New Publications [pp. 854-860]

8S8 New Publications.
book will be extensively read and care- words, rank Atheisn~-is included. This
fully reflected on by men and women is done in order that the young student
alike. may be enabled to choose for himself if he pleases, At/teis'n! We have
here, however, but a logical sequence
FAIR HARVARD. A Story of American of the doctrine of private judgment, and
College Life. New York: G. P. we see to what they finally come who
Putnam & Son. 1869. have once rejected the only infallible
criterion of truth.
This book presents a sufficiently correct view of American college life. It
is interesting, possesses considerable THE PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW
literary merit, and contains some happy TRADITION. By Frederick Henry
sketches of Boston society. Hedge. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
It has, however, one fault in common 1870.
with Verdant Green, a book after which
it is evidently modelled to a considera- The paper, type, and entire typograble extent. It lacks a sufficiently high phical and mechanical execution of this
tone. Getting up muscle, excessive book are so extremely good that we are
-drinking, midnight escapades, and im- disappointed and pained to be obliged
morality, alluded to more or less openly, to add that this pretty shell contains a
are made to play entirely too prominent worthless nut. The doctrine of the esa part in both stories. In Fair Har- say is an incoherent kind of pantheism,
vard the brutal foot-ball game (now, we together with a confused sort of semibelieve, abolished) is depicted without rationalism. The style is dull, and the
condemnation-except from a young manner of treating the topics introduced
lady, whose judgment the reader is of extremely commonplace. The only recourse expected, with the hero of the deeming feature which an infidel book
story, to disregard-while the disgrace- can have is its smartness and charm of
ful conduct of the students at Worces- style. But a dull book of infidelity is
ter two years ago is narrated as though simply unbearable, and this one is alit were something very" smart." When most as dull as the Essays andi?eviews.
we read such things, we involuntarily
think of what Carlyle, we believe, says
somewhere in his works-that most AN AMERICAN FAMILT IN PARIS. With
young men at that age when, under the fifty-eight Illustrations of historical
present system of things, they are at Monuments and Familiar Scenes.
college, should be under barrels. A New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1869.
couple of contemptuous allusions, moreover, to the Irish people, found in this Tbis book is, on the whole, written in
book, are, we assure the author, to say a pleasant and interesting manner; still,
the least, in exceedingly bad taste. it is not fit to be put in the hands of
We think it our duty to add that we Catholic children. It deals not alone
by no means consider Harvard, or any with il~e Paris of to-day, but with the
other non-Catholic college, a suitahie Paris of the past, and so includes not
place for a Catholic young man to pur- only sight-seeing but history; and we
sue his studies. His morality will there cannot let our children get their first
be endangered; but what is perhaps of ideas of history from Protestant sources.
still more importance, his f~ifl~ will be It gives the old story of the so-called
put in the greatest peril. This is true massacre of St. Bartholomew, with all
of Harvard College now more than ever its misrepresentations and errors; and
before, since under the new regi?ne lec- although the life of St. Genevieve is
tures are delivered before the students beautifully told, still it adds "that unon all the different systems of philoso- true and impossible stories have been
phy, by eminent professors of the same; told of her, and foolish honors paid to
and in this list Positivism-in other her, which should not be paid to any