The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

The Dublin Review. New Series: No. VIII.
Burns, Lambert, and Oates.
There can no longer be any doubt whatever as to
the extraordinary improvement manifested in this
thoroughly rejuvenated and re-energized periodical.
It is not simply that new blood has been infused
into it, but that that new blood is, so to speak, the
" blue blood" of literature, the healthiest, the most
invigorating. Number eight of the new series, the
number just issued with the April magazines, is in-
comparably the best instalment of the Dublin that
has appeared since it passed under its present
management. Its contents, as a whole, com-
pletely justify us in the opinion we remember to
have already expressed in regard to the Dublin
Review, as it is now conducted, when some' few
months back we took occasion to say that it
has fairly assumed its position, as a literary organ,
recognizably upon the same le\ el, side by side, with
the ablest of its contemporaries, with the Quarterly
and with the Edinburgh. There is about it a direct
purpose—such as it is—that is as comprehensible,
as appreciable, as consistent, as persistent, as that
of the quarterly organ of either the Tories or of the
Liberals—of the blue-and-buff Whig or of the
tawny Conservative. There is, apparently,
throughout it, moreover, throughout each
separate number of it—and this present num-
ber may be referred to as one affording a
singularly apt and vivid illustration of the
fact we would here insist upon—there' is apparent
now in each number of the Dublin an unity of
design and of purpose that gives to the organ a
force, that can hardly fail to secure to it an influ-
ence with the general public, that it very much
lacked previously. Hitherto its reputation, though
high, has been restricted. The scope of it, as the
quarterly organ of its creed and party, may be re-
cognised now, as it appears to us, readily enough
upon a mere examination of the themes selected to
be descanted upon by its several contributors in the
very number just now issued from the press.
Apart from an eloquent and touching Memorial,
to which we shall refer more particularly before
closing . our remarks, there is, as the very first
article in the number before us, a bold and uncom-
promising discussion of " The Principles of 'Eighty-
Nine," with especial regard to Political Society
and the Source of Power. As the next article,
strongly contrasting with the one immediately be-
fore it—we have a charming criticism upon
" Recent Irish Poetry"—poetry, mind ! not mere
verse-making—by true poets, such as Samuel
Fergusson, and Speranza, otherwise Lady Wilde, as
Aubrey de Vere, and William Allingham. Other
masters of the lyre, or rather, it should be said,
we presume, of the Irish Harp, such as Thomas
Davis and Florence Macarthy, are not forgotten
by the reviewer, these latter being referred
to, however, only incidentally. As the third
article, there is one in which the Dublin,
from its point of view (or of re-view, shall
we say?) pronounces upon the "Causes and Objects
of the War in America." Then comes an article
upon " Irish History," suggested by Theiner's
materials for it. Afterwards there is a paper on
modern Italian History, suggested, in its turn, by the
memoirs of Consalvi. The sixth article is entitled
suggestively " Wanted, a Policy for Ireland." The
seventh and eighth relating to the famous En-
cyclical Quanta cura ac pastorali vigilantia. The
former of these two papers, commenting upon it,
taking its purport, that is, minutely into consi-
deration—the latter, article eight namely, giving
(in their entirety) both the Encyclical itself
' and the Syllabus—in the original Latin, and in a
wonderfully literal and yet idiomatic translation.
Afterwards, as the ninth article, headed "Notices
of Books," there are clubbed together nearly twenty
minor criticisms. The tenth (and last) article in the
number being a record of some recent " Foreign
Events of Catholic Interest." The " Memorial,"
however, already referred to as prefixed to the
general contents of this April number
of the Dublin, will be read with far deeper inte-
rest, and we are certain, also; with yet higher ad-
miration than any other portion of the ten articles
of which it is appropriately the precursor. It
is a Memorial of the last survivor (until the other
day) of the three 'men who first founded the Dublin
Review—himself the greatest of all the contributors to
it. Occupying though this memorial does less than a
dozen pages, it is nevertheless one of the completest
memorials of Cardinal Wiseman that has yet ap-
peared—the completest, we would_ say, excepting
only the funereal discourse delivered on the day o
his interment.

Sermons on Our Lord and His Blessed Mother. By
His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. One Vol.,
pp. 398. James Duffy, Dublin.
Having but just now had occasion to comment
upon the last, it should even be said, the posthu-
mous literary production of his Eminence the late
Cardinal Wiseman, we have, in the present instance,
to direct attention to other and very different papers
of his, some of them, according to the Preface in
this volume, among the very earliest of his compo-
sitions. Sermons they are, all of them, as the above
title, indeed, explicitly intimates. Not Essays, not
Lectures—simply and avowedly Sermons, and ser-
mons, too, as their collective titles indicate them to
be, upon themes the most sacred. Nevertheless,
sermons though they are, it is purely and simply in
their capacity as literary productions that they are
here for an instant referred to in the columns of a
public newspaper. Criticised in their capacity as
Sermons, they might be, with some show of reason,
we will go so far as to say even of decorum, in the
columns of an avowedly ecclesiastical or expressly
religious journal, in such organs, for example, as the
Tablet or the Record. Whereas, in a general news-
paper, like our own, works of this particular charac
ter, can alone be referred to, en passant, with anything
like a regard for good taste, we will even go so far as
to repeat the word, with anything like a regard for
decorum, in their capacity, purely and simply, as lite-
rary performances. So regarded, the present col-
lection of sermons will be found singularly interest-
ing—contrasting, and yet harmonising, as they do,
in the style of them, with the more ripened vocabu-
larly and the more flowing periods of their writer's
last, his posthumous, production. Speaking him-
self of the modifications in style always noticeable in
an author whose literary labours have extended over
a long series of years, the Cardinal himself remarks,
here, very picturesquely, in the course of his Preface
..--." Our frame, our features, our. complexion, our
voice, cannot remain the same through thirty years ;
and no more can that style which forms the phy-
siognomy of our writing." Pursuing the same
thought very ingeniously still further, he adds—
"lt [the style' which he has so happily termed the
physiognomy of our writing') takes its character
from our occupations, our society, our health ; it
catches its colour and hue from the objects that
surround us, from the very atmosphere which
we breathe, from the authors which we happen to
be chiefly reading, and from a thousand inappre-
ciable influences." So, here, has it been—he himself
was conscious of it, while writing thus—so precisely,
here, has it been in regard to these very Sermons.
Preached as they almost all were (he tells us in the
Preface) at Rome—they were—the Sermons in this
Collection—written at various and scattered periods
within an interval of Thirty Years. A space of above
a thousand miles, he also tells us, sometimes inter-
vened between the delivery of some and the deli-
very of others among these sermons--sermons,
nevertheless, occasionally in this volume placed side
by side, as though they had been delivered, let us say,
on consecutive Sundays from the same pulpit. Ob-
viously, therefore—indeed, quite necessarily and un-
avoidably—there often appears an extraordinary dis-
crepancy in the mere manner or style of the discourses
now, by reason simply of their kindred themes,brought
together into a single collection. For this very rea-
son, however, the book has an additional attraction
of its own. If it lacks uniformity, it possesses
diversity. But, while the absence of uni-
formity is alone noticeable in the style, the
diversity of the book is alone noticeable in the
varying manner of its contents. As to the subject-
matter of it, that is noticeable for its oneness, so to
speak, throughout. The work here under considera-
tion in fact, although by nomeans the most remark-
able among the voluminous writings of cardinal
Wiseman—whose literary masterpiece, by the way ,