The Sun.
London, England, 1848-01-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

THE ANGELIC 176Uin SAINT ALOYSIUS
01 ' GONZAGA. Translated from the Italian of
Fa ther Pasquale de Maffei. By H. S. 11. the Princess
Maria Elisa di Gonzaga-Mantua, Princess (1. Costly-
'ion e,
A Volume of Roman Catholic devotions, written for
the t tse of Roman Catholics, and illustrative of the
life a. Od -writings of a Roman Catholic saint—we are
induct ?d to notice this publication, as it appears to us
to be a Very singular historical curiosity. The book
is an e. tact and graceful translation from the original
of the ; ?adre Mattei, by the Princess of 11. S. 11.
Alexander, Prince di Gonzaga-Msntua, &c. &c., the
last desc. sndant of the ancient and illustrious family of
which Al op sius was a member. The existence of this
celebrated' religious of the Papal Church appears to
have been .of itself a miracle of asceticism. Born on
the 9th of March, 1568, in the Castle of Castiglione
—the son of ' Ferdinand Gonzaga, Prince of the Holy
Empire at al Marquis of Castiglione, and of Martha
Tana San tena, daughter of Tanus Sante* Lord of
Cherry in Piedmont—Aloysius seems to have aban-
doned hin iself to a series of austerities which only
terminate d with his death, on the 21st of June, 1591,
shortly tiller he had completed his twenty-third an-
niversary.. Before then he had long practised as a
disciple of. Ignatius. His career is so extraordinary
that it is Q.onsidered by his co-religionists as an evi-
dence of his sanctity, while it is viewed by
others as nothing lees than the consequence of an
unparalleled fanaticism. Of the character of the
religious sentiments of Gonzaga we may obtain some
conception by gleaning the following as among the
more remarkable of his maxims :--
" Let him who falls into sin, however trifling, have
recourse immediately to God, and entreat for pardon."
—p. 21.

"'The strength of a Christian proceeds from the holy
fear of God ; for he Who fears God has nought else to
fear."—p. 38.

"As water when ruffled or agitated by the winds
cannot represent the image of objects ; so the mind
which is obscured by defects or agitated by passions, is
incapable of expressing in prayer the images of celestial
objects."—p. 49.
" No one ought to esteem his neighbour worse than
himself, but rather, if possible, put a good construction
upon all his actions."—p. 60.
"He who desires to love God does not love him truly,
unless he has a continual thirst to suffer for him every
sort of silliction."—p. 70.

The volume before us contains devotions for what is
called a plenary indulgence, and others for a novena,
the latter being suggested by the reflections penned
by Cardinal Bellarmine. In the present translation,
which is written in the purest idiom of our
language, there is a peculiar interest, seeing
that it is the effusion of the wife of the living
representative of the Gonzagas —a Prince whose
rights have been acknowledged by Napoleon and
Pius, and who, when only fourteen years of age, re-
ceived on the field of battle the decoration of the
Legion of Honour from the hands of the great Em-
peror and King. This interest, arising from his posi-
tion, is enhanced by his misfor,tunes. The work
under consideration is dedicated to Pius IX. in these
words—words as earnest and dictated in a more ge-
nerous and gentle spirit than those employed by
Walter Savage Landor in his dedication of his
" Hellenics" to the same Pontiff:—

"Most Venerable and August Pontiff, your Holiness
having, in the private audience with which you honoured
my husband, Prince Alexander di Gonzaga, deigned to
accept the homage of my English translation of the
Devotion to St. Aloysius di Gonzaga,' and benignantly
pronounced these words, This work would do much good
in Englund;' allow me to offer ray most gratetul ac-
knowledgments for the favour your Holiness has thus
conferred upon my undertaking. I feel assured that this
record of the above words, pronounced by the successor
of St. Peter, and by the Wisest, Greatest, and most Be-
loved of all earthly Sovereigns, will impress upon the
minds of my fellow-Christians the spiritual advantages
they may derive from the more intimate study of the
miracles and virtues of the great saint whose name I
have the honour to bear. Of your Holiness, the most
devoted and attached child in Christ, Princess Maria
Elisa di Gonzaga-Mantua."
We doubt not the book will be examined with
particular attention by the Roman Catholics of
England-

PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE
NECESSITY .OF ASCERTAINING THE
DEVIATIONS OF THE COMPASS. By
Captain E. J. Joinsox, R.N. Barclay.

