to assist the average man to present his thoughts and arguments in a pleasing and effective manner. The Mechanism of Discourses is a textbook, not a series of essays: it is presented by the publisher in the simplest possible form; but it is packed full of wise and practical instructions, and it is well worth the attention of all whose duty it is to preach the Gospel. A very few hours given at intervals to the careful study of these pages will almost surely suffice to raise the standard of the reader's eloquence. We commend the book heartily.

SERMON PLANS ON THE SUNDAY EPISTLES. By Rev. Edmund Carroll. Philadelphia: Peter Reilly.

This is a second edition of Father Carroll's Sermon Plans on the Sunday Epistles, first published in London some twenty years ago. The sermons are cast in the homiletical form, and the divisions are always subordinate to one leading idea. The parish priest will find them full of helpful suggestions.

DISCOURSES ON THE PENITENTIAL PSALMS.

Volume II.

By Ven. John Fisher. St. Louis: B. Herder. 30 cents net. This is one of the publications of the Catholic Library which aims at presenting the best of both past and present in English devotional letters. In view of this purpose, the selection of these Sermons would seem to be extremely appropriate. They are quaint, ascetical, systematic and deeply spiritual. Worthy of a martyr, indeed, is the apostolic freedom with which he reprehends sinners. Contrition and repentance form the burden of his commentary, and all the Psalms penitential, particularly the one hundred and twentyninth, receive new and stimulating light because of the saint's exposition.

SEVENTEEN. By Booth Tarkington. New York: Harper & Brothers. $1.35.

We heartily recommend to our readers Booth Tarkington's latest novel, Seventeen. It will drive away the blues from the most melancholy of men. From the first page to the last this story is fairly bubbling over with fun and frolic. It pictures in clear outlines William Sylvester Baxter, a youth possessed of an overwhelming sense of his own dignity and importance. After denouncing the female sex with the greatest scorn, he falls head over heels in love with a certain Miss Pratt, his "baby-talk lady." The course of his true

love is far from smooth, owing to the fact that no one but himself seems to realize that he has at last put away the things of childhood, and become a man. Poor William is always on the brink of despair, for events and people-father, mother, little sister Jane, and the colored servant, Genesis-seem ever to be conspiring against him. Youthful love is an old, old story, but no one has ever before depicted it with such skill and humor.

THE TWIN SISTERS. By Justus Miles Forman. New York: Harper & Brothers. $1.35 net.

This society novel portrays in strong contrast the lives of twin sisters educated in different environments by parents who had been separated for a long time. The girls meet after twenty years, fall in love with the same English lord, and hate each other most cordially, but of course the noble, truthful, honorable girl wins out in the end despite many an obstacle. There are a few questionable statements and a few disagreeable scenes that might have been omitted to the betterment of the story. A Westerner will not be pleased with the crude portrait of the domineering Quintus Brown from Idaho.

LUTHER BURBANK: HIS LIFE AND WORK. By Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. New York: Hearst's International Library Co. $2.50 net.

Dr. Williams has written a popular account of the life and work of Luther Burbank, the well-known plant experimenter with fruits, garden vegetables, flowers, lawn grasses, shrubs and trees. He discusses in detail seed-planting, the care of seedlings; pruning, grafting and budding fruit trees; pollenizing flowers to produce new varieties; and selective line breeding to accentuate desired qualities. Part III. is a defence of the modern pagan science of eugenics, with its sterilization of the criminal and the unfit, State certificates of health before marriage, and race suicide. The author has no idea of the dignity of human nature, or of the first principles of ethics.

LETTERS FROM AMERICA. By Rupert Brooke. With an Introduction by Henry James. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25

net.

These letters from America appeared originally in The Westminster Gazette and the New Statesman of London. They are brief, sketchy records of a young poet's impressions of New York,

Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec, Winnipeg, the Canadian Rockies, and the South Seas. Occasionally his poet soul is manifest in a beautiful description of the Great Lakes, the Canadian Rockies, or Lake Louise, but he frequently wastes both time and his ability on such commonplaces as a New York skyscraper, or a Harvard baseball game.

In an introduction of some forty pages, Henry James gives an excellent critique of this volume and a glowing tribute to the author's poetic ability. Of this volume he writes: "The pages from Canada, where as an impressionist he increasingly finds his feet, and even finds to the same increase a certain comfort of association, are better than those from the States; while those from the Pacific Islands rapidly brighten and enlarge their inspiration. This part of his adventure was clearly the great success, and fell in with his fancy, amusing and quickening and rewarding him, more than anything in the whole revelation."

