Spiritual Letters of Archbishop Finelon: Letters to Men. Translated by
the Author of " Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai." (Rivingtons.)— Many English readers will welcome this translation of Fdnelon's Letters, in which the better side of Catholicism is very impressively represented, for they reveal a man of earnest piety, of unworldly nature, of the tenderest affections, who was also generally guided by strong good- sense in the region within which he moved. Perhaps no priest or bishop ever watched with more affectionate interest and anxiety, or with a finer spiritual sense, limited though it was, over tho souls of those ho loved than the good Archbishop of Cambrai. Yet one cannot read these letters without being conscious of a defect both in the writer's method and his aim. laden lived for some years in the century whose decline saw "the general overturn." It might have boon thought that a man of his spiritual calibre would have exercised a re- deeming power to save France from the ruin of which the causes wore already active in his lifetime. As a matter of fact, Fdnelon did nothing to avert the doom of his Church and people. No one who reads these letters need be anprised at this fact. Tho aim of Fdnelon was to make saints, not citizens. His watchword was "Self-cultivation," not "Duty." His method was to set men to self- introspection, rather than to any examination of tho relations in which they stood with their fellow-men. His attention was so fixed on the attitude of a man's soul towards God, that piety with him seems to supersede righteousness. Gifted in some ways with a deep wisdom in spiritual things, he yet fails to teach coon the wisdom by which they may redeem the time in evil days. It is saddening to witness in these letters a saintliness, unworldliness, unselfishness of the highest type effecting so little for the world. There was in England a contemporary of the Archbishop's, who has not received a tenth of his fame, yet Englishmen of to-day may still thank Heaven for giving them a George Fox, instead of a Fenelon.
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