demned to destruction in the struggle for existence with a more powerful and energetic race-they are to be helped and protected, gathered into a confederacy and encouraged to the difficult task of self-government. To support the action of the Catholic missionaries among them is to be the privilege of the European colonists. "Whereever Catholic Missionaries have been able to act freely and without impediment, the degraded races have little by little been raised to civilization." In Australia there is a most remarkable exemplification: on one side, in spite of all the English Government has been able to do to the contrary by schools and Protestant missionaries, the aborigines rapidly disappear; on the other, not far from Perth, on the west coast, the monks at New Nursie have, among other wonderful results, civilized a large number of these natives, considered the most degraded type of the human race. The Marquis de Rays, says, enthuthiastically: "The monks founded old France, and they will found New France." The first step in colonization has already been made. The first ship (the Chandernagor) left Flushing in September last, with a large and chosen body of sailors, agriculturists, workmen, &c., under the direction of le Baron de la Croix, the future commander of Port Breton.

A second ship has just left Barcelona for Port Breton, by way of Suez and Singapore, taking a large number of volunteers, a company of gendarmes recruited from among the best Spanish soldiers of the old army of Don Carlos, and a number of Benedictine religious charged by the Propaganda to establish among the natives missions and schools of agriculture. The large funds in hand and the numerous applications now permit the organization of a third expedition. This will go in the steamer India, and will consist of a hundred families of Italian, Spanish, and French farmers, who possess sufficient means to pay their way and build their own houses on their arrival. The Marquis de Rays, who has created and executed this work in ten months, is familiar with the regions he goes to colonize, and has lived there a long time; he knows the people and the difficulties to be expected.

The German Government has made great efforts to create a maritime empire in Oceanica; its attention was particularly called to the islands of the Archipelago of New Britain by Capt. F. Von Schleinitz, charged in 1874 with a scientific mission in those parts, but up to the present no Government has taken possession.

Will the colony succeed? There is no want of funds, of able leaders associated with the Marquis de Rays, or of enthusiasm. The advance guard in the waves of modern colonization has generally been composed of more or less worthless adventurers, selfish, immoral, cruel in this case the conditions most likely to succeed, both morally and socially, have been carefully considered. The Papuas, the native tribes, are simple, open and hospitable; it may be confidently predicted that they will neither refuse the advantages offered by the new settlers, nor use treachery or foul play to rid themselves of their presence. The motives of the founders of the colony are pure and

elevated-neither aggrandizement nor fame-but the conversion and civilization of the natives. The signal success of the missionaries who accompany them is more than all an augury of happy results.

The reader will find a lengthened, but interesting, description of the islands and the plans and methods to be adopted, in these two articles of the Revue Catholique.

Notices of Books.

A Brief Reply to Dr. Bain on Free Will.

Reprinted from the Mind

of April, 1880. By W. G. WARD, D.Ph. London: Burns and Oates. 1880.

WE

E have great satisfaction in calling attention to this further contribution of Dr. Ward to his admirable papers on "Free Will," which, by his courtesy, we are enabled to incorporate in the present number of this REVIEW. Dr. Ward has lately found a new audience for his philosophical articles, and, whilst we should think it extremely hard that he should altogether abandon our own pages, it cannot but be a matter of satisfaction to all who care for Christian truth and sound philosophy that his writings are actually receiving that recognition from non-Catholic thinkers which is implied in the criticisms of the Spectator, of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, and of Dr. Bain himself.

The reply to Dr. Bain does not contain much that is novel to those who have followed Dr. Ward's articles. Dr. Bain had criticized him in the third edition of "The Emotions and the Will," Dr. Ward had replied in two articles in the DUBLIN REVIEW of last year, and Dr. Bain had again rejoined in Mind. "In April last" (1879), says Dr. Ward, "whilst cordially acknowledging that Dr. Bain had treated me with most abundant courtesy-I was nevertheless obliged to complain that throughout his criticism he did not so much as once refer to that central and fundamental argument on which I avowedly based my whole case. On the present occasion I must repeat the same acknowledgment and the same complaint." He contents himself, therefore, with stating and enforcing, by new illustrations, his own position, and then answering one by one the somewhat petty and thin objections of his adversary. The Paper is, as usual with Dr. Ward, full of light, of vigour, and of pregnant philosophic thought.