In his tribute to Rupert Brooke, "young, happy, radiant, extraordinarily endowed, and irresistibly attaching," he says: "He is before us, as a new, a confounding and superseding example altogether, an unprecedented image, formed to resist erosion by time or vulgarization by reference, of quickened possibilities, finer ones than ever before, in the stuff poets may be noted as made of. ...... Never was a young singer either less obviously sentimental or less addicted to the mere twang of the guitar...... His irony, his liberty, his pleasantry, his paradox, are all nothing if not young."

PRAYERS OF THE GAEL. Being a Translation from Irish into English by R. MacCrócaigh of the Collection of Miss Charlotte Dease. St. Louis: B. Herder. 45 cents net.

This collection contains a number of the almost innumerable prayers, which have been handed down from immemorial times. among the Gaelic-speaking population of Ireland, and are still in daily use wherever the old tongue survives as the speech of daily life. Indeed, many of them are known and repeated in English, among communities in which the ancient language has disappeared. Their variety is a testimony to the strength of Irish faith to which the world beyond is not a distant bourne to be reached some day or another in the future; but a present reality as actual as this valley of tears. Prayer for it is not a duty to be discharged merely at stated times; but one which is to precede every item of daily routine; and every situation or task, every danger or tempta

tion, has its appropriate prayer, breathing the spirit of ardent piety. The prayers are not alone expressions of religion, but instinct with the inspiration of the Gael, they are literature and poetry full of the "light that never was on sea or land," and they will touch a deep chord in every heart through which flows any Gaelic blood.

THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. By Rt. Rev. Monsignor Ward. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.

This is the third edition of Monsignor Ward's popular commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, originally published in 1897. The introduction discusses the life of St. Luke, the text and the circumstances under which he wrote. The commentary is intended for the average layman, who looks for a simple and clear explanation of the third Gospel.

MEDITATIONS ON THE PASSION OF OUR LORD. By the Right Rev. Joseph Oswald Smith. New York: Benziger Brothers. 70 cents net.

This little book consists of fifty-seven short meditations on the Passion of Christ and the Dolours of our Blessed Lady. They are written for Religious, but the lessons apply also to the laity. Only in union with the suffering Victim of the Cross may we render our own sufferings fruitful unto life. For those who are able to give but a short time to prayer, the meditations will prove a great aid, in using well even a very brief period of time.

THE

HE MOTHER OF MY LORD, OR EXPLANATION OF THE HAIL MARY, by the Rev. Ferreol Girardey, C.SS.R. (St. Louis: B. Herder. 75 cents net), includes meditations on the Hail Mary, and pious readings on devotion to our Blessed Mother. Both meditations and readings will help to increase love for and imitation of her whom her children delight to honor.

THE

HE last three volumes of that great work to which we have so often called the attention of our readers-the English translation of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, translated by the Dominican Fathers of England-have just been published. They contain the treatises on "The Last End and Human Acts," the "Sacraments" and "Law" and "Grace" and "Habits," general and particular. They may be obtained from Benziger Brothers, New York. The price of each volume is $2.00.

Recent Events.

The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to state that none of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of the magazine, with the exception of "With Our Readers," voices the editorial opinion of the magazine. And no article or department voices officially the opinion of the Paulist Community.

Great Britain.

The military operations of Great Britain have, in the recent past, been limited almost entirely to the defensive. Such activity as she has exerted has been confined to getting ready for future efforts, and to an organization of her forces. The first and foremost is, of course, not the raising of an army, but the maintenance of those already raised. By the voluntary system something like three million men joined the colors, and are now serving in the various fields of action. To supply the wastage, and to maintain these armies at their full strength, continual drafts were, of course, necessary. The wastage is calculated by experts to amount to about nine per cent per month. The voluntary system was failing to supply the required numbers when Lord Derby came forward with his group system. This was a voluntary enrollment of men willing to serve according to a certain defined order, determined by state, single or married, age and occupation. The groups numbered forty-six, of which the single men were to be called first, and subsequently, in case of need, the married groups. Nearly three million responded to this appeal. So far there had been nothing like conscription; in fact, the whole system was adopted with the hope of avoiding conscription. The Prime Minister, however, had made a promise that if a large number of single men failed to offer themselves voluntarily by, as it was called, becoming attested, means would be taken to compel such delinquents. So large was the number thus left unattested that the Prime Minister was compelled to pass through Parliament an Act which enrolls in the army the single men who had not come forward. Compulsion or conscription, so far as it has been adopted in Great Britain, applies only to them.

By the passing of the National Defence Act, it was hoped that a full provision had been made for keeping up the strength of the