NEW BOOKS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 15 April 1909, Page 595

NEW BOOKS

1 • , qt«+;5 O i/^ M A rkl ***** J <Notre *>*&*> Indiana, Unite States) has .issued l * new and enlarged edition of Mr Charl« Warren Stoddart's terribly fascinating book, The Lepe, of Molokai. .We notice a -new chapter and an epilogue which add greatly to the interest of the book. We hay often referred to this wonderful little book, and, in. 190 we quoted extensively from its pages in describing tl isle or death m which the poor lepers.spin out the three or life, their sorrows assuaged by the tender care of nob and devoted priests and Sisters of our faith. No bright* or more touching example of the all-embracing charity < the Church is to be found in our day than {Eat which, tak< place on lone Molokai, and no noble deed of devotion 1 the afflicted has found a fitter or more readable chronic] than that of the book before us. A most excellent prize book (Pp. 138, 75 cents. Of all Catholic booksellers). bands and Co. have issued a book which will he t much interest to the growing number of clients and a< mirers of the gentle Saint of Assisi. It is entitled Filgri, Walks zn Franciscan Italy. The author is Joannes Jdi gensen, and his book is an interesting and well-writtei narrative of a pilgrim journey and pilgrim stays, unde the most favorahle auspices, in the historic Franciscai centres of Greccio, Fonte Colombo, Assisi, Cortona, ant the Holy Mount of Alverna. The narrative contains als. bright sketches of the people, their festivals, and thei ways. (Louis Gille and Co., 73-75 Liverpool Street Sydney). Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs' (Christchurch. Wei Imgton, and Dunedin) list of new publications dealing with the early history of New Zealand keeps growing apace in number. That enterprising firm deserves well of the public of this Dominion, and it has made them once more its debtors by an excellent reprint of Augustus Earle's Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 Ihe author was an artist and draughtsman to the British surveying ship, the Beagle. The book is of very great value in as much as it records the observations and impressions of an educated man in regard to the conditions »:f both white and native life in those primitive times of Ne Zealand. His descriptions of Maori life are of an altogether special interest, and his inland excursions among the brown people, at a time when cannibalism was still everywhere prevalent, and slavery and the other old pagan customs still rife, alone make the book well worth perusal. The missionary and the whaler and the exconvict and the sailor also come in' for a good deal of attention from the author. The book is illustrated by eight engravings from the author's pictures. (Pp. 282 cloth gilt.) ' The name of Father Hull, of the Bombay Examiner, is sufficient to guarantee the excellence and finish of any publication with which it is associated. His latest brochure, Priests and People in Ireland, is a' much-needed reprint of a series of articles in which he exposes the statements and inferences of the book of the same title by the soi-disant ' Catholic,' Michael McCarthy. Father Hull's work is temperate and reasonable in tone' and deadly in substance. The need of it is sufficiently indicated by the frequency with which callow misrepresentations of of Mike McCarthy, pet and orator of the Ulster Orange lodges, are even still flung at Catholics in and but sf ' controversy. Father Hull's able and timely pamphlet la published at the nominal price of one penny (posted- 2d) and may be obtained from W\ P.-Linehan, 309-311 Little Collins Street, Melbourne. The Kegan Paul firm have brought out~a third edition of the charming book, Roads to Rome. It is compiled and edited by Mr. J. Godfrey Raupert (himself a convert and former Anglican clergyman), and it gives personal records of nearly sixty converts to the faith, and descriptions of the various. roads by which they were led to 'Rome.' The book is a series of autobiographical human documents of surpassing interest — many of them written with a charm of style that will carry the reader along in spite of himself. (Pp. xx.-330, cloth, gilt. . From Louis Gille and. Co., 7375 Liverpool street, Sydney.)