The School - Goy Saint. A Sketch of the Life of Decalogne
de la Porno. By Mrs. J. F. Mitchell. (J. T. Hayes.)—Decalogne de la Perrie was born about the middle of the last century, not very far from Amiens. He died in his seventeenth year, showing all the notes of a genuine saint of the Roman type. His was a character of which it is hardly possible for an Englishman brought up in the customary traditions of this country to judge. Anything more unlike the ordinary English school-boy it would be impossible to conceive. These are not indeed, in- capable of devotion in its ascetic form, but they never resemble so strange a development as was this young Picard saint. The author tells us that his life is read, and with effect, at French schools as a preparation for first Communion. We could not recommend it for a similar purpose here, but it is a remarkable study of life, and older readers at least may find a profit in noting it. It is to be regretted that Mrs. Mitchell has gone out of her way to make it distasteful in some respects to English Churchmen. No one would have complained of the lad's Roman notions but why does she go out of her way to try and reconcile them with Anglicanism.
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