BOOK NOTICES

New Zealand Tablet, 1 December 1921, Page 17

BOOK NOTICES

London C.T.S. Publications: I am a Catholic Because I am a Jew, by Hugh I. Angress; Pascal's Provincial Letters, by Hilaire Belloc; Buddhism in Europe: The Beginning and End of Man, by Rev. Ronald Knox, M.A., all twopence each. A Doctrine of Hope, by Bishop Bonomelli. Burns, Oats, Washburne, 3/6 net. The name of the late Bishop of Cremona is always a pledge that a book that bears it is worth reading. The scope of the present volume is indicated thus by Father Martindale, S.J.: "Numbers of men have a sort of knotted web of thought, tightly pegged down above their true selves, which are not free to energize. And these thoughts they take to be themselves, and what is really their prison they take to be their life. Then, when their thoughts are in defiance of their faith they believe themselves to be unbelievers. Bishop Bonomelli applied himself industriously to unknotting these entanglements. . . Anguish was in his heart and love; and these it was that inspired him to write this. Read then, no cold argument, but pages whose very sobriety is inspired by a passionate love and a patient faith." The Norman and Earlier Medieval Period, by Earnest Hull, S.J. We would, as would most people who know them, gladly see every one of Father Hull's books in the library of every educated Catholic layman. In handy manuals, exceedingly low in price considering their real value, he has given us a library of doctrinal and apologetic books. The r present volume, complete in itself, is a sequel to The British and Anglo-Saxon Period. It deals with a period

during which the Church has been misrepresented by English historians, writing with a Protestant bias. It gives us the truth concerning the long struggle of Church with State which culminated in the murder of Becket which brought the contest to a close. If you want an antidote to the misrepresentations that are current in English literature concerning that period you must get Father Hull's little book. Most Catholic booksellers keep his works in stock, and if they do not your order will remind them that they ought to. A Catholic History of Great Britain, by E. M. WilmotBuxton, F. H. Hist. Soc. Burns, Oates, Washbourne, London, 5/- net. This volume aims at doing for juniors what Father Hull is doing for their seniors. The author tells us that its standard is about the level of the knowledge expected in Middle and Upper Classes in Secondary Schools. The work is scientifically written, arranged on the method of grouping important events and tracing cause and effect, as the true philosophy of history demands. The book is done in the modern spirit which has ousted the old fashioned system of dealing out facts and dates with which the memories of the pupils were too often only uselessly laden as waggons are laden with inert impedimenta. The author does not think as so many who have written history, and so many who have not even read it, do, that England and Englishmen are the hub of the universe. Attempts were made at various periods to cut England off from European civilisation but they did not wholly succeed, and an effort is made in this book to review English history in its proper perspective. We are not taught that the Empire is the first and last thing in the world but we are reminded that England is just a little bit of the globe, just as the hand or foot is part of the body. This volume is probably the best compendium of its kind yet published.