To all parents and teachers we also recommend Mr. Formby's amusing little drama, The Village Carol-Singers (Burns and Lambert). The satire which runs through the plot and dialogues is levelled against a popular folly which cannot be too openly exposed. Some very good songs and hymns are also interspersed. Opportunely, at the present season, Messrs. Burns and Lambert have issued The Offices of Holy Week, in Latin and English, printed in full, and pointed for recitation or chanting. From the same publishers appears also a translation of the Manual of the Brothers and Sisters of the Order of Penance of St. Dominic; a body of constitutions interesting to the general reader, and indispensable to such brothers and sisters of the Order as are unable to read the original. A similar interest attaches to the Devotions to the Seraphic Father St. Francis (Beresford, Islington), translated from the Raccolta di Novene, published in Rome in 1848; and to the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to the use of the Carmelite order, in Latin and English (Burns and Lambert). Mr. Ward, formerly of St. Saviour's, Leeds, has addressed a letter to the inhabitants of that parish, called The Sequel of Tractarianism (Leeds, Bradley), of more than local interest, especially from its containing a statement respecting Dr. Pusey which has not a little astonished some of his still-adhering disciples. Dr. Pusey, it seems, "placed the new Catholic hierarchy at least on a level with that over which Dr. Sumner presides!" And further, he considers it quite compatible with "dutifulness" to the Establishment to believe in the Pope's supremacy! Is not fact, after all, far stranger than fiction? A pretty specimen of Protestant wilfulness, ignorance, and want of candour is to be found in The Jesuits, a correspondence between a Catholic gentleman and Mr. Hoare, the incumbent of Christ Church, Ramsgate. It is the old tune over again, but with fresh variations, jingling and clattering away as senselessly and noisily as ever. 66 At St. Matthew's, Bristol, preaches a Mr. Clifford, an evangelical" clergyman, of strenuous anti-Catholic activity. Mr. Edward Walford has lately been answering some of Mr. Clifford's most absurd" questions for Roman Catholics to answer if they can, and if they like," in his Plain Words to Protestants (Richardson). Mr. Clifford was hardly worth answering, we should have thought; but they say every simpleton finds some more simple than himself to believe in him. The same author's Little Mary's Hymn-Book (Richardson) may be also recommended to those who want a cheap present for a child. To Mr. Dalton's translation of St. Teresa's Way of Perfection (Dolman) we shall again recur. We wish that all translators exercised Mr. Dalton's discrimination in their choice of books. No. 42 of the Clifton Tracts (Burns and Lambert) is a very clear and powerful statement of the scriptural evidence for " the supremacy of St. Peter," slightly altered and abridged from the writings of St. Francis de Sales upon the same subject. We take this opportunity, also, of reminding our readers at this season of the tracts on Holy Week published in this series, Nos. 14, 15, and 16. Dr. O'Brien, the Protestant Bishop of Ossory-(we do not retaliate the inverted commas with which Dr. O'Brien designates the Catholic prelates of England and Ireland)—has published a Charge to his Clergy (Hodges and Smith), in many respects favourably distinguished from the documents of a similar kind which have recently issued from his episcopal coadjutors. His abilities and style are of an order more than respectable; he condescends to read some of the writings of that Church which he assails; he does not forget that he is under certain obligations of charity and gentlemanly feeling even when Catholics are the objects of his remarks; and though he is too squeamish to eschew the impertinence of the inverted commas, he speaks of Catholic prelates and Catholics in general as men who are to be treated as persons of conscientiousness and honour until they prove themselves the reverse. Of course he falls into many errors as to Catholic doctrines and practices; and with all his professions of toleration, reserves toleration, in the true sense of the word, for Establishment Protestants alone. Nevertheless, for the sake of truth and the destruction of humbug, we sincerely wish that we always had as clear-headed and straightforward opponents as Dr. O'Brien. The charge itself is an elaborate vindication of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and it has a clever Preface on the Catholic Oath, strikingly contrasting with the offensive remarks on the uselessness of the Oath as binding on Catholics, which we have recently heard broached by "liberals" in Parliament. We abhor the oath, because it does fetter us. Mr. Ferguson, in his Poland and other Poems (Groombridge), has not done his reputation justice, or come up to the mark of his previous efforts. He will waste the abilities he possesses, and reap needless disappointment, if he forget the extreme caution necessary in the publication of poems. The writer of the pamphlet, Mesmerism considered (Blackie, Glasgow), assumes that Mesmerism is preternatural and diabolical. As we think the reverse, we cannot sympathise with his deductions. Certain it is, that some very high Catholic authorities have permitted its use for medical purposes, and with due precautions. A correspondent sends us the title of a curious work with reference to our article on "the Gold-fields of the Ancients:" The Discoverie and History of the Gold Mynes in Scotland, by Stephen Atkinson, written in the year MDCXIX., which was edited and presented to the Bannatyne Club by Gilbert Laing Measom, Esq., in 1825. Levey, Robson, and Franklyn, Great New Street, Fetter Lane. The Rambler. PART LIII. CONTENTS. HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF DEVOTIONS TO THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. No. V. Benediction KATE GEAREY; OR, IRISH LIFE IN LONDON THE GOLD-FIELDS OF THE ANCIENTS REVIEWS.-CATHOLIC BIOGRAPHY UNDER THE PENAL LAWS. DR. PHILLPOTTS AND THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. The THE CAPE AND THE KAFIRS. The Cape and the Kafirs; PAGE 341 349 376 383 392 403 410 or, Notes of Five Years' Residence in South Africa. Church and the Holy Bible.-Extracts and Comments for those who choose to read.-Illustrated First Cate- chism.-An Illustrated Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Septenary of the glorious Patriarch St. Joseph. -Bradshaw's Sixpenny Railway Guide.-The Choir, a Collection of Sacred Music for Churches, &c.-Free- To Correspondents. Correspondents who require answers in private are requested to send We cannot undertake to return rejected communications. All communications must be postpaid. Communications respecting Advertisements must be addressed to the publishers, Messrs. BURNS and WE have already said that it is uncertain whether the carrying of the Blessed Sacrament in procession, which is now so striking a characteristic of the festival of Corpus Christi, was coeval with the institution of that feast, or a later addition to its ceremonies. But however this may be, it was certainly very often carried in this way at a much earlier period. We learn from Lanfranc that such a procession formed a part of the function on Palm-Sunday even in his day; and it must have been very common in the Greek Church during Lent, when they made such frequent use of the Missa Præsanctificatorum. Moreover, some kind of procession of the Blessed Sacrament might always be seen whenever there was occasion to administer the viaticum to the sick. The constitutions of many of our provincial councils held during the thirteenth century give very minute directions upon this subject. That held at Oxford, for example, under Stephen Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1222, and another under his successor, St. Edmund, in 1234, and another in Reading in 1279; these all desired that the priest who carried the Holy Eucharist on these occasions should wear a stole and surplice, unless the place to which he was summoned was at a very great distance in the country; that he should be preceded by ecclesiastics bearing one or more lights, a bell, and (if it had not been already taken to some other sick man in the parish) the cross also; and that he should take every possible means to warn the people in the neighbourhood, both by these external circumstances and by the utmost reverence and solemnity in his own demeanour, that he was bearing with him the King of Glory, that so they might fall down and worship Him as He passed. But in all |