This valuable and important work is the result of
the observations, inquiries, and researches, of Cap-
tain Johnson, the Superintendent of the Compass
Department of the Royal Navy; and it is published
under the sanction of the Admiralty. Its object is
to illustrate the necessity which exists for ascertain-
ing the deviations of the compass on board all ships ;
and when we inform our readers than the annual
average number of wrecks of British ships is about
547, and that at least ninety-nine out of every hun-
dred vessels are navigated across the seas by persons
who have no knowledge of the deviations of the com-
pass, it will be evident that such a work as the one now
before us is a boon of inestimable value to the nauti-
cal world. The deviation of the compass is quite
independent of the variation : the latter is tolerably
well understood by all seamen, and is properly al-
lowed for in the science of navigation ; but the
former is nothing more nor less than the error of the
compass, and to calculate the extent and influence of
which is a matter of great difficulty, inasmuch as in
some vessels the amount of deviation is small, while
in others it is so large as to be quite sufficient to cause
the loss of a ship even during a short run. Thus it
is clear that the deviation in one vessel is not a guide
to its amount in another ; and there is no other
remedy but ascertaining this precise amount by
direct experiment in each ship. For this purpose
Captain Johnson has laid down a set of " Practical
Rules," which are appended to the work now under
notice. We have stated that the deviation is the
error of the compass ; and from the causes of this
deviation it will be apparent that iron vessels, espe-
cially steamers, incur incalculaWe perils so long as
the amount of deviation remains unascertained. For
the deviation of the compass is mainly caused by the
influence of the ship's iron upon the magnetic
needle, according to the direction of the
ship's head; although minor causes of deviation
may be found in the reciprocal action of com-
passes upon each other when the binnacles are placed
too closely together—as well as in the imperfection
of the compasses themselves, or rough usage, and in-
attention to the occasional examination of the pivots,
caps, needles, &c. Now every one—be he the veriest
landsman, that never saw the sea—knows that in
directing a ship's course allowances are made for
leeway, the set of the tides or currents, and for the
variation of the compass ; but it is by no means so usual
to find that any allowance is made at all for deviation.
We frequently read of ships being wrecked upon a
coast, a rock, a sand, or a shoal, from which, accord-
ing to the " lead, log, and look-out," they calcalated
at the moment of the disaster they were fifteen or
twenty miles distant ; and then it is wondered how
the misfortune could possibly have occurred. The
wreck of the Apollo frigate and forty of her convoy
on the coast of Portugai, in 1803, was the subject of
profound marvel in the nautical world at the time,
seeing that the charts were accurate, the calculations
nicely made, and the usual precautions of navigation
duly adopted. A similar sensation of wonder was
excited when three of our finest line-of-battle ships
were wrecked on the coasts of Jutland and
Holland in 1811 ; and in thousands of other
instances the surpriie has been as great, and
the mystery has appeared as impenetrable.
But the lucid demonstrations of Captain Johnson
have at length dispelled that mystery ; and it is plain
and evident that while all the usual precautions of
the art of navigation were adopted in the cases alluded
to, the one grand calculation was omitted—the de-
viation, or error, of the compass was unthought of I
We will suppose a vessel to be steering up the
Channel in the night ; it would endeavour to pass
midway between the Portland Lights, on the English
coast, and Cape La Hogue, on the French coast. In
this case it would leave all the perils of the Channel
Islands and the Gaskett Rocks on the right. But an
error of half a point in her compass__that is to say,
the deviation—in a long run, would carry her into
the very dangers which she was endeavouring to
avoid. Again, the distance between Dungeness
Light and the Light on Cape Griznez (France) is
twenty-three miles. The Reliance, East Indiaman,
was lost on the French coast in 1842, by taking a
wrong course through the deviation of the compass,
and which led her to mistake the French
for the English Light. But if the deviation can
be so great in wooden ships, how much more
must the magnetic needle be influenced by the huge
masses of iron employed in the construction of steam-
ships and their machinery. This consideration may
naturally revive the question of how the Great Britain
came to be wrecked ; for the error of the compass
frequently induces a course which will place signal
lights in such a position with regard to the ship as to
engender the most fatal mistakes. Thus, in 1842,
Captain King, of H.M.S. Alban, informed Capt;in
Johnson that on one occasion, when leaving the Long
ships Light (on the Cornwall coast), he steered north
for sixtes miles, and then north by east for the Tuscar
lighthouse (on the Irish coast); but when the weather,
which had been very thick, cleared up, to his surprise
he found himself in a most dangerous situation on the
Welsh coast 1 In this instance all the usual rules
and practices of seamanship were fully adhered to ;
but it was the deviation of the compass, for which no
calculation had been made, that led to the adoption of
a course so far astray, and so perilously
wrong. " The Ethalion, ' says Captain John-
son, quoting another instance, " rar upon a shoal
in the Gulf of Finland when steering, as the captain
and master supposed, in the fair- way between two
shoals, according to the bearing of a point of land
given in the sailing directions, as leading clear of
thew. The point of land did actually bear as di-