ation as to make it a means of producing a greater degree of co-operation and personal acquaintance with each other, and with Catholic affairs, than has hitherto existed among the members of the Catholic body in London and its vicinity.-Fourth: That in order to carry these objects into effect, it is expedient to form a Society which shall consist of all Catholics, who, having been elected by ballot, shall pay an annual subscription of ten shillings.-Fifth: That the Society shall be governed by officers elected annually in the usual manner."

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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

Bertrand, a Tragedy. By S. B. Harper, Esq. London. Fraser, 1837. HE scene of this tragedy is laid in Madrid, and the subject is a plot entered into by some Castilian nobles to dethrone the reigning king, Ferdinand, and raise in his stead his queen, Joan, who had been living for some time in a convent, as a nun. Lopez, one of the conspirators, at the same time that he seems all loyalty to the king, determines in his own mind, if their designs against the king should succeed, to marry Queen Joan, and thus elevate himself to the regal dignity. A young noble, named Bertrand, who is betrothed to Lopez' sister, is ardently loved by Joan, and is on that account hated by Lopez, who attempts to get rid of him by assassination; but a feeling for his sister, Mariana, forbids him to repeat his attempt at least until he effects a change in her affections, which he tries to do by persuading her that Bertrand loves Queen Joan. For this purpose, he feigns having received a message from Joan, requesting Bertrand's attendance at the convent; and having thus sent him there, he informs his sister of Bertrand's errand, and advises her to follow him and be a witness of his visit to the convent. Her jealousy prompts her to conceal herself near the convent gate, within which she sees that Bertrand gains admittance; but before he enters, she overhears some fragments of his soliloquy, which she misconstrues so as to confirm her worst suspicions. So far Lopez succeeds. He next sends Bertrand on a pretended commission from Joan to the conspirators, and then obtains from the king a guard which seizes him immediately after he has delivered his message to the conspirators, and conducts him to Ferdinand, who condemns him to death. On the night before his execution, he encounters in his dungeon one of the conspirators, with whom he enters into conversation, and, from their mutual explanations, the dark designs of Lopez are made manifest to both.

The morning of the execution arrives, and Queen Joan, as if by magic, appears on the scaffold, on which a tumult is begun by the people, who shout "Long live Queen Joan." She quells this commotion, on the condition that the king should pardon the criminals before him. He does so; but Mariana, whose nerves were so much shaken by the supposed infidelity of Bertrand, that she becomes insane, stabs her lover-and thus ends the tragedy.

We have space for only a very few remarks. The character of Mariana seems to us to have an excess of violence in it; and though, in the end, she is destined to sum up the story with a deed of blood, that deed, nevertheless, proceeds from madness, which very seldom occurs, unless the feelings of the patient are very sensitive and acute. This is precisely Mariana's case; and to fancy that a being of such feelings would be so indifferent to those of others, would be to suppose a thing more than improbable. When she upbraids her brother for his seeming indifference to the danger from assassination, to which Bertrand had been exposed, and from which he had just escaped, she finishes with these words:

"Then might'st thou feel a kind of gratitude,

That powerful majesty had missed its aim,

So as just at that then present instant

T'eclipse the outbreakings of revenge. But hired,
Night-prowling, indiscriminate stabbers!

Why the man 's no more mettle than an ass!"

And when he first tells her that Bertrand loves another, the sister addresses the brother thus:

"William !-Assassin !-Fiend !-What is thy name?

The Devil, not God, made thee! My Father's Son
A vile impostor !"

This passage leaves as bad an impression on our mind, of the charity of Mariana, as the one above does of the poetry of our author.

The most of the second scene is nothing but a wide field, in which the impudence of Lopez' servant, Vallos, is shown off, and the highborn conspirators are unhappily made to bear with it all, till his lacqueyship chooses to give it up. There is no meaning, no end to be attained in this, and we naturally conclude that it would have been better left unwritten. The second act is better managed than the first, and is the best, except the fourth; but one or two passages, such as the following, might be omitted to advantage:

"LOPEZ. Were I now to kill thee, sister, could'st think it love? MARIANA. So please my brother, I had rather he should not prove me.

