17 OCTOBER 1891, Page 25

The Life of B. John Juvenal Ancina. Edited by Charles

Henry Bowdler. (Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—John Juvenal Ancina was one of the companions of St. Philip Neri. He was born in 1545, and died in 1604. In 1890 he was admitted into the Second Order of Saints, as we may call it, being beatified. The book is not one that can fairly be made the subject of criticism. To some readers it will be profoundly interesting and edifying ; to others it will seem painful and even absurd. According to his biographer, he was poisoned ; but what is told us of his austerities is sufficient to account for his dying in his fifty-ninth year. In the desert a man may practise these and yet live out a century ; but in towns it is almost impossible.