Irish Homes and Irish Hearts. By Fanny Taylor. (Longman.)—The homes
visited and described by Miss Taylor are religious institutions, and the hearts of which she speaks are devoted to deeds of charity. Mach of the book is painful to Englishmen, many of its sentiments will not be accepted in a Protestant country, and some not in a country where common sense is valued. Bat the general impression left on us is that Miss Taylor is honest, that where she blames she has had good -cause for her blame, and where she praises her praise has been deserved. We cannot follow her through the whole course of her tour, or allude to more than a few of the details she gifes M. She certainly shows that an immense amount of good is done by most of the religions houses she mentions, by some among the poor, by others among criminals, by some in teaching the young, by'others in reclaiming women. The dark side of her book is the account of the systematic attempts at conversion which prevail in parts of Ireland, and which are carried on by appeals to hunger. While in the great Roman Catholic Hospital in Dublin, persona of all creeds are admitted and tended indiscriminately, and are allowed the ministrations of their own religion, patients have been turned out of other hospitals in their last hours because they refused to die without confessing. Wo hope some of Miss Taylor's stories are exaggerations, Rota it is unfortunately certain that, whether true or not, they are believed by the Irish. Even if she has coloured her pictures of Irish things too highly, and believes too readily all that was told her against the English, the effect of her book remains the same, and will until we alter it.
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