LOPEZ. But could'st trust it, love?" &c.

The third act opens with a soliloquy of Joan, who, among some much better things, says, speaking of herself:

"Herbs and raw fruits her princely banquets make;
Cold, cold, hard stones, her velvet cushioned couch."

And addressing Mariana

"The sun did shine at night, when thou wast born!"

We can understand how a princely banquet can be composed of herbs and raw fruits; but, in spite of all poetical licence, we are at a loss to cenceive how "cold, cold, hard stones," can be brought to signify a "velvet cushioned couch;" and this is the first time we have heard of the sun shining in the night-time.

Act IV is rather long; but the poetry is very good throughout, and abounds with images. It commences with a soliloquy of Lopez, who, though of a cold, calculating nature, nearly akin to misanthropy, is yet, on this occasion, sensibly affected, and all his feelings are warmed into love for his kind, by contemplating the beauty and harmony of nature on a gay summer morning. The passage alluded to is one of the best written in the work, and does the author great credit.

After the pardon of Bertrand, in the fifth act, the following is used by Mariana, as an expression of endearment towards him:

"Oh Bertrand, darling! As the boa constrictor
Doth furl around, tight, tight its many coils,

My round long love hugged thee; oh! oh! how could'st
Thou throttle me? It would have kept thee warm."

Now it strikes us, that if our poet, at the time he wrote this, had in his mind the nature of the serpent, or remembered the fable, in which the countryman, who meeting with one whose energies were paralyzed with cold, and taking it up to restore animation, by putting it into his bosom, did so to his own detriment,-we think he would not have employed this unfortunate simile, as he has fared no better with the image than the countryman did with the reality.

The principal defect of the work is a want of connexion, which becomes very apparent in Act V. There are a few improbabilities, such as the retention of Vallos by Lopez, who knowing his servant to be a villain and an eaves-dropper, nevertheless trusts him with a letter, containing a bribe to the lady Abbess of the Convent. The bribe (a diamond ring) excites the curiosity of Vallos, who, like many of the modern successors in his calling, bends the letter, and learns an important secret of his master's.

We make the foregoing remarks, merely to apprise the author of what he ought to guard against, if he should think of again coming forward as a candidate for fame. We would advise him to work hard, for there are, if taken individually, many passages of great beauty to be found in the work before us; and it is only the difficulty of producing a harmonized whole, that he will have to surmount the next time he comes before the public.

Essays, Literary and Political: by W. E. Channing. Glasgow, James Hedderwick and Son, 1837.-As an eloquent writer and original thinker, Dr. Channing has established a high reputation. Many of his views are profound; but he stumbles. like a man in the dark, when he touches on the subject of the Catholic religion. With all his liberality and charity, he entertains silly prejudices against Catholicism, which must be ascribed to early education. The letter on Catholicism, has several striking passages; but it betrays, on the part of the author, an entire ignorance of the first principles of Christianity, and the constitution of the Christian Church.

Philosophy and Religion, with their Mutual Bearings comprehensively considered and satisfactorily determined on clear and scientific principles:

by William Brown Galloway, A.M. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1837.-In an age like the present, abounding with scepticism upon the subject of revealed religion, every attempt to connect philosophy and religion cannot fail to excite the interest of every believer in Christianity. Much evil, as Mr. Galloway observes in his preface, has resulted to philosophy and revealed religion from the want of a proper understanding of their mutual bearings; many ingenious men having in consequence been led into infidelity, and still more having had their belief injuriously affected; while, on the other hand, many religious men entertain a jealousy of philosophy. These evils he ascribes to the erroneous and ill-defined notions of moral and metaphysical philosophy which have hitherto prevailed, and to correct these is the object of his work, which he modestly says is "a desideratum both in philosophy and in religion." But we quarrel not with Mr. Galloway for this high opinion of his own performance; which, notwithstanding some startling metaphysical dogmas, is a work of great merit.

