ughtful mind, be the best solution of the
Irish question. The writer, though avowing himself a Protestant, and
declaring that under no circumstances whatever would he be induced to
believe in miracles, has shown, with equal candour and attractiveness,
what the Catholic Church is, and what it can do, when free and
unfettered. He shows it to be the truest and best friend of humanity; he
shows it to care most tenderly for the poor and the afflicted; and he
shows, above all, how the despised, exiled Irish are its best and truest
supports; how the "kitchen often puts the parlour to the blush;" and the
self-denial of the poor Irish girl assists not a little in erecting the
stately temples to the Almighty, which are springing up in that vast
continent from shore to shore, and are only lessened by the demands made
on the same willing workers for the poor father and mother, the young
brother or sister, who are supported in their poverty by the alms sent
them freely, generously, and constantly by the Irish servant-girl.

[Illustration: Ireland and America]

Nor have the Catholics of America overlooked the importance of literary
culture. A host of cheap books and serials are in circulation, and are
distributed largely and freely in convent schools, collegiate
establishments, and country parishes; and with a keen appreciation of
the religious necessities of the great mass of non-Catholics, of which,
unfortunately, English Catholics are oblivious, tracts are published in
thousands for general reading, and given to travellers in the railcars,
and steamboats. Nor has a higher class of literature been overlooked.
The gifted superior of the Congregation of St. Paul has been mainly
instrumental in getting up and superintending the labours of the
_Catholic Publication Society_, which, in addition to the multitude of
valuable works it has published, sends forth its monthly magazine, well
entitled _The Catholic World_, which is unquestionably the best serial
of its kind, and may vie with those conducted by the most gifted
Protestant writers of the day, while it is far superior to anything
which has as yet been published by the Catholics of this country.

Such is a brief outline, and scarcely even an outline, of the _present_
history of Ireland, in which the hearts of so many of our people are in
one country, while their bodies are in another. There is another phase
of this present history on which I could have wished to have dwelt much
lo