the more freedom, by seeming to speak rather of others than himself.

"With influence there is life, without it there is none. . . . I have known a time in a great school of letters, when things went on for the most part by mere routine, and form took the place of earnestness. This was the reign of law without influence, system without personality. And then again I have seen in this dreary state of things, as you yourself well know, while the many went this way and rejoiced in their liberty, how such as were better disposed and aimed at higher things, looked to the right and the left as sheep without a shepherd, to find those who would exert that influence upon them which its legitimate owners made light of; and how, whenever they saw a little more profession of strictness and distinctness of creed, a little more intellect,

principle, and devotion than was ordinary, thither they went, poor youths, like S. Anthony when he first turned to GOD for counsel and encouragement; and how, as this feeling, without visible cause, mysteriously increased in the subjects of that seat of learning, a whole class of teachers gradually arose, unrecognized by its authorities and rivals to the teachers whom it furnished, and gained the hearts and became the guides of the youthful generation, who found no sympathy where they had a claim for it. And then, moreover, you recollect, as well as I, how, as time went on, and that generation grew up and came into University office themselves, then from the memory of their own past discomfort they tried to mend matters, and to unite rule and influence together, which had been so long severed, and how they claimed from their pupils for themselves, that personal attachment which in their own pupilage they were not invited to bestow; and then, how in consequence a struggle began between the dry old red tapists, as in politics they are called, and--."-Pp. 114, 115.

But enough has been said to adumbrate the speaker's antecedents, and to win the confidence of those to whom-and not to friend Richard—he is talking. The whistle of the steam engine breaks in upon his reveries, and hurries him back to the scenes where his present energies were necessary.

The varied pages of this book give us several other examples of personal influence, which all serve as steps towards the pedestal on which the writer's position is to be secured. Does he come to Ireland void of definite authority? We are reminded of the crowds in the schools of Athens,-a crowd, for instance, " chiefly of foreigners, whom Protagoras 'bewitched like Orpheus by his voice."

"Such sophists,' says Mr. Grote, referring to the passage in Plato, 'had nothing to recommend them, except superior knowledge and intellectual fame, combined with an imposing personality, making itself felt in the lectures and conversation." "-P. 83.

We are reminded also that Rome has been no stranger to a like unestablished influence, even though Cato strove to quench it by the strong tide of legislative coercion.

"Especially,' says Plutarch, the graceful eloquence of Carneades, which had a reputation equal to its talent, secured large and formidable audiences, and was noised about the city. It was reported that a Greek, with a perfectly astounding power, both of interesting and of commanding the feelings, was kindling in the youth a most ardent emotion, which possessed them, to the neglect of their ordinary indulgences and amusements, with a sort of rage for philosophy.'”—P. 85.

The reader is, of course, intended to cap this quotation from Plutarch with another from Horace. "Mutato nomine de te." One character, however, there is drawn at length. There was one in the twelfth century who trod from early life the paths of am

bition, in the consciousness of intellectual pre-eminence. He did great things" by devotion to one idea." The wisdom of truth, we are told, is "from above, is chaste, is peaceable." Such, however, was not the wisdom of Abelard. His sphere was controversy -his instrument was a sharp syllogism,-his principles were his own self-created judgments.

"People came to him from all quarters and amongst those who sought his instructions, now or afterwards, were the great luminaries of the schools in the next generation. . . . . It was too much for a weak head and heart, weak in spite of intellectual power; for vanity will possess the head, and worldliness the heart of the man, however gifted, whose wisdom is not an effluence of the Eternal Light."-P. 301.

Then we are told how he fell under the snare of sensuality. From this, however, he rose again. Known as the author of a new theory, people looked to him with eagerness and anxiety.

"Once more his school is thronged by the curious and the studious, and at length a rumour spreads that Abelard is exploring the way to some novel view on the subject of the Most Holy TRINITY. 'I betook myself to a certain cell,' he says, 'wishing to give myself to the schools, as was my custom. Thither so great a multitude of scholars flocked, that there was neither room to house them, nor fruits of the earth to feed them!' Such was the enthusiasm of the student, such the attraction of the teacher, when knowledge was advertised freely, and its market opened."-P. 303.

A career is here exhibited to us, which as far as its intellectual features and self-reliant boldness are concerned, is surely singularly significant. With another closing extract we conclude.

"I know not why I need follow his life further. I have said enough to illustrate the course of one who may be called the founder, or at least the first great name of the Parisian schools. . . . He had to sustain the fiery eloquence of a Saint directed against him; he had to present himself before two Councils; he had to burn the book which had given offence to pious ears. His last two years were spent at Clugni, on his way to Rome. The home of the weary, the hospital of the sick, the school of the erring, the tribunal of the penitent is the city of S. Peter. He did not reach it; but he is said to have retracted what had given scandal in his writings, and to have made an edifying end. He died at the age of 62, in the year of grace 1142.

"In reviewing his career, the career of so great an intellect so miserably thrown away, we are reminded of the famous words of the dying scholar and jurist, which are a lesson to us all, Heu, vitam perdidi, operosè nihil agendo.' A happier lot be ours!"

NORTHCOTE'S ROMAN CATACOMBS.

The Roman Catacombs, or some account of the Burial Places of the Early Christians in Rome. By the Rev. J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE, M.A., late Scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Dolman, 61, New Bond Street.

BOTH the subject matter and the style of Mr. Northcote's publication are calculated to recommend it to the general reader. Opening as he does a vast, we had almost said an immense field of research, from which the antiquarian and the theologian can derive important as well as interesting information; it is scarcely enough to affirm that he has given a clear, concise, and graphic description of what he has himself carefully examined. It is only common justice to add, that in giving his account of the Catacombs, he has introduced just that amount of extraneous matter that is necessary to give point and perspicuity to his narrative; that he has displayed very high powers of selection, and that his happy management of the argumentative part of the subject has saved the reader several tedious disquisitions, which a less ready reasoner, with inferior powers of disposing of rival theories, could scarcely have escaped.

At the same time, Mr. Northcote's volume must not on any account be set down as nothing more than a guide or text-book of the Catacombs at Rome. It is this to a very eminent degree, and we can hardly imagine it possible that more minute directions could be given for the examination of the Catacombs, and for selections of those portions of them which are particularly interesting, than those with which the author furnishes us. But it is quite impossible to overlook the circumstance that all through the book, there is a constant effort to edge in arguments in behalf of the distinctive tenets of the Roman Catholic system. Mr. Northcote seems to feel that the evidence from early antiquity constitutes the weak point in his fortress, and in this conviction his mind is ever on the strain to lay stress upon those characteristics of the Catacombs which in any way help to strengthen his own religious position. There can be no harm in his doing so, and it is quite natural that he should adopt such a course. It is, however, very evident that the insinuation of a controversial spirit takes off from the literary completeness of the book; and to a certain extent prevents its being read in that confiding and unsuspicious temper of mind which the solemn and interesting subject could otherwise engender. We wish that the author had been content to give the result of his own accurate examination of the Catacombs, without drawing so

VOL. XIX.