CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Dublin Review for October. (Burns, Oates, and Co.)—The new number of the Dublin contains three articles of considerable interest. One is the answer to Dr. Newman's charge that the party which called for the Vatican Council, and the recent decision on Infallibility, had been cruel and careless in its indifference to the difficulties of minds drawn towards the Roman Church, but not yet prepared to swallow so difficult a theological morsel. The reviewer quotes from Father Newman's account of the Fourth Council, and asks with considerable cogency whether all the same objections would not have applied from a minimizer's point of view to the verbal definition of the div;ne Son's existence "in two natures" which was agreed on at that Council, and which certainly led to the great Monophysite heresy. Father Newman, we believe, has never hesitated in approving the earlier dogmatic decisions of the Church. If he hesitates about the last, may it not be that, though quite unconsciously, he is really more doubtful of the truth sof the decision about the rule of ecclesiastical infallibility than he over was about the decisions as to dogmatic teaching ? There is also a very spirited and ably-written article on the plays. Mr. Tennyson's and Sir Aubrey de Vero s, concerning Mary Tudor. We do not, however; entirely agree with the writer's literary estimate of these plays. In the first place, he does not see the great power and dignity of the figure of Mary as painted by Mr. Tennyson, and appears to think that Mr. Tennyson meant only to put her weak and evil side foremost. To our mind, it is quite otherwise. There is, we think, more dignity in the figure of Tennyson's Queen Mary (one thread in it, her abject passion for Philip, being alone excepted) than in Sir Aubrey de Vere's. In the next place, of Sir Aubrey de Vero's two plays, the earlier seems to as to have far more power, movement, and passion than the second, and to be, indeed, in some respects, superior to Mr. Tennyson's play; while the second. part seems to us very inferior to it. Still,
the article is full of skill and vigour. But the most amusing article in the number is that on Burke and O'Conne11,—we were afraid at first that the writer meant to burke O'Connell,—which is written with humour, dash, and literary force. The reviewer makes great fun of the idea that O'Connell was ever an Ultramontane, and disputes, too, his qualities as a statesman, but as a " man of the people" he sketches him admirer !y, and satirises the Home-Rulers for their wonderful credulity in sspposing that O'Connell would have thought the worse of any Irisisnan for accepting honourable office under the English Government,—a right which ho strove bard to main- tain. Neither the Irish priests nor the Irish Homo-Rulers will like the
article ; and as the Irish are nearly divided now between the party of the priests and the party of the Home-Rulers, we suspect the Dublin will be very unpopular in Ireland. But the reviewer writes common- sense about O'Connell, and about the recent collapse of the Centenary celebration, for all that.
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