A Life's Decision. By T. W. ALLIES, M.A.

THIS

Paul. 1880.

London: C. Kegan

HIS is a book which, it is not too much to say, is second in interest of its kind only to the "Apologia" of Cardinal Newman. Mr. Allies has here given us the steps of his conversion-the record of the VOL. XXXV.—NO. 1. [Third Series.]

ways and means by which God led him, of the surroundings which affected him, of the eminent men who influenced him, in taking the "decision" which, momentous as it was at the time, grows more solemn and more wonderful to contemplate every year that he recedes further away from it.

By what grace of God, by what concurrence of my own will with that grace, by what gradual steps, and amid what conflicting currents of passions, interests, and convictions-being born and bred a Protestant, and having, when my education was completed, after three years' travel in Catholic countries, not only no inclination towards Catholicism, but the strongest prejudice against it-I yet, in after times, when my course in life was taken, when all external well-being and prosperity for myself, my wife, and my children, were inextricably linked with my continuing to be a Protestant, when, moreover, the first affection of my heart had been given to the Anglican Church, and I had for more than twelve years been one of her ministers, and had found unexpected honour and emolument as such -how, I repeat, after all this, I became a Catholic-this, for my own remembrance in future years, if God have such in store for me, and still more for my children who come after me, is the subject of what I am about to write (pp. 1, 2).

The record of these things, now given to the world, is full of every sort of interest. There is the never-dying interest of the struggle of a soul from darkness to light, from light to light. There is the interest of foreign travel-churches, clergy, Catholic people—as it influenced the writer's mind and heart. There are many references to Cardinal Newman, and several letters of his, full of his own characteristics, now for the first time printed. The great names, now so well known, which always appear and re-appear in the history of Anglican conversions during the last forty years, are again brought before us, with fresh traits and new materials-Keble, Ward, Manning, Coleridge, Wilberforce, Gladstone, Palmer, Forbes of Brechin. The volume would be worth securing for the newly-published letters alone. Very interesting to readers of the lately-published instalment of Bishop Wilberforce's Life will be found chapter v., entitled "Solution Helped by a Model Anglican Bishop." Mr. Allies was attacked and threatened with prosecution by Bishop Wilberforce for certain doctrinal statements in his well-known "Journal." Several letters passed, and Mr. Allies says:

The letters of the bishop may be compared with those he wrote to Dr. Hampden. In the one case he appears soft, sleek, and silky, as is seemly in approaching a Queen's nominee; in the other he is prompt and bristling, as a guardsman eager to cut down a rebel who is running amuck. These letters from a man made a bishop by mere Court favour, who, while he denied the Real Presence, assumed the tone of an apostle, made me lose all respect for him. I never could find any

solid core of truth in him in his conduct to me (p. 208).

Very well worth reading, too, and very touching, is the account of the writer's interview with Pius IX. at Gaeta, in 1850. Of this audience Bishop Grant wrote, a few days afterwards, to Dr. Wiseman :

"By the way tell Mr. Allies that he must be quick, as the Pope spoke about him yesterday. . . . Cardinal Ferretti said that the only night of real freedom from melancholy at Gaeta was after Allies and Wynne had been to see his Holiness. Get him converted quam primum" (p. 228). All Catholics will share Mr. Allies's conviction that from the moment of that audience and that blessing the cloud began to dissolve and the daystar to rise.

It ought to be rientioned that, besides matters of graver import, there are numberless good things in the book. As a specimen, take this, attributed to Mr. Ward-he is speaking of the Anglican dignitaries" If a man be called moderate, or venerable, beware of him; but if both, you may be sure he is a scoundrel" (p. 11).

Biographical Sketch of St. Thomas of Canterbury. By Mrs. WARD. London: Burns and Oates. 1880.