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Picturesque and Historical Recollections during a Tour through Belgium, Germany, France, and Switzerland: by M. O'Connor, Esq. London: Orr and Co. 1837.-Among the many books of travels through Germany and Switzerland that now are published, the above we find to be one of the most interesting, as well as filled with more liberal sentiments, with regard to the religions and customs of our continental neighbours, than such works ordinarily contain. The author, an Irishman, delights to draw comparisons between his own country and that of the Swiss :-" Both," he says, are peopled by a hardy race, who have, in most of the fields of battle in Europe, figured in the same ranks, won laurels, and reflected glory on their respective countries." He amuses with his remarks on the stiffness and hauteur which aristocratic English families generally assume when travelling abroad, and which deservedly exclude them from the pleasures which the nobility of every other country derive from the intelligent conversation of mercantile tourists. He conveys instruction to the historian by his succinct description of the labours of the Irish monks, at the head of whom was Columba, who took up his residence in the Vosges Mountains, and founded several monasteries, which afterwards became celebrated for the number and value of the manuscripts which they contained; and he interests the admirers of the fine arts, by his very just remarks on the paintings of the old Flemish school, which he had an opportunity of visiting on his way through Holland. Our author visited Basle, where he of course went to the cathedral, in the churchyard of which is the tomb of Erasmus. He thus describes his visit:

We passed over a wooden bridge, six hundred feet in length, into Great Basle. Our first visit was to the cathedral; and as our guide had never heard the name of Erasmus, we were obliged to wander in quest of his tomb, but were repaid by the perusal of old monumental inscriptions, in which we recognised the learning and classic elegance of the old university. Many a pious sentiment elevated us to the contemplation of futurity. Many a holy text pointed to the vanities of all sublunary enjoyments; and many an epitaph, in the medium between

exaggerated praise and moderate eulogy, excited us to the imitation of the virtues of those to whom they were inscribed. At length, we descried the bust of Erasmus. His epitaph is written in a style of simplicity and elegance characteristic of the inhabitant of the tomb beneath. His mortal remains are there deposited; but his wit no longer animates, his genius no longer illumines, his learning no longer ennobles, his true sense of religion no longer chastens the university. Ignorance and illiberality have fixed their residence in those once celebrated abodes of science and toleration. The Reformers have banished the Catholic religion from Great Basle. The free exercise of it is excluded from all places of religious worship, and is connived at in Little Basle, to the great inconvenience of the Catholic population of the other town."

Mammon; or, Covetousness the sin of the Christian Church: by John Harris. London: Ward and Co. 1837.-This work is so well known as the essay which gained the prize offered by Dr. Conquest, for the best work on the above-mentioned subject, and the best means for its remedy, that we need say little or nothing on its merits: it will be enough to say, that the author has treated his subject in a most masterly style, and that the work is worthy of notice, principally on account of the powerful reasoning and elegant style of writing which pervade its pages.

Sonnets, by Edward Moxon: second edition. London, 1837. These verses possess considerable poetical merit: some of the author's ideas, however, border upon the extravagant. He is ready with a sonnet on any given subject, even on pensions. Witness Sonnet XXV, “Occasioned by the debate on the motion for a Revision of the Pension List," which thus pathetically opens :

"The times are full of change; and restless men,
Who live by agitation, would devour

The widow's mite-her all,-the orphan's dower,—
If upright minds do not, by speech and pen,

Their fury check."

And, accordingly, Mr. Moxon brings his grey goose quill into requisition. The book, in its typography and paper, is a bijou.

St. Agnes' Fountain, an old English Ballad, and other Poems: by J. W. Kelly. London: Darton, 1837.-A neat little book, made up of a collection of verses of a light nature, and well calculated to inspire children with a taste for reading poetry, which we think is the object of the writer.

Poems, original and translated: by Charles Percy Wyatt, B.A. London: Fraser, 1837.--This is an addition to the numberless works of poetry already published, which could almost be dispensed with, were it not for a few of his sonnets, and his translations from the German. The latter are executed with spirit, and the former glide along with ease and smoothness, and display good taste.

The Oakleigh Shooting Code: by Thomas Oakleigh, Esq., with numerous explanatory and other Notes: edited by the Author of " Nights at Oakleigh Old Manor Hall." Second edition. London: Ridgway and Sons, 1837.-This is a very useful manual for Sportsmen. fewness of the technical terms used in it renders it intelligible to the

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