BOOK NOTICES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 15, 11 August 1893, Page 19

BOOK NOTICES.

Apples Ripe and Rosy, Sir, and other stories for boys and girls. By Mary Catherine Crowley. Beprinted from the Aye Maria.

Everything sent out from tbe office of the Aye Maria, ip so facto, carries with it a high reputation. That excellent institution has well earned tbe character of placing within reach of the Catholic public literature deserving of all tbeir approbation and support. We know, indeed, of no periodical published by the Catholic Press which, on tbe whole, is more satisfactory than the Aye Maria, or which fills a more usefal place. To have appeared in the pages of the Aye Maria, therefore, is quite a sufficieat guarantee for any tale, or essay, or literary composition of any kind. The little book to which we now especially refer is no exception to the rule. It provides for children a series of stories that are sure to interest and delight them. For a school prize it is especially Buitable. It is prettily bound, and la every respect moat creditably brought oat.

A reply to the lecture delivered oy the Rev C. H. Garlanl, " The Bearing of Higher Criticism on Leading Evangelical Doctrines" William Shepherd Allen, M.A. Auckland : Wilsons and Sorton. This, ai the title imports, is a reply to the lecture recently delivered at the Wesleyan conference in Dunedin, and which produced such dismay in Evangelical quarters. From a Protestant standing point the reply appears a fair one, and it is certainly very much better and more to the point than anything that we have seen published on the subject in the newspapers . Tbe writer is evidently a man of a higher intellectual stamp than any of the writers in question, or even, we should say, than the original lecturer. Some of tbe arguments quoted by him in defence of the authenticity of the bookß of the Old Testament are decidedly good, and his analysis of the character of the higher critic is also deserving of praise. In dealing with the New Testament, ht is hardly bo successful. Here the right of private judgment sadly interferes with his plea. Certainly the higher critics have all the right that Protestant principles confer, to take a passage, interpret it according to their lights and form a doctrine, nay, a whole Church, upon it, if they will. The writer complains of a statement made by ths lecturer :— " It makes," he says, " every man hia own standard of authority, his own Bible, »nd his own God." But the right of private interpretation certainly does as much ss this11 There is only one infallible guide," he says again, " and that is the Bible, the word of God.'" An infallible guide, however, explained by fallible interpreters, loses all its certainty. The private interpreter, moreover, is a fallible interpreter individually, nor collectively does he attain to a higher power. On Protestant principles, in short, it is impossible to argue from within against the higher critics. The only available argument is from without— from history or archaeology, if tradition be rejected. The Evangelical pleader, if he be consistent or logical, which, in fact, he never iB and can hardly be, must Bhare with his opponent the inspired text. Here both of them are in equal plight, because like Archimedes of old, each of them lacks tbe pou sto. However, as we have said, from a Protestant standing-point, into which, we may add, consistency and logic do not enter too deeply, the reply in question seems a fair one.

The Borrowed Bride ; a Fairy Love Legend of Donegal. By Patrick Sarsfield Cassidy. New York : Holt Brothers. We honestly confess that the Bight of a whole book, a solid volume of no mean size, of poetry, came upon us with something of a shock. True, we had long known Mr Patrick Sarsfield Cassidy as a clever writer of verses. Nay, more ; much that we had read from his pen had the true poetic ring. But here waa a whole »olume, and that, perhaps, was a differeot affair. It was, however, nothing of the kind. From beginning to end the writer is at his best. Here, indeed, is a story told with a freshness, a quaintnesß, a spirit, truly racy of the soil. The naiveti of tbe peasant is here, joined to the learning, tbe polish, the culture, of the man of reading and refinement. Never, in Bhort, has the folk-lore of the country been mjre charmingly or more naturally put forth. In concluding the veraes j with which the writer prefaces his tale, he writes :—: — " It gave me a holiday, With much of pleasure, naught of toil." And so it would seem to have been. The freedom of the verses is perfect. No strain of the mind, no forced image, no laboured phrase can be found in them. The narrator evidently haa before his eyes all of which he tells his hearers, and need not go in search of it. There is a charm, also, in the simplicity of the language, particularly in these days when it is the apparent ambition of some poets to wrap up subtleties almost beyond the power of unravelment in high-sounding words. The writer, too, has something deep to tell us, albeit with a simple grace. The manner, for example, in which he sets Bide by side the creei of Buddha, as explained by a sibyl of the ancient race, the Tuatha-de-Danaanß, and that of Christ, as shown forth in the teaching and vision of St Oolumba, .is particularly fine. Tbe verses, we may add, in which St Columba has a place, read like an old-time ballad coming straight from the mouth of an old-time bard. The metre is graceful and tastefully varied. There are beautiful descriptions of scene and pageant. There is a breath of the sea, and of the mountain and heath. There is a tone of old Ireland, of simplicity, and oi native delicacy, of the refining atmosphere, in a word, where, as Mr Cassidy, in a prefatory note says, with little exaggeration, the uncontaminated peasant is the " truest gentleman in Europe." The notes are a most valuable addition to the volume, containing as they do a vast store of legendary lore and of the researches of biatory and arcbseolocy-first, as relating to Ireland but by no means so limited. The book is finely illustrated, and richly bound, and forme an extremely handsome volume.

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