THIS

HIS agreeable volume is a reprint of two articles which have appeared in the DUBLIN REVIEW. They seem to have been in some degree suggested by the crude and illiterate "studies" of Mr. J. A. Froude. They follow Father Morris's well-known "Life and Martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury," and do not, therefore, require us to do more than announce their re-publication. The writer has brought out very successfully both the natural character and the supernatural sanctity of the holy martyr, and her lively and pleasing style, together with her skilful selection from his own letters, although they only present us with a "sketch," nevertheless give that sketch an enduring value.

The Refutation of Darwinism, and the Converse Theory of Development. By T. WARREN O'NEIL, Member of the Philadelphia Bar. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1880.

W"

ITH the single drawback that this book is a little rhetorical, and, if the expression may be used, flippant in its invective, we have here a very useful and even original essay on the shortcomings of Darwinism. Mr. Darwin's facts, allowing for his way of making too much of them, are true, and, being true, must be of the utmost value to true science. Mr. O'Neil accepts his facts, argues that the pet conclusion with which his name is associated is not borne out by them, and then very skilfully shows to what they do really point. Mr. O'Neil considers that all Mr. Darwin's facts prove the law of Reversion, and not the law of Natural Selection. But Reversion points to a multiplicity of different original types. Mr. O'Neil says very well that there is no proof whatever that variations may proceed to an indefinite extent. Yet Mr. Darwin always assumes this throughout. And not only do his facts not prove it-as how could they?—but his repeated admission that the reason, or, as scholastics would call it, the formal cause of the tendency to Variation is totally

undiscoverable, should make him pause before he pronounces that it can proceed without limit. But-and this is the most original point of Mr. O'Neil's book-Mr. Darwin does lay down one law, the law of Reversion, which goes far to invalidate his continual assumption that there is no limit to Variation. Reversion is the principle that lost characters, features, and organs re-appear in the individual under favourable conditions. Almost every character, for instance, which is developed in animals when domesticated, and cared for by manall those which have been produced by the presence of favourable conditions of growth-were once, in some period past, in a perfect state, and fully developed, in some remote ancestor. Those characters may seem to have been diminished, lessened, or wholly lost, but they were present all the time, in germ, in every individual of the species, and they only required an opportunity to re-appear to the eye. Now Mr. Darwin concedes that all the phenomena of Variation, with an unimportant qualification, may be ranged under the head of Reversion; and, says Mr. O'Neil, there is not a single fact to be found in any of his works, or within the range of physiology, which militates against this view. But if this theory is true, then the theory of unlimited Variation is false. If the theory of Reversion is true, then the number of "species" was fixed by Nature or by God, the assumption of enormous periods of time is unnecessary, and Holy Scripture and popular belief have not been so far mistaken as the men of science would have us believe. It is to he hoped that this book will be read widely. It is most ably written, displays full knowledge of the subject, and places before the reader one view, at least, that we have not met before.

Gleanings of Past Years, 1843-1878. By the Right Hon. W. EGLADSTONE, M.P. In Seven Volumes. London: Murray. 1878.

TH

HESE "Gleanings" are Essays contributed by Mr. Gladstone at various times during the last thirty-six years to various publications of the day. It is characteristic of the author both that he should have thought it worth while to collect and republish them, and that the republication should have been made in these volumes, whose appearance is significant of a railway book-stall, and whose size, of the pocket of a great coat. There is, according to George Herbert, a kind of humility which is "pride in a chain," and Mr. Gladstone possesses no small share of that dubious virtue.

Mr. Gladstone's "Gleanings" fill seven volumes. The first is entitled "The Throne, the Prince Consort, the Cabinet, and Constitution;" the second," Personal and Literary;" the third, "Historical and Speculative;" the fourth, "Foreign;" the fifth and sixth are denominated "Ecclesiastical;" the seventh is described as "Miscellaneous." Upon the whole we cannot say that we think these books will greatly add to their author's fame, or that they will either delight or profit the bulk of their readers. There are very few review or magazine articles with sufficient body in them to bear